from Moscow to Cadiz, and which sentenced the unjust judges to
the contempt and detestation of all Europe. The really efficient
weapons with which the philosophers assailed the evangelical
faith were borrowed from the evangelical morality. The ethical
and dogmatical parts of the Gospel were unhappily turned against
each other. On one side was a Church boasting of the purity of a
doctrine derived from the Apostles, but disgraced by the massacre
of St. Bartholomew, by the murder of the best of kings, by the
war of Cevennes, by the destruction of Port-Royal. On the other
side was a sect laughing at the Scriptures, shooting out the
tongue at the sacraments, but ready to encounter principalities
and powers in the cause of justice, mercy and toleration.

Irreligion, accidentally associated with philanthropy, triumphed
for a time over religion accidentally associated with political
and social abuses. Everything gave way to the zeal and activity
of the new reformers. In France, every man distinguished in
letters was found in their ranks. Every year gave birth to works
in which the fundamental principles of the Church were attacked
with argument, invective, and ridicule. The Church made no
defence, except by acts of power. Censures were pronounced: books
were seized: insults were offered to the remains of infidel
writers; but no Bossuet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter
Voltaire. There appeared not a single defence of the Catholic
doctrine which produced any considerable effect, or which is
now even remembered. A bloody and unsparing persecution, like
that which put down the Albigenses, might have put down the
philosophers. But the time for De Montforts and Dominics had
gone by. The punishments which the priests were still able
to inflict were suffficient to irritate, but not sufficient to