In order to justify this execution it was necessary to charge the unfortunate man with the most enormous of crimes. The grey friar--the _very_ grey friar Marsenne, was so besotted as to publish that "Vanini set out from Naples, with twelve of his apostles, to convert the whole world to atheism." What a pitiful tale! How should a poor priest have twelve men in his pay? How should he persuade twelve Neapolitans to travel at great expense, in order to spread this revolting doctrine at the peril of their lives? Would a king himself have it in his power to pay twelve preachers of atheism? No one before Father Marsenne had advanced so enormous an absurdity. But after him it was repeated; the journals and historical dictionaries caught it, and the world, which loves the extraordinary, has believed the fable without examination.
Even Bayle, in his miscellaneous thoughts (_Pensées Diverses_), speaks of Vanini as of an atheist. He cites his example in support of his paradox, that "a society of atheists might exist." He assures us that Vanini was a man of very regular morals, and that he was a martyr to his philosophical opinions. On both these points he is equally mistaken. Vanini informs us in his "Dialogues," written in imitation of Erasmus, that he had a mistress named Isabel. He was as free in his writings as in his conduct; but he was not an atheist.
A century after his death, the learned Lacroze, and he who took the name of Philaletes, endeavored to justify him. But as no one cares anything about the memory of an unfortunate Neapolitan, scarcely any one has read these apologies.
The Jesuit Hardouin, more learned and no less rash than Garasse, in his book entitled _"Athei Detecti"_ charges the Descartes, the Arnaulds, the Pascals, the Malebranches, with atheism. Happily, Vanini's fate was not theirs.
A word on the question in morals, agitated by Bayle, "Whether a society of atheists can exist." Here let us first observe the enormous self-contradictions of men in disputation. Those who have been most violent in opposing the opinion of Bayle, those who have denied with the greatest virulence the possibility of a society of atheists, are the very men who have since maintained with equal ardor that atheism is the religion of the Chinese government.