indeed brought to abhor that maffacre. Ferocious as they are, it is not difficult to make them diflike it; because the politicians and fashionable teachers have no interest in giving their paffions exactly the fame direction. Still however they find it their interest to keep the fame favage difpofitions alive. It was but the other day that they caused this very maffacre to be acted on the stage for the diverfion of the defcendants of those who committed it. In this tragic farce they produced the cardinal of Lorraine in his robes of function, ordering general flaughter. Was this fpectacle intended to make the Parifians abhor persecution, and loath the effufion of blood?-No, it was to teach them to perfecute their own pastors; it was to excite them, by raifing a disgust and horror of their clergy, to an alacrity in hunting down to deftruction an order, which, if it ought to exift at all, ought to exist not only in fafety, but in reverence. It was to ftimulate their cannibal appetites (which one would think had been gorged fufficiently) by variety and feafoning; and to quicken them to an alertness in new murders and maffacres, if it should fuit the purpose of the Guises of the day. An affembly, in which fat a multitude of priests and prelates, was obliged to fuffer this indignity at its door. The author was not fent to the gallies, nor the players to the house of correction. Not long after this exhibition, those players came forward to the affembly to claim the rites of that very religion which they had dared to expose, and to fhew their proftituted faces in the fenate, whilst the archbishop of Paris, whofe function was known to his people only by

his

his prayers and benedictions, and his wealth only by his alms, is forced to abandon his houfe, and to fly from his flock (as from ravenous wolves) because, truly, in the fixteenth century, the Cardinal of Lorraine was a rebel and a murderer.

Such is the effect of the perverfion of history, by thofe, who, for the fame nefarious purposes, have perverted every other part of learning. But thofe who will stand upon that elevation of reason, which places centuries under our eye, and brings things to the true point of comparison, which obfcures little names, and effaces the colours of little parties, and to which nothing can afcend but the ípirit and moral quality of human actions, will fay to the teachers of the Palais Royal,-the Cardinal of Lorraine was the murderer of the fixteenth century, you have the glory of being the murderers in the eighteenth; and this is the only difference between you. But history, in the nineteenth century, better understood, and better employed, will, I truft, teach a civilized pofterity to abhor the mifdeeds of both these barbarous ages. It will teach future priests and magiftrates not to retaliate upon the fpeculative and inactive atheists of future times, the enormities committed by the prefent practical zealots and furious fanatics of that wretched error, which, in its quiefcent ftate, is more than punished, whenever it is embraced. It will teach posterity not to make war upon either religion or philofophy, for the abuse which the hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable bleffings conferred upon us by the bounty of the univerfal Pa P 2

tron,

tron, who in all things eminently favours and protects the race of man.

If your clergy, or any clergy, fhould fhew themfelves vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those profeffional faults which can hardly be separated from profeffional virtues, though their vices never can countenance the exercise of oppreffion, I do admit, that they would naturally have the effect of abating very much of our indignation against the tyrants who exceed measure and justice in their punishment. I can allow in clergymen, through all their divifions, fome tenaciousness of their own opinion; fome overflowings of zeal for its propagation; fome predilection to their own state and office; fome attachment to the intereft of their own corps; fome preference to those who liften with docility to their doctrines, beyond thofe who fcorn and deride them. I allow all this, because I am a man who have to deal with men, and who would not; through a violence of toleration, run into the greatest of all intolerance. I must bear with infirmities until they fefter into crimes.

Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the pasfions, from frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it true that the body of your clergy had past those limits of a juft allowance? From the general style of your late publications of all forts, one would be led to believe that your clergy in France were a fort of monsters; an horrible compofition of fuperftition, ignorance, floth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But

is

is this true? Is it true, that the lapfe of time, the ceffation of conflicting interefts, the woful experience of the evils refulting from party rage, has had no fort of influence gradually to meliorate their minds? Is it true, that they were daily renewing invafions on the civil power, troubling the domeftic quiet of their country, and rendering the operations of its government feeble and precarious? Is it true, that the clergy of our times have preffed down the laity with an iron hand, and were, in all places, lighting up the fires of a favage perfecution? Did they by every fraud endeavour to encrease their eftates? Did they use to exceed the due demands on eftates that were their own?

Or, rigidly screwing up right into wrong, did they convert a legal claim into a vexatious extortion? When not poffeffed of power, were they filled with the vices of those who envy it? Were they enflamed with a violent litigious spirit of controverfy? Goaded on with the ambition of intellectual fovereignty, were they ready to fly in the face of all magiftracy, to fire churches, to maffacre the priests of other defcriptions, to pull down altars, and to make their way over the ruins of subverted governments to an empire of doctrine, fometimes flattering, fometimes forcing the confciences of men from the jurifdiction of public inftitutions into a fubmiffion to their perfonal authority, beginning with a claim of liberty and ending with an abuse of power ?

Thefe, or fome of thefe, were the vices objected, and not wholly without foundation, to feveral of the churchmen of former times, who belonged to.

the two great parties which then divided and dif tracted Europe.

If there was in France, as in other countries there visibly is, a great abate.nent, rather than any increase of these vices, inftead of loading the prefent clergy with the crimes of other men, and the odious character of other times, in common equity they ought to be praised, encouraged, and fupported, in their departure from a spirit which difgraced their predeceffors, and for having affumed a temper of mind and manners more fuitable to their facred function.

When my occafions took me into France, towards the close of the late reign, the clergy, under all their forms, engaged a confiderable part of my curiofity. So far from finding (except from one fet of men, not then very numerous though ve ry active) the complaints and difcontents against that body, which fome publications had given me reason to expect, I perceived little or no public or private uneafinefs on their account. On further examination, I found the clergy in general, perfons of moderate minds and decorous manners; I include the feculars, and the regulars of both fexes. I had not the good fortune to know a great many of the parochial clergy; but in general I received a perfectly good account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties. With fome of the higher clergy I had a perfonal acquaintance; and of the reft in that clafs, very good means of information. They were, almoft all of them, perfons of noble birth. They refembled others of their own rank; and where there was