8 December 1892

Manila

Manila, 8 December 1892

MR. JOSE RIZAL

Dapitan

MY MOST BELOVED IN CHRIST DON JOSE:

I received your esteemed letter of 11 November in which you state that you have a point of view in religious matters different from mine; that if I am interested in asking you about it, you will tell me in what it consists even though you do not believe it opportune for the present to tell me why. Why will I not be interested in asking you with all solicitude about the most important business you have at hand – the sole, necessary, transcendental, undeferable business of your eternal salvation? Therefore, please indicate to me in the most concrete way and as fully as possible your manner of thinking concerning religious matters. You assure me that you are not a Protestant and that had it not been for your respect for the religious idea and for holding religion as a matter of convenience or as an art to get along well in this life, you would now be rich, free, and covered with honors. I am sincerely glad for such candid confession. You add besides that had I heard your discussions with a Protestant curate in the long summer twilights there in the solitude of Odenwald, when in slow, calm conversation, having the freedom to speak, you talked about your respective beliefs, about the morality of peoples, and the influence of their respective creeds, I would not have formed such a hasty opinion.

Come on, my dear friend, what do you want me to tell you? For, even dispensing with all that you had written in conformity with Protestant doctrines in the Noli me tangere, El Filibusterismo, and in your annotations to Morga, which books I have read and are now in my possession, what is the significance of the conclusion that you got from discussions throughout the three months that the conversations lasted? You yourself state it: A profound respect, you say, for the good faith of the adversary and for the most contrary ideas…which led you almost always to the conclusion that religions, whatever they might be, should not make men enemies of one another but brothers and real brothers. So that from those conferences you did not get anything else but a profound respect for all ideas sincerely conceived and practiced with conviction?…Well, already you fell into the trap in which the curate of Odenwald put you. Yes, my friend, because this theory of respecting the most contrary ideas that diverse religions ought to unite men in their very diversity, professing profound respect for every idea sincerely conceived and practiced with conviction is thoroughly Protestant, because it is the consecration of the personal judgement of men.

The Catholic curate of the little town on the banks of the Rhine who gave you an example of this Christian fraternity, considering himself with the Protestant as two servants of the same God. .. if he did such a thing he would be a simpleton, ignorant, who had lost the Catholic common sense because he necessarily must be so to consider the Protestant servant of the God of the Catholics. This can only be affirmed by those who, like you, believe that the differences between Catholics and Protestants are only of opinion and not of faith, and that a religious duty can be fulfilled without knowing how the will of God is interpreted in it. This is interpreted well and better with Catholicism; neither better nor well but bad and worse with Protestantism.

The moderate Protestants believe, that in all sects one can interpret and fulfill the will of God and be saved. The liberal Protestants even more progressive, like Lessing, Reymarus; those of the evangelical alliance, with all the file of freethinkers of our days at whose head Draper pretends to be, affirm that in all the religions of the universe and even without any religion, man can fulfill his duty and gain happiness. It is evident that in this way they pretend to place on the pedestal the idol of reason, independent and separate from faith, and constitute it as the supreme judge and final arbiter of all truths. And is this not to pretend to dethrone God and elevate prostituted reason in His place as the philosophers of the French Revolution (supported by Draper in his Conflicts) did in the last century, putting up a statue of the Goddess of Reason, personified by a prostitute?…If this is admitted, all science and philosophy become unnecessary and the most contradictory principles and the most illogical and monstrous deductions will be respected as axioms of truth. Where shall we end with such absurdities if not in the destruction of reason and its objective which is truth and in universal skepticism? Is this practical and reasonable?…Well there you have the consequences of that free and independent reason that could very well be called the reason of wrong inasmuch as far from being guided by the inexorable laws of legitimate reasoning, allows itself to be led quite often by the caprices of the madwoman of the house, Lady Imagination.

Such deviations or misbehavior of reason ought to be attacked and corrected decisively by reason itself illuminated by faith and this system, the lone savior of true knowledge and a true religion, is what everyone who values himself as a Catholic should practice exclusively.

