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years, to purchase the favour of God, and to be reconciled to him again! But it is a fruitless vain wish; millions of millions of years will bring me no nearer the end of my tortures, than one poor hour. O eternity! eternity! who can properly paraphrase upon the words-forever and ever!"

In this kind of strain he continued till his strength was exhausted, and his dissolution approached; when, recovering a little breath, with a groan so dreadful and loud, as if it had not been human, he cried out, "Oh! the insufferable pangs of hell and damnation!" and so died; death settling the visage of his face in such a form, as if the body, though dead, was sensible of the extremity of torments.

Emerson was an infidel, and one of the first mathematicians of the age. Though, in some respects, he might be considered a worthy man, his conduct through life, was rude, vulgar, and frequently immoral. He paid no attention to religious duties, and both intoxication and profane language were familiar to him. Towards the close of his days, being afflicted with the stone, he would crawl about the floor on his hands and knees, sometimes praying, and sometimes swearing. What a poor creature is man without religion! Newton died of the same disorder, which was attended, at times, with such severe paroxysms as forced out large drops of sweat down his face. In these trying circumstances, however, he was never observed to utter the smallest complaint, or to express the least impatience. What a striking contrast between the conduct of the infidel and the Christian!

Voltaire, during a long life, was continually treating the Holy Scriptures with contempt, and endeavouring to spread the poison of infidelity among the nations. In his last illness he sent for Tronchin. When the doctor came, he found Voltaire in the greatest agonies, exclaiming with the utmost horror— am abandoned by God and man. Doctor, I will give you half of what I am worth, if you will give me

six months life. The doctor answered, Sir, you cannot live six weeks. Voltaire replied, Then I shall go to hell, and you will go with me! and soon after expired.

This is the hero of modern infidels! Dare any of them say,-Let me die the death of Voltaire, and let my last end be like his? That he was a man of great and various talents, none can deny; but his want of sound learning, and moral qualifications, will ever prevent him from being ranked with the benefactors of mankind. If the reader have felt himself injured by the poison of this man's writings, he may find relief for his wounded mind, by perusing Findlay's Vindication of the Sacred Books from the misrepresentations and cavils of Voltaire; and Lefanu's Letters of certain Jews to Voltaire. The hoary infidel cuts but a very sorry figure in the hands of these sons of Abraham.

During Voltaire's last visit to Paris, when his triumph was complete, and he had even feared that he should die with glory, amidst the acclamations of an infatuated theatre, he was struck by the hand of Providence, and fated to make a very different termination of his career.

In the midst of his triumphs, a violent hemorrhage raised apprehensions for his life. D'Alembert, Diderot, and Marmontel, hastened to support his resolution in his last moments, but were only witnesses to their mutual ignominy, as well as to his own. Rage, remorse, reproach, and blasphemy, all accompany and characterize the long agony of the dying atheist.

On his return from the theatre, and in the midst of the toils he was resuming to acquire fresh applause, Voltaire was warned, that the long career of his impiety was drawing to an end.

In spite of all the sophisters flocking around him, in the first days of illness, he gave signs of wishing to return to the God whom he had so often blasphemed. He called for the priest. His danger increasing,

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he wrote the following note to the Abbé Gaultier:You had promised me Sir, to come and hear me. intreat you would take the trouble of calling on me as soon as possible.-Signed VOLTAIRE. Paris, the 26th Feb. 1778.

A few days after he wrote the following declaration, in presence of the Abbé Gaultier, the Abbé Mignot, and the Marquis de Villevieille, copied from the minutes deposited with Mr. Momet, notary at Paris:

"I the underwritten, declare, that for these four days past, having been afflicted with a vomiting of blood, at the age of eighty-four, and not having been able to drag myself to the church, the Rev. the Rector of Sulpice, having been pleased to add to his good works, that of sending to me the Abbé Gaultier; I confessed to him; and if it pleases God to dispose of me, I die in the church, in which I was born; hoping that the divine mercy will deign to pardon all my faults. Second of March, 1778. Signed VOLTAIRE; in presence of the Abbé Mignot, my nephew, and the Marquis de Villevieille, my friend.

