II. CHAP. invention of priests to terrify mankind. It is not in such studies that the moral preparation necessary to qualify man for the powers of freedom is to be found. This was the great cause of the downward progress, unbounded wickedness, and ultimate failure of the Revolution. The character of these men has been drawn by the hand of a master himself an eternal monument of the consequences of their doctrines. "The Encyclopedists," says Robespierre, "embraced several estimable men, but a much greater number of ambitious charlatans: many of their chiefs have become considerable statesmen; whoever is ignorant of their influence and politics will have a very incomplete idea of our Revolution. They introduced the frightful doctrines of atheism-were ever in politics below the dignity of freedom in morality they went as far beyond the dictates of reason. Their disciples declaimed against despotism, and received the pensions of despots; they composed, alternately, tirades against kings, and madrigals for their mistresses; they wrote books against the court, and dedications to kings; were fierce with their pens, and rampant in antechambers. They propagated with infinite care the principles of materialism. We owe to them that selfish philosophy which reduced egotism to a system, regarded human society as a game of chance, where success was the only distinction between what was just and what was unjust,-probity as an affair xxxii. 369. of taste and good breeding, the world as the patrimony of the most dexterous of scoundrels."1 1 Discours de Robes pierre sur l'Etre Su prême, Mai 7, 1794. Hist. Parl. 59. which vailed. pre The writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, RayUniversal nal, Diderot, Helvetius, and their successors, exercised an infidelity influence over the opinions of the whole educated classes in France, of which no previous example had existed in the world. Almost the whole philosophical and literary writers in Paris, for a quarter of a century before the Revolution broke out, were avowed infidels; the grand object of all their efforts was to load religion with obloquy, or, what was more efficacious in France, to turn it into CHAP. II. ridicule. When David Hume was invited at Paris to meet a party of eighteen of the most celebrated literary men in the French capital, he found, to his astonishment, that he was the least sceptical of the party he was the only one present who admitted even the probability of the existence of a Supreme Being.* It was to propagate and extend these principles that all their exertions, both in teaching, writing, and conversation, were directed. Such productions are not permanently hurtful to the cause of religion over the world, but they often destroy a particular state the reaction comes with unerring certainty; and the cause of Christianity, purified in the furnace from its human imperfections, at length comes forth in primeval simplicity, and with renovated strength. Already the reaction has begun, alike in France and England. Religion is again, as in its best days, the basis of the highest class of British literature; and in the French capital, the calm eye of philosophical investigation, undeterred by the sneers of an infidel age, has traced to admiring multitudes the blessings of religious institutions. But the immediate effects of these scep- 1 Guizot, tical writings were to the last degree destructive. By en Europe. accustoming men to turn into ridicule what others most revere by leading them to throw off the principles and faith of their forefathers, they prepared the way for a general dissolution of the bonds, not only of religion, but of society. It is a slight step for those who have thrown off restraint in religious, to disregard authority in civil concerns. Civilisation 60. these irreli The sceptical doctrines of the philosophers, permitting as they did unbounded gratification to the senses, without Spread of either restraint in this world or punishment in the next, gious prinwere too agreeable to the wishes of a corrupted and liber- ciples tine age, not to meet with almost universal assent in the nobility. French capital. Towards the latter part of the reign of Louis XV., no one at court but the King, the Dauphin * ROMILLY'S Memoirs, i. 179. among the VOL. I. M II. CHAP. and Dauphiness, and a few of the older part of the nobility, evinced any respect for religion. Even the external acts of worship were abandoned to the tradesmen and the lower people. Such of the higher ranks as did not openly turn religion into ridicule, from a lingering respect for ancient opinions, confined themselves to three slight and ambiguous observances of its forms. On Sunday, they went out and paid visits to avoid going to the mass; they might be thought to have been there. During Lent, they passed one half of the season in Paris, the other in the country. In this way they eluded observation or inquiry as to whether or not they joined in the religious observances of that period of devotion. Finally, on the death-bed of one of two married persons, the family kept the confessor at a distance; they were unwilling that the priest should be made acquainted with the infidelities of the dying spouse, in an age when regularity of manners was regarded only as a subject of ridicule. The children and relations concealed from the curé the dangerous nature of the malady, and only sent for him when it was too late to obtain a confession. Religion, banished from the palaces of the great, found shelter only in the cottages of the poor; and it was there alone, i. 207, 299. accordingly, in the western provinces, that any effectual stand against the Revolution was made.1 1 Soulavie, Règne de Louis XVI. 61. Great en courage by Frede rick and Catherine. It is a remarkable proof how completely ignorant the most able persons