Interficite errores,[1] St. Augustine says to us, et diligite homines from which I deduce that the good faith of the adversaries deserves consideration but not any of the ideas contrary to truth. True religion ought to regard the false ones as enemies. Thus Christ said: qui non est pecum contra me est,[2] nor can he tolerate their errors however much he may consider their followers as strayed sheep that live outside of the flock and the fold, love them as a Catholic, take an interest in them as fellowmen, attract them solicitously as children of the same Father who is in heaven into whose paternal dwelling he ought to endeavor to introduce them that in serving Him they may glorify Him. Et alias oves habeo, Christ himself said to the Apostles, quae non sunt ex hoc ovili, et illas oportet ad me adducer et vocem meam audient, et fiat unum ovile et unus pastor.[3] He came to the world with such purpose, ut salvum faceret quod perierat, et ut filios Dei qui errant disperse congregaret in unum. With identical purpose therefore we also ought to work, by means of the wholesome teachings of the Church combatting errors and falsehood in order to bring back those who err to the fold, to the gentle yoke of the law of Christ and perpetuate in this manner among men the extremely abundant fruits of their redemption. The Savior roused his disciples to such heroic undertaking when he told them: Ignem veni mittere in terram et quid volo nisi ut accendatur. . . Non veni Pacem mittere sed gladium. . .[4]

As a summary of everything said, it is necessary to conclude by establishing the following bases: 1. The greatest benevolence and profound respect, complete acquiescence and even solidarity with every true idea sincerely conceived and practiced with conviction. 2. Profound hatred, implacable and ceaseless war against all false and erroneous ideas. 3. Commiseration towards persons who have sincerely conceived and practiced with conviction false and erroneous doctrines, offering them opportune and even inopportune and efficacious aid whenever an occasion arises in order to banish their errors and make them come out of the mire into which their bad convictions and habits have plunged them. 4. Persecute, isolate, silence, and confuse every erroneous idea maliciously conceived and practiced, especially if it is pernicious so that it will not contaminate society with its harmful purpose. In the latter case, severity is charity and pity would be cruelty.

You tell me that in the midst of the darkness that reigns over your country you do not want shadows but you prefer light. So much the better; however, you should try that this be the true light; Jesus Christ says of himself: Ego sum lux mundi, qui venit ad me non ambulat in tenebris.[5] Of this light the evangelist St. John writes: Erat lux vera quae illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum.[6] Therefore I add: Ambulate dum lucem habetis et dum lucem habetis credite in lucem ut filii lucis sitis. Jesus Christ said also: Ego sum veritas.[7] In another part of your letter however you add: “Of course I admit with Your Reverence that supernatural (divine) light is much more perfect than human reason. Who will doubt that Torch when we see in this world the effects of the little spark (?) granted (?) to mankind (?). What will the creator’s reason be when I am so much surprised by that of the inhabitant of the little world cast by Him into space like a snail in the midst of the giants of the sea?” Thanks be to God that you feel as an incontrovertible principle the existence of God, Creator and Lord, personal, who cast worlds into space, endowed with reason (of intelligence, you would like to say, because God is the purest intelligence or in actu simplicisimo) and has granted to man (personal not to impersonal mankind) this little spark (not by way of emanation, evolution, or manifestation of his own essence but by way of creation out of nothing) that we call understanding or the faculty of thinking, discussing, reflecting, abstracting, generalizing, and reasoning. How correctly the Catholic Church discourses on this fundamental truth, when it believes and confesses that there exists one true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, omnipotent, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in his intelligence and will, that being unique, singular, withal simple and incommutable spiritual substance, ought to be proclaimed really and essentially distinct from the world; in itself and by itself most holy and ineffably sublime above all things that exist and can be conceived out of Him.

This singular true God for His kindness and omnipotent virtue, not to augment His happiness, not to acquire new perfection but to manifest it through the riches He bestowed upon His creatures, with most free counsel at the beginning of time, founded at the same time out of nothing both two creatures: The spiritual and the corporal, namely, the angelical and the worldly, and afterwards the human as ordinary, composed of spirit and body.

All things, however, that God has created, He preserves and rules with His providence, reaching firmly from one extreme to the other and ordering all things with gentleness. For, in His eyes, all things are bare and open, even those that will be by the free action of creatures.

