diverse views in politics and morality; all these questions have become urgent again at the present time. Much can be learned from a careful study of Bayle’s engagement in the Philosophical Commentary with problems that remain very much alive.
Sources
On Bayle’s Life and Times
Allen, J. W., A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1961).
Labrousse, Elizabeth, Bayle, trans. Denys Potts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
MacCulloch, Diarmid, The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin Viking, 2004).
On Bayle’s Thought
Bayle, Pierre, Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet, translated with notes and an interpretive essay by Robert C. Bartlett (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000).
Brush, Craig, Montaigne and Bayle: Variations on the Theme of Skepticism (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966).
Kilcullen, John, Sincerity and Truth: Essays on Arnauld, Bayle and Toleration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
Lennon, Thomas, Reading Bayle (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
Mori, Gianluca, Bayle Philosophe (Paris: Champion, 1999).
Rex, Walter, Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965).
Tinsley, Barbara Sher, Pierre Bayle’s Reformation: Conscience and Criticism on the Eve of the Enlightenment (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 2001).
A NOTE ON THE PRESENT TRANSLATION
This edition of the Philosophical Commentary is an amended version of the first English translation, which appeared in London in 1708. The author of the translation, which remains the only complete rendering of the Commentary into English, is unknown. A more recent translation by Amie Godman Tannenbaum was published in 1987, but it omits Part III and the Supplement.1
We have checked the text of the 1708 translation against the French text (from http://gallica.bnf.fr/) and made silent changes to correct omissions, misprints, and mistranslations and to clarify places where change in the meaning of English words would make the translation unintelligible or misleading to the modern reader.2 We have also implemented the corrigenda of the 1708 edition. We have not tried to make the translation more literal; in our judgment it is rather free (in the manner of the time), but substantially very faithful, and lively. The pagination of the 1708 edition is indicated inside angle brackets.
We have identified and supplied details for Bayle’s various references and translated passages quoted in foreign languages, unless Bayle himself supplies a translation or paraphrase. We have left the titles of works referred to in the original language unless the title illustrates Bayle’s argument, and then we have translated it. In notes and appendixes we have provided information needed for reading the work with reasonable comprehension. Footnotes of the 1708 edition are indicated by asterisk, dagger, etc. Notes supplied by the present editors are numbered. Material we have added to the 1708 footnotes is enclosed in square brackets.
We are grateful to Professor Gianluca Mori for help in identifying some of Bayle’s references; see notes 129, 193, 195, 199, and the reference to Josephus (p. 143, note). We are grateful also to Greg Fox for help in transliterating some passages in Greek, and to Guy Neumann for help with a difficulty in the French text. The web sites of the Bibliothèque nationale de France have been of great assistance.
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REFERRING TO BAYLE’S WORKS
| CG | Critique générale de l’histoire du Calvinisme de Mr Maimbourg, OD, vol. 2. |
| CP | Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jésus-Christ, “Contrain-les d’entrer,” OD, vol. 2. |
| CPD | Continuation des Pensées diverses, OD, vol. 3. |
| DHC | Dictionnaire historique et critique (various editions, and English translation, London, 1734). |
| EMT | Entretiens de Maxime et de Thémiste, OD, vol. 4. |
| NL | Nouvelles lettres de l’auteur de la Critique générale de l’histoire du Calvinisme, OD, vol. 2. |
| OD | Oeuvres diverses (La Haye, 1727, reprint Hildesheim: Olms, 1966). |
| PD | Pensées diverses à l’occasion de la comète, OD, vol. 3. |
| RQP | Réponse aux questions d’un provincial, OD, vol. 3. |
| S | Supplément du Commentaire philosophique, OD, vol. 2. |
<i> A
Philosophical Commentary ON These Words of the Gospel, LUKE XIV. 23. Compel them to come in, that my House may be full.
In Four Parts.
I. Containing a Refutation of the Literal Sense of this Passage.
II. An Answer to all Objections.
III. Remarks on those Letters of St. AUSTIN which are usually alledg’d for the compelling of Hereticks, and particularly to justify the late Persecution in France.
IV. A Supplement, proving, That Hereticks have as much Right to persecute the Orthodox, as the Orthodox them.
Translated from the French of Mr. BAYLE, Author of the Great Critical and Historical Dictionary.
In TWO VOLUMES.
LONDON, Printed by J. Darby in Bartholomew-Close, and sold by J. Morphew near Stationers-Hall. 1708.
Advertisement of the English Publisher. <ii>; <iii>
When the two first Tomes of the following Work were publish’d in Holland, they were pretended to be translated from the English of Mr. John Fox of Bruggs. The Reason of Mr. Bayle’s feigning this Original, as ’tis observ’d in his LIFE, lately translated from a French Manuscript, and printed at the End of the Second Volume of his Miscellaneous Reflections, was, 1. Because the way of Reasoning in it resembl’d that Depth and strenuous
