Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
he had with Ramsay , who was talking to him about his book project . He also wrote to him on June 7 , 1724 , stating that “ the Chinese canonical books are truly older than Moses ; they contain many things that can only be understood in terms of our religion ; the authors can only have known about these things through ancient tradition that must have come from Adam , through Seth , Enoch , Sem , etc .; that in this sense Enoch may be recognized as the author of these books .” 32
His approach was to demonstrate to the Chinese he was seeking to convert that their tradition belonged to the revealed Church , which they had abandoned and to which they should return .
Ramsay ’ s agenda in The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion is however very much broader . 33 In the first part , he borrows the “ geometrical form ” used by Huet in his Demonstratio Evangelica , that is to say a form of deductive reasoning that
35 However , pure love is the essential feature of natural religion . In a few pages , Ramsay re-orchestrates all the debates in the French dispute , not without a modicum of serious irony : “ The love of God for himself , and of all other beings for him is the law of eternal order . [ ... ] This is the supreme original law , yea the law of God himself , from whence he cannot depart without ceasing to be what he is . [ ... ] All other laws are only emanations of this original law ; or helps to arrive at it . We might have been placed in circumstances , wherein all other laws would have been useless . This is the only necessary , essential , universal law of all intelligent natures , in all times , in all places , and in all situapresents a proposition from which corollaries can be deduced , and the conclusion summed up in scholia . His objective is to define natural religion from a philosophical point of view . This has nothing to do with Hume ’ s definition of natural religion : these are ideas about religion that can only be understood through reasoning . There are some similarities with Fénelon ’ s Démonstration de l ’ existence de Dieu , 34 which Ramsay had compiled at the request of Fénelon ’ s nephew in 1718 , bringing together two texts written at different times . The difference lies in the fact that Ramsay explicitly challenges all the philosophers of his time , in particular Malebranche and above all Spinoza , in an attempt to undermine the first principles of the latter ’ s Ethics .
In the end , what he draws from this is a natural religion established by philosophical reasoning and not by revelation alone . In the first place , God ’ s attributes are addressed : infinite Power , Wisdom and Goodness , the trinity and pure love . 35 This is followed by
32 Cited by Bruno Neveu , “ La ‘ Science divine .’” This diary is kept in the Borgia Latin collection of the Vatican Library . ( Our translation .)
33 A summary relating to the issues discussed here can be found in Urs App , “ Ramsay ’ s Ur-Tradition ,” in The Birth of Orientalism ( Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press , 2010 ), pp . 254-296 . A more complete analysis is contained in Baldi , Verisimile , non vero , pp . 317-419 .
34 François de Fénelon , Œuvres philosophiques , Démonstration de l ’ existence de Dieu , edited by Chevalier Ramsay and the Marquis de Fénelon ( Paris : Jacques Estienne , 1718 ; previously in two volumes , one of which unpublished : 1713 and 1715 ). English edition : A Demonstration of the Existence of God , trans . Samuel Boyse ( London : John Murray , 1769 ). See Henri Gouhier , Fénelon philosophe ( Paris : Vrin , 1977 ), pp . 128 ff .
10