Against such doctrines have been dashed to pieces the false theories of the materialists, idealists, and pantheists, including the theories of emanation and absorption and Indian nirvana, the theory of eternal evolution of matter as manifestations of divine essence, the theories of universal and impersonal divinity that determines the universality of beings in their diverse gradations of genus, species, and individuals, and the theory of a Supreme Force without a Supreme Being consisting of a mechanical law that necessarily operates in eternal matter and infinite producer of all the phenomena that develop in the universe.

Theories are all those that like castles of cards have been erected in the erring reason of freethinkers since the supposed reconstruction of philosophy and science owing to the first principle or false supposition of Descartes, Cogito, ergo sum;[8] a principle that its author never dreamed would give rise to materialism, idealism, and pantheism in philosophy, liberalism in politics, deism, rationalism, incredulity, and indifference in religion, romanticism and naturalism in literature and fine arts, and positivism and egoism in domestic, civil, and social economy, in all the branches of commercial, industrial, and agricultural life. In all these manifestations it always appears in the forefront with Satanic autolatria or rather the apotheosis of I, downright conceit, and arrogance.

I congratulate myself sincerely that you are not a partisan of these systems; for you admit the existence of one God, Creator and Lord of all creation. But do you also admit the divinity of Jesus Christ and the divine institution of his church?

I ask you this question because I see that you continue in your letter thus: “But who with justifiable reason can call himself on this our planet the reflector of that Light? Who? Well. . . Jesus Christ, God and true man. By virtue of his human nature he is the legitimate Reflector and by virtue of his nature and divine personality, the same light and splendor of his Eternal Father.

Credo, the Church sings, in unum Dominum Jesum Christum Filium Dei unigenitum et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula, Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lunine, Deu.m verum de Deo vero. Genitum non factum, Consubstantialem Patri per quem omnia facta sunt, qui Propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria virgine et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato passus et sepultus est et resurrexit tettio die secundum Scripturas et ascendit in coelos sedet ad dexterram Patris, et iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos cujus regni non erit finis.[9]

The Holy Ghost comes from the Father and the Son. Nor is the Church paganized by believing in the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity because in it are three persons and one God. You ought to believe this if you are still a Catholic. . . But, the following words that I read in your letter make my soul cold: “All religions pretend to possess the truth. . .On hearing the marvels, miracles, and testimonies, etc. with which every religion pretends to prove its divinity or origin at least, on seeing intelligent, honest men. . .with the same desire to perfect and save themselves, profess in matters of religion diverse beliefs. . .I imagine men engaged in the study of truth like students copying a statue. Seated around it . . . they see it in different ways and the more they endeavor to be faithful in their drawings the more these drawings will be different from one another. . . And Your Reverence do not tell me that truths seen from all points always have to show the same form; this would be for Him who is everywhere and whose glance embraces everything. To us only mathematical truths that are like plane figures show themselves in that manner; but religious, moral, and political truths are figures of extent and depth. . . and this is without speaking of preoccupations, of suggestions, of sympathies!. . .”

And the divine mission of Jesus Christ, my dear friend, and his divinity itself count for naught and weigh nothing on the disk of your intellectual balance with the object of tilting your assent?

The divine mission of Jesus Christ is more than sufficient, most abundantly proven by his miracles, which if they are true, are the most evident testimonies and constitute a kind of irrefutable proofs, digna infidelibus. . . I will cite you only one that is worth a thousand in order not to tire your attention, Ab uno disce omnes.[10] Who, on seeing a four-day buried corpse, fetid and decomposed, that at the sole voice of one man returns to life, will deny that a true miracle of the first order had been worked there? Well such was the resurrection of Lazarus by Jesus Christ. A public act, done before the face of an entire town, a transcendental act that its performance cost Jesus Christ himself his life. Will you deny it perchance? Well you close all the pages of history inasmuch as from now on they are of no use to me. Either authenticity has no proofs or this is an unimpeachable authentic miracle.