After the two witnesses had signed this declaration, Voltaire added these words, copied from the same minutes:-" The Abbé Gaultier, my confessor, having apprized me, that it was said among a certain set of people, that I should protest against every thing I did at my death;' I declare that I never made such a speech, and that it is an old jest, attributed long since to many of the learned, more enlightened than I

am.”

This declaration is also signed by the Marquis de Villevieille, to whom, eleven years before, Voltaire wrote, "Conceal your march from the enemy, in your endeavours to crush the wretch!" (7)

(7) It had been customary during many years for Voltaire to call our blessed Saviour-The Wretch. And he vowed that he would crush him. He closes many of his letters to his infidel-friends with the same words-crush the wretch!

Voltaire had permitted this declaration to be carried to the rector of Sulpice, and to the archbishop of Paris, to know whether it would be sufficient. When The Abbé Gaultier returned with the answer, it was impossible for him to gain admittance to the patient. The conspirators strained every nerve to hinder the chief from consummating his recantation, and every avenue was shut to the priest; whom Voltaire himself had sent for. The demons haunted every access; rage succeeded to fury, and fury to rage again, during the remainder of his life.

D'Alembert, Diderot, and about twenty others of the conspirators, who had beset his apartment, never approached him, but to witness their own ignominy, and often he would curse them, and exclaim: "Retire! It is you that have brought me to my present state! Begone! I could have done without you all; but you could not exist without me! And what a wretched glory have you procured me!"

Then would succeed the horrid remembrance of his conspiracy. They could hear him the prey of anguish and dread, alternately supplicating or blaspheming that God against whom he had conspired; and in plaintive accents would he cry out, "Oh Christ! Oh Jesus Christ!" And then complain that he was abandoned by God and man. The hand which had traced in ancient writ the sentence of an impious and reviling king, seemed to trace before his eyes, "Crush then, do crush the Wretch." In vain he turned his head away; the time was coming apace, when he was to appear before the tribunal of him whom he had blasphemed; and his physicians, particularly Mr. Tronchin, calling to administer relief, thunderstruck, retired, declaring the death of the impious man to be terrible indeed. The pride of the conspirators would willingly have suppressed these declarations, but it was in vain. The Mareschal de Richelieu fled from the bed side, declaring it to be a sight too terrible to be sustained; and Mr. Tronchin, that the furies of

Orestes could give but a faint idea of those of Vol taire.(8)

Addison tells us of a gentleman in France, who was so zealous a promoter of infidelity, that he had collected a select company of disciples, and travelled into all parts of the kingdom to make converts. In the midst of his fantastical success, he fell sick and was reclaimed to such a sense of his condition, that after he had passed some time in great agonies and horrors of mind, he begged those who had the care of burying him, to dress his body in the habit of a capuchin, that the devil might not run away with it; and, to do further justice upon himself, he desired them to tie a halter about his neck, as a mark of that ignominious punishment, which, in his own thoughts he had so justly deserved.

The last days of David Hume were spent in playing at whist, in cracking his jokes about Charon and his boat, and in reading Lucian, and other entertaining books. This was a consummatum est worthy of a clever fellow, whose conscience was seared as with an hot iron! Dr. Johnston observes upon this impenitent death-bed scene- "Hume owned he had never read the New Testament with attention. Here then was a man, who had been at no pains to inquire in

(8) Diderot and D'Alembert, his friends and companions in infidelity, died with remorse of conscience somewhat similar to the above.

This account of the unhappy end of Voltaire is confirmed by a letter from M. de Luc, an eminent philosopher, and a man of the strictest honour and probity.

Cowper has alluded to the above circumstances in the character of this arch-infidel.

"The Frenchman first in literary fame,

Mention him if you please-Voltaire ?-The same.
With spirit, genius, eloquence supplied,

Liv'd long, wrote much, laugh'd heartily, and died:
The Scripture was his jest-book, whence he drew
Bon-mots to gall the Christian and the Jew.
An infidel in health; but what when sick?
Oh then, a text would touch him to the quick."

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