Voltaire Dying | AdventAI

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 25, 1875

Voltaire Dying.

ON the twenty-fifth of February, 1758, Voltaire penned the following blasphemy: "Twenty years more and God will be in a pretty plight." Let us see what was taking place at precisely the time indicated. On the twenty-fifth of February, 1778, Voltaire was lying, as was thought, on his bed of death. Racked and tortured by remorse for past misdeeds, he was anxious to propitiate the God whom he had insulted, and the church which he and his band had sworn to destroy; and hence he resolved on addressing a minister of religion in order to receive the sacrament of reconciliation. On the twenty-sixth he wrote the following to the Abbe Gaultier: "You promised me, sir, to come and hear me. I entreat you to take the trouble to call as soon as possible." The Abbe went at once.

A few days later, in the presence of the same Abbe Gaultier, the Abbe Mignot, and the Marquis de Villeveille, the dying man made the following declaration: "I, the undersigned, declare that, for these four days past, having been afflicted with a vomiting of blood, at the age of eighty-four, and, not being able to drag myself to church, the reverend rector of St. Sulpice, having been pleased to add to his other good works that of sending to me the Abbe Gaultier, a priest, I confessed to him, and, if it pleases God to dispose of me, I die in the Holy Catholic Church, in which I was born, hoping that the divine mercy will pardon all my faults. If ever I have scandalized the church, I ask the pardon of God and of the church. March 1, 1778.—Voltaire." This document was deposited with Mons. Momet, notary of Paris. It was also, with the permission of Voltaire, carried to the rector of Sulpice and to the Archbishop of Paris, in order that they might say whether or not the declaration was sufficiently explicit and satisfactory.

Twice before, when dangerously ill, the wretched man had made abject retractions. But these he had not only rejected when restored to health, but, passing from bad to worse, he poured out fuller vials of his wrath against God and Christianity. It was then of necessity to receive the most solemn and full abjuration of past infidelities.

When Gaultier returned with the archiepiscopal answer, he was refused admission to the dying man. The arch-conspirators trembled at the apostasy of their hero; and, dreading the ridicule which would fall upon themselves, it was determined not to allow any minister of religion thenceforth to visit him. Finding himself thus cut off from the consolations of religion, Voltaire became infuriated; no reproach, no curse being deemed bad

enough for the D'Alemberts and Diderots who guarded him. "Be gone," he said; "it is you who have brought me to my present state. Be gone! I could have done without you all; but you could not have existed without me; and what a wretched glory you procured me!" And then praying, and next blaspheming, now saying, "O Christ," and next, "I am abandoned by God and man," he wasted away his life, ceasing to curse and blaspheme and live, on the thirtieth of May, 1778. These facts were made public by Mons. Tronchin, a Protestant physician from Geneva, who attended him almost to the last. Horrified at what he had to witness, he declared that to see all the furies of Orestes, one only had to be present at the death of Voltaire. "Such a spectacle," he adds, "would benefit the young who are in danger of losing the precious helps of religion." The Marshal de Richelieu was so terrified at what he saw that he left the bedside of Voltaire, declaring that the "sight was too horrifying for endurance."—London Popular Journal.