Well now, Jesus Christ performed that miracle to prove his divine mission. Already on another occasion he had said to the Jews: Si mihi non vultis credere, operibus credite. In relating the deed St. Luke says thus: Jesus autem elevatis sursum oculis, dixit: Pater gratias ego tibi quoniam audisti me. Ego autem sciebam quia semper me audis, sed Propter populum qui me circunstat, dixi, ut credant quia tu me misisti. Haec cum dixisset, voce magna clamavit; Lazare veni foras et statum prodiit qui fuerat mortuus, ligatus pedes et manus institis et illius sudario erat ligata. Dixit eis Jesus, solve eum et sinite abire.[11]

Let all the leaders of the other religions and other copyists come now and do as much beyond the reach of natural laws.

The miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus proves therefore the divine mission of Jesus Christ.

The miracle of the glorious resurrection of his own body likewise proves the divinity of Jesus Christ.

It is so public and resounding an act, the most transcendental of all for Christianity, because it constitutes the most evident proof of the truth of the religion established by Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ himself had foretold it repeatedly before it occurred. Ecce ascendimus Jerosolyman, Jesus Christ once told his apostles, et consummabuntur omnia quae scripta sunt per Prophetas de Filio hominis. Tradetur enim gentibus et illudetur, et flagellabitur, et consePuetur; et Postquam flagellaverint occident eum, et tertia die resurget.[12] On another occasion, after his transfiguration on the Tabor, he had prescribed to his three apostles who witnessed it, Peter, John, and James: Nemine dixeritis Visionen donec Filius hominis a mortuis resurgat;[13] and at another place Solvite templum hoc et in tribus diebus excitabo illud.[14] Ipse autem, adds the evangelist loquebatur de templo corporis sui. And in other passages when he says, Praecedam vos in Galilea[15] and in the comparison of his burial with that of Jonas in the belly of the whale, etc.

The act of the resurrection of Christ was so evident and clear that St. Thomas himself so obstinately persistent in his incredulity formerly, had to admit it later, not till after he had put his fingers on the scars of the wounds of the hands, feet, and the side of Jesus Christ. This event was so publicly known, universally admitted, and of such practical and transcendental consequences that I cannot resist copying here all that the Doctor of the Gentiles remarked about it in his letter to the Corinthians,: Chap, XV, v. 1-23: Notum autem vobis facio, Fratres, evangelium quod praedicavi vobis, quod et accepistis, in quo et statis per quod et salvamini qua ratione praedicaverim vobis, si tenetis, nisi frustra credidistis. Tradidi enim vobis in primis, quod et accepi; quoniam Christus mortuus est pro Peccatis nostris, secundum Scripturas; et quia visus est Cephae et post hoc undecim; deinde visus est plus quam quimgentis fratribus simul, ex quibus multi manent usque ad huc, quidam autem dormierunt; deinde visus est Jacobo, deinde apostolis omnibus; novissima autem omnium tanquam abortivo, visus est et mihi. Ego enim sum minimus apostolorum, qui non sum dignus vocari apostolus, quoniam Persecutus sum ecclesiam Dei. Graiia autem Dei sum id quod sum et gratia ejus in me vacua non fuit; sed abundantius illis omnibus laboravi; non ego autem, sed gratia Dei mecum. Sive enim ego, sive illi, sic Praedicamus, et sic credidistis. si autem Christus Praedicatur quod resurrexit a mortuis, quomodo quidam dicunt in vobis quoniam resurrectio mortuorum non est? Si autem resurrectio mortuorum non est, neque Christus resurrexit. Si autem Christus non resurrexit, inanis est ergo praedicatio nostra, inanis est et fides jestra. Invenimur autem et falso testes Dei, quoniam testimonium diximus adversus Deum, quod suscitaverit Christurn, quern non suscitavit si mortui non resurgunt. Num si mortui non resurgunt, neque Christus resurrexit. Quod si Christus non resurrexit, vana est fides vestra; adbuc enim estis in Peccatis vestris. Ergo et qui dormierunt in Christo, Perierunt. Si in hac vita tantum in Christo sperantes sumus, miserabiliores sumus omnibus hominibus.