in Europe were of the ultimate effects ment given of this irreligious spirit, that the greatest encouragement to irreligion which the sceptical philosophers of France received, was from the clear-sighted and imperious despots of the north. Frederick the Great of Prussia and the Empress Catherine of Russia not only corresponded regularly with Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Diderot, but evinced in their letters the most lively interest in the great work going forward, of destroying the church in France. The former of these sovereigns gave Voltaire an asylum, with an ample establishment, in his palace at Berlin; while II. the latter settled a pension on Diderot, and corresponded CHAP. with him on such flattering terms as amply consoled him for all the persecution he underwent from the government of Louis XV. No man was better aware than Frederick how unqualified men of abstract habits of thought, in general, are for the regulation of mankind; to him we owe the caustic saying, the truth of which probably few practically acquainted with human affairs will be disposed to dispute, "If I wished to destroy one of my provinces, I would entrust its government to the philosophers." Nevertheless, so enamoured was he of the warfare against the Christian religion, which the Parisian savans were carrying on, that he, as well as Catherine, never gave the French church any other name, in their correspondence with Voltaire and D'Alembert, but the sobriquet "l'Infâme," which they had invented for it; the initial Règne de letters of which so long perplexed the French police, i. 205, 207. who opened their letters. 1* Catherine, in the later 66 * In 1759, Voltaire wrote to the King of Prussia, "Votre Majesté me reproche de caresser quelquefois l'Infâme. Eh! mon Dieu ! non; je ne travaille qu'à l'extirper, et j'y réussis beaucoup parmi les honnêtes gens."- VOLTAIRE to KING OF PRUSSIA, 9th June 1769. On the 8th January 1766, Frederick wrote to Voltaire, “ L'Infâme ne donne que des herbes vénéneuses; il vous est réservé de l'écraser avec votre redoutable massue, avec les ridicules que vous répandez sur elle, et qui portent plus de coups que tous les argumens." Again, on 25th February 1766, “Votre vieillesse est comme l'enfance d'Hercule; ce dieu écraisat des serpens dans son berceau, et vous-chargé d'années-vous écrasez Infâme." In 1767, Frederick and Voltaire mutually congratulated each other on the success of the efforts of the philosophers against l'Infâme. "J'ai lu," says the Prussian monarch, "toutes les pièces que vous m'avez envoyées; vos piéces contre l'Infâme sont si fortes que, depuis Celse, on n'a rien publié de plus frappant. Il ne reste plus de réfuge au Fantôme de l'Erreur; il a été flagellé sur toutes ses faces, sur tous ses côtés. Il est tems de prononcer son oraison funèbre, et de l' enterrer." And on the 16th March 1771, Frederick wrote to Voltaire, "J'approuve fort la méthode de donner des nassardes à l'Infâme, en la combattant de politesses."-See Correspondance de FREDERICK avec VOLTAIRE, Euvres de VOLTAIRE, vols. lii. liii. edition 1829. This "Infâme," so much the object of their philosophic horror, was the church of France-the church of Bossuet and Fénélon, of Fléchier and Bourdaloue, of Pascal and Saurin! Voltaire and D'Alembert, for a series of years, generally closed their letters with écr. l'Inf., (écrasez l'Infâme), which long puzzled the French police, who opened them. What a picture of an age! The first of monarchs and the first of philosophers corresponding on their efforts to destroy the church, and their letters regularly opened by the police of a despotic monarch! See SOULAVIE, Règne de Louis XVI. i. 206, et seq. 1 Soulavie, Louis XVI. II. CHAP. years of her reign, was so sensible of the encouragement she had given to sceptical opinions in France, and their disastrous effects, that she entertained a serious dread that she would be regarded by history as one of the causes of the Revolution. 62. state of the church at this period. The clergy in France were far from being insensible to Weakened the danger of this flood of irreligion which deluged the land, and they raised their voice in the loudest strains to denounce it; but they did not possess ability sufficient to stem the torrent, and had no other resource but to call on the government to enforce the laws against works of an irreligious tendency, and get the writings of the modern philosophers burned by the hands of the executioner. The Romish church now felt the consequences of the entire overthrow of the Protestant faith in France, so long the subject of congratulation; the barbarous injustice of the revocation of the edict of Nantes at length recoiled on the head of its authors. Victory had abated their energies, the cessation of controversy had destroyed their powers; indolence and luxury in the noble dignitaries, poverty and ignorance in the inferior functionaries of the church, rendered them wholly unequal to a contest with the giant powers of newly-roused infidelity. The race of Bossuet and Bourdaloue, of Pascal and Fénélon, was extinct the Roman Catholic faith did not now possess their robust arms to defend its tenets; the followers of Molina and Jansen had ceased to contend for victory; their fierce contests no longer divided the religious world. These acrimonious antagonists had suspended their polemical quarrel on the approach of civil conflict; the Port Royal controversy had merged in that of the parliaments with the throne. So low had the talents of the once illustrious church of France fallen, that in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Christianity itself was assailed, not one champion of note appeared i. 219, 223. in its ranks ; and when the convocation of the clergy in 1770 published their famous anathema against the 1 Soulavie, |