SECTION III.. The Stiff Lutheran, the Savage Calvinist, the Proud Anglican High

The stiff Lutheran, the savage Calvinist, the proud Anglican high churchman, the fanatical Jansenist, the Jesuit always aiming at dominion, even in exile and at the very gallows, the Sorbonnist who deems himself one of the fathers of a council; these, and some imbecile beings under their respective guidance, inveigh incessantly and bitterly against philosophy. They are all different species of the canine race, snarling and howling in their peculiar ways against a beautiful horse that is pasturing in a verdant meadow, and who never enters into contest with them about any of the carrion carcasses upon which they feed, and for which they are perpetually fighting with one another.

They every day produce from the press their trash of philosophic theology, their philosophico-theological dictionaries; their old and battered arguments, as common as the streets, which they denominate "demonstrations"; and their ten thousand times repeated and ridiculous assertions which they call "lemmas," and "corollaries"; as false coiners cover a lead crown with a plating of silver.

They perceive that they are despised by all persons of reflection, and that they can no longer deceive any but a few weak old women. This state is far more humiliating and mortifying than even being expelled from France and Spain and Naples. Everything can be supported except contempt. We are told that when the devil was conquered by Raphael--as it is clearly proved he was--that haughty compound of body and spirit at first easily consoled himself with the idea of the chances of war. But when he understood that Raphael laughed at him, he roundly swore that he would never forgive him. Accordingly, the Jesuits never forgave Pascal; accordingly, Jerieu went on calumniating Bayle even to the grave; and just in the same manner all the Tartuffes, all the hypocrites, in Molière's time, inveighed against that author to his dying day. In their rage they resort to calumnies, as in their folly they publish arguments.

One of the most determined slanderers, as well as one of the most contemptible reasoners that we have among us, is an ex-Jesuit of the name of Paulian, who published a theologico-philosophical rhapsody in the city of Avignon, formerly a papal city, and perhaps destined to be so again. This person accuses the authors of the "Encyclopædia" of having said:

"That as man is by his nature open only to the pleasures of the senses, these pleasures are consequently the sole objects of his desires; that man in himself has neither vice nor virtue, neither good nor bad morals, neither justice nor injustice; that the pleasures of the senses produce all the virtues; that in order to be happy, men must extinguish remorse, etc."

In what articles of the "Encyclopædia," of which five new editions have lately commenced, are these horrible propositions to be found? You are bound actually to produce them. Have you carried the insolence of your pride and the madness of your character to such an extent as to imagine that you will be believed on your bare word? These ridiculous absurdities may be found perhaps in the works of your own casuists, or those of the Porter of the Chartreux, but they are certainly not to be found in the articles of the "Encyclopædia" composed by M. Diderot, M. d'Alembert, the chevalier Jaucourt, or M. de Voltaire. You have never seen them in the articles of the Count de Tressan, nor in those of Messrs. Blondel, Boucher-d'Argis, Marmontel, Venel, Tronchin, d'Aubenton, d'Argenville, and various others, who generously devoted their time and labors to enrich the "Encyclopædic Dictionary," and thereby conferred an everlasting benefit on Europe. Most assuredly, not one of them is chargeable with the abominations you impute to them. Only yourself, and Abraham Chaumeix, the vinegar merchant and crucified convulsionary, could be capable of broaching so infamous a calumny.

You confound error with truth, because you have not sense sufficient to distinguish between them. You wish to stigmatize as impious the maxim adopted by all publicists, "That every man is free to choose his country."

What! you contemptible preacher of slavery, was not Queen Christina free to travel to France and reside at Rome? Were not Casimir and Stanislaus authorized to end their days in France? Was it necessary, because they were Poles, that they should die in Poland? Did Goldoni, Vanloo, and Cassini give offense to God by settling at Paris? Have all the Irish, who have established themselves in fame and fortune in France, committed by so doing a mortal sin?

And you have the stupidity to print such extravagance and absurdity as this, and Riballier has stupidity enough to approve and sanction you; and you range in one and the same class Bayle, Montesquieu, and the madman de La Mettrie; and it may be added, you have found the French nation too humane and indulgent, notwithstanding all your slander and malignity, to deliver you over to anything but scorn!

What! do you dare to calumniate your country--if indeed a Jesuit can be said to have a country? Do you dare to assert "that philosophers alone in France attribute to chance the union and disunion of the atoms which constitute the soul of man?" "Mentiris impudentissime!" I defy you to produce a single book, published within the last thirty years, in which anything at all is attributed to chance, which is merely a word without a meaning.

Do you dare to accuse the sagacious and judicious Locke of having said "that it is possible the soul may be a spirit, but that he is not perfectly sure it is so; and that we are unable to decide what it may be able or unable to acquire?"

"Mentiris impudentissime!" Locke, the truly respectable and venerable Locke, says expressly, in his answer to the cavilling and sophistical Stilling-fleet, "I am strongly persuaded, although it cannot be shown, by mere reason, that the soul is immaterial, because the veracity of God is a demonstration of the truth of all that He has revealed, and the absence of another demonstration can never throw any doubt upon what is already demonstrated."

See, moreover, under the article "Soul," how Locke expresses himself on the bounds of human knowledge, and the immensity of the power of the Supreme Being. The great philosopher Bolingbroke declares that the opinion opposite to Locke's is blasphemy. All the fathers, during the first three ages of the church, regarded the soul as a light, attenuated species of matter, but did not the less, in consequence, regard it as immortal. But now, forsooth, even your college drudges consequentially put themselves forward and denounce as "atheists" those who, with the fathers of the Christian church, think that God is able to bestow and to preserve the immortality of the soul, whatever may be the substance it consists of.

You carry your audacity so far as to discover atheism in the following words, Who produces motion in nature? God. "Who produces vegetation in plants? God. Who produces motion in animals? God. Who produces thought in man? God."

We cannot so properly say on this occasion, "Mentiris impudentissime"; but we should rather say you impudently blaspheme the truth. We conclude with observing that the hero of the ex-Jesuit Paulian is the ex-Jesuit Patouillet, the author of a bishop's mandate in which all the parliaments of the kingdom are insulted. This mandate was burned by the hands of the executioner. Nothing after this was wanting but for the ex-Jesuit Paulian to elevate the ex-Jesuit Nonnotte to be a father of the church, and to canonize the Jesuits Malagrida, Guignard, Garnet, and Oldham, and all other Jesuits to whom God has granted the grace of being hanged or quartered; they were all of them great metaphysicians, great philosophico-theologians.