Nunc autem Christus resurrexit a mortuis, Primitiae dormientium; quoniam quidem per horninem mors, et per hominem resurrectio mortuorum. Et sicut in Adam omnes moriuntur, ita est in Christo omnes vivificabuntur.[16]

Jesus Christ resurrected by his own virtue, according to his own testimony. When he drove out of the temple the merchants he told them: Auferte ista hinc, et nolite facere domum Patris mei, domun negociationis.[17] Then the Jews asked him to perform a miracle to prove his divinity as the Son of God for he acted with such to authority, Quod signum ostendis nobis quia haec facis,[18] to which Christ replied: Solvite templum hoc, et in tribus diebus excitabo illud. The word in the Hebrew text signifies templum et corpus. Jesus Christ was talking of the resurrection of his own body through his own virtue, the Jews inasmuch as they were then in the temple, understood it as excitabo illud, that he was talking about its reconstruction, and so they told him: Quadraginta et sextannis aedificatum est templum hoc, et in tribus diebus excitabis illud?[19] But the evangelist, a witness of the deed, explains afterward the meaning of what the Lord said: Ille autem dicebat de templo corporis sui. Cum ergo resurrexiset a mortuis recordati sunt discipuli ejus quia hoc dicebat, et credidierunt Scriptura et sermoni quem dixit Jesus.[20]

Therefore the example that you adduce of the students copying a statue does not apply; because it does not deal there about statues but of the very original and prototype Jesus Christ God and true man, author of religion, of revelation, and sanctification, founder of the Catholic Church, consummator and object of our hope, cause and motive of our being, knowledge, and natural inclinations, as God creator, and supernatural as Redeemer, and at the same time the end of our eternal happiness. Ego sum, he tells us, the principium et finis.[21] With what other point of view then can men regard the supernatural but with that given to them by the very same being and author of the supernatural who is God himself whose gaze embraces all? He has elevated our faculties and has put them in such conditions of aptitude by means of His divine grace, illuminative and impulsive, that our intelligence aided by it can know the existence of the mysteries and our will to believe them and to wish and act in conformity with the most holy will of God in such a way that all the acts of the virtues will entitle us to life eternal if we perform them invested with the sanctifying grace of habitual charity.

Inspice, ergo, et fac secundum exemplar quod tibi monstratum est.[22] Et noli vocari Rabbi super terram, unus est enim Magister noster, Christus.[23] At another place he teaches us saying: Ego sum via veritas et vita.[24] Blessed are those who listen to his teachings and keep them. Let us listen to Christ then. He has established his church to which he entrusted the body of his revelation and made it the dispenser of his graces, and for this purpose promised the church as well as its head or chief, the visible vicar of Christ himself on earth, His aid until the end of the centuries. I should like to tell you something of the origin and prerogatives of this divine institution; however I am afraid to prolong myself too much and we shall leave it in any case for the next mail. As you please, we shall leave the political question ad kalendas graecas concerning which I believe you are involved in a paralogism called fallacy of the heart. Bear in mind, however, that 1st, the right of Spain to the occupation and later to the domination of the Philippines was a divine and natural right; 2nd, that the prescription of the fact of Spanish domination over the Philippines with attending circumstances sanctioned her original right; 3rd, that the fruits of the occupation and domination of Spain, secured for the benefit of the Philippines, thanks to the system of legislation, government, administration, and culture adopted and employed by Spain, corroborate the fact and right of her domination, and the abuses committed in all branches of the government by the personnel of the same, even if they ought to be corrected, cannot be used to destroy the fact or right of her domination; 4th, Philippine separatism constitutes, especially at present, the ugliest blot of downright ingratitude; 5th, that separatism in the Philippines is impossible of execution, indefensible in practice, and in the end unwise; and 6th and last, that united to Spain, the Philippines will run triumphantly until the end over the course of true progress, but separated from her, she will inevitably run headlong into the chaos of anarchy, of slavery, of savagery.

I pity these people for their wretched condition in their muddy places during the planting season. Please see how all this could be avoided. We will try to remedy it as long as it is within my power. My regards to Mr. Ricardo.

I remain your affectionate friend and servant in Christ.

PABLO PASTELLS, S.J.

04-767 [Misc.]