The writing of the second part of this book presented a peculiar difficulty. On the one hand I had the great advantage of having found the first rough draft of the manuscript La Religion du Chretien, corrected and often recorrected. Authorship could eventually be established beyond shadow of doubt, and in the corrections one could see de Vallone changing his opinions as he wrote. On the other the sheer length of the manuscript - about 140,000 words - plus the num­ ber of corrections - well over 3,000, many of them lengthy - the enormous number of references in the text to the Classics, to the Scriptures and Apochrypha, to the Fathers, to Philosophers, ancient and contemporary or near contemporary to de Vallone, and to a considerable number of other contem­ porary authors, all of which would require a footnote (not to speak of other footnotes necessary as comments on the text itself) made the production of a critical edition a financial impossibility. Instead I decided, for the sake of scholars interested in this type of manuscript, to give a full, i. ndeed meticulous­ perhaps too meticulous - digest of the manuscript with a running commentary, showing the influences working on de Vallone, the intellectual atmosphere in which he lived, indicating the significance of all the major revisions and correc­ tions in his text and commenting on what one can only describe as his own world-theory and on his use of his authorities and of their influence upon him.

Inhalt

I Biographical.- 1 The Search for de Vallone.- 2 The Story of Yves de Vallone.- 3 The Calvinism of de Vallone.- 4 Predestination and the Quarrel with Jaques Bernard.- II "La Religion Du Chrétien".- 1 Introduction.- 2 God.- God and Matter.- Atheism and Polytheism.- The Doctrine of the Trinity.- 3 The Soul.- The Nature of the Soul.- The Duration of Souls: Metempsychosis and Hell.- De Vallone and Spinoza. God and the Universe.- Occasionalism and Life after Death.- The Specific Identity of Souls.- Magic.- The World System of de Vallone.- Influences: the Anima Mundi, Nature and the "Grand Tout".- 4 Authority.- Reason.- Error.- The State, the Philosophes and the Common People.- The Jesuits.- "Bon Sens" and Conscience.- Sin and Punishment.- De Vallone's Theory of Human Psychology.- Can Any Sect Claim Religious Truth?.- The Religion of the Chinese.- Deism.- 5 Scripture.- Is Scriptural Revelation Worthy of God?.- The Style and Languages of the Texts of the Scriptures.- Who Wrote the Old Testament?.- The Authorship of the Books of the New Testament.- The Influence of Richard Simon.- The Character and Authority of the Prophets.- Spinoza and de Vallone.- The Sibyls.- 6 The Christian Religion.- The Person and Teaching of Christ.- Early Christology.- Contemporary Christianity.- III Conclusion.- 1 The Unorthodoxy of de Vallone.- 2 The Clandestine Manuscripts.- Cuppé, Meslier and the Militaire Philosophe.- The Three Impostors.- Henry de Boulainvilliers.- Nouvelles Libertés de Penser; the Soul, Immortality and Freewill.- La Lettre de Thrasibule à Leucippe.- The Examen de la Religion: Rationalistic Deism.- The Character of the Philosophe.- 3 Conclusion.