The general detestation of the hypocrisy and fanaticism of the Puritans tended to heighten their irreligion, and encouraged them to publish their opinions: but the kingdom at large was not infected by them; and the following reigns exhibit in every rank of people an attachment to religion, and a zeal in its cause, which the annals of no other nation can furnish."*

For a considerable length of time however, infidelity was confined to the higher and the literary orders; the humble and unambitious Christian was happily placed without the sphere of its influence. The project of the wily serpent was as yet in its infancy: and little did those nobles, who encouraged it, imagine, that they were unwarily helping to construct an engine destined for their own destruction. But, as the period of the third woetrumpet approached, Satan took at once both a wider and more systematic range. Infidelity was diffused in a manner unknown in any former age. No class of society was exempt from its poison. Publications, adapted to the comprehension of the lower orders, were zealously distributed throughout every country in Europe by the secret clubs of the illuminated and, as a mind unused to argument, can readily see an objection, without being able accurately to follow the train of reasoning which pervades the confutation of it, a captious doubt, once injected into the head of a poor and illiterate man, can scarcely ever be removed even by the clearest demonstration of the evidences of Christianity.† Impudent as

Hist. the Inter. Vol. II. p. 135.

† A learned and much revered friend of mine, (the Rev. R. Hudson, A. M. head, master of the Grammar school at Hipperholme,) some time since put into my hands a small tract, which was industriously circulated in his neighbourhood. It was replete with a variety of quibbling questions, which the merest sciolist in theology would find little difficulty in answering, but which were perfectly well adapted to puzzle the intellect of a plain unsuspecting labourer. In order to avoid the necessity of annexing the printer's name to a publication, it was ingeniously ante-dated, It was by small tracts of this sort," says the present worthy Bishop of London, "disseminated among the lower orders in every part of France, that the great body of the people there was prepared for that most astonishing event (which, without such preparation, could never have been so suddenly and so generally brought about), the public renunciation of the Christian Faith. In order to produce the very same effects here, and to pave the way for a general apostacy from the Gospel, by contaminating the principles and shaking the faith of the inferior classes of the people, the same arts have been employed, the same breviates of infidelity have, to my knowledge, been published and dispersed with great activity, and at a con

sertion now occupied the place of proof: and a convic tion of false representation was little regarded by those, whose object was to disseminate error, and who had regularly calculated that an atheistical publication would be read by many that would probably never see the answer to it. Formerly infidelity was conveyed in the shape of a professed treatise; and they, who chose to peruse it, were at least aware of what they might expect. Hence a careful Christian parent knew how to secure his inexperienced offspring from the effects of its poison. But now, there is scarcely a book which he dares to trust in the hands of his children, without first thoroughly examining it himself: and, even after all his precautions, his son may accidentally take up a treatise on botany or geology, and rise from the perusal of it, if not an infidel, yet a sceptic. In short, the lurking poison of unbelief has of late years been "served up in every shape, that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile, the imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem; in interspersed and broken hints; remote and oblique surmises; in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history; in a word, in any form rather than that of a professed and regular disquisition."*

The sure word of prophecy has taught us where to look for the real origin of these infernal productions. "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." It has done more. It has explicitly described to us the character of those abandoned men, those hardened scoffers, whom Satan was about to employ as his wretched tools in the last days. The existence of such men we have witnessed with our own eyes but, till lately, we were not aware of their existence in any other than their mere individual capacity. We have at present however upon record the confession of an arch-atheist, that there has long been in Europe,

siderable expence, among the middling and lower classes of men in this kingdom." Charge 1794. • Paley's Moral Philosophy.

See the prophecies relative to the last times collected together in the third chapter of this Work.

particularly in papal Europe, a systematic combination of the scoffers of the last days for the purpose of at once overturning the throne and the altar, of letting loose at once those two dogs of hell anarchy and atheism.

:

"There was a class of men," says the notorious Condorcet," which was soon formed in Europe, with a view, not so much to discover and make deep research after truth, as to diffuse it whose chief object was to attack prejudices in the very asylums, where the clergy, the schools, the governments, and the ancient corporations, had received and protected them and who made their glory to consist rather in destroying popular error, than in extending the limits of human knowledge. This, though an indirect method of forwarding its progress, was not, on that account, either less dangerous or less useful. In England, Collins and Bolingbroke; in France, Bayle, Fontenelle, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and the schools formed by these men; combated in favour of truth.* They alternately employed all the arms, with which learning and philosophy, with which wit and the talent of writing could furnish them. Assuming every tone, taking every shape, from the ludicrous to the pathetic, from the most learned and extensive compilation to the novel or the petty pamphlet of the day; covering truth with a veil, which, sparing the eye that was too weak to bear it, left to the reader the pleasure of guessing it; insidiously caressing prejudices in order to strike at them with more certainty and effect; seldom menacing more than one at a time, and that only in part; sometimes soothing the enemies of reason, by seeming to ask but for a half toleration in religion, or a half liberty in polity; respecting despotism when they combated religious absurdities, and religion when they attacked tyranny: combating these two pests in their very principles, though apparently inveighing against ridiculous and disgusting abuses; striking at the root of those pestiferous trees, whilst they appeared only to wish to lop the straggling branches; at one time pointing out superstition, which covers despotism with its impenetrable

What the truth was, for which Voltaire combated, a long life laboriously spent in the service of a hard task-master has amply shewn: and France has no less amply tasted the fruits of it.

shield, to the friends of liberty, as the first victim which they are to immolate, the first chain to be cleft asunder ; at another denouncing superstition to despots as the real enemy of their power, and alarming them with a representation of its hypocritical plots and sanguinary rage; but never ceasing to claim the independence of reason, and the liberty of the press, as the right and safegaurd of mankind; inveighing with enthusiastic energy against the crimes of fanaticism and tyranny; reprobating every thing which bore the character of oppression, harshness, or barbarity, whether in religion, administration, morals, or laws; commanding kings, warriors, priests, and magistrates, in the name of nature, to spare the blood of men; reproaching them, in a strain of the most energetic severity, with that which their policy or indifference prodigally lavished on the scaffold, or in the field of battle; in fine, adopting the words reason, toleration, and humanity, as their signal and call to arms. Such was the modern philosophy, so much detested by those numerous classes which exist only by the aid of prejudices. Its chiefs had the art of escaping vengeance, while they exposed themselves to hatred; of concealing themselves from persecution, while they made themselves sufficiently conspicuous to lose nothing of their glory."*

In order as it were that the meaning of this rhapsody may not possibly be mistaken, the same Condorcet plainly tells us, what effects this sort of truth, propagated by Voltaire, did produce. Celebrating the glories and benefits of the French revolution, he observes, "that it would have been impossible to shew in a clearer light the eternal obligations which human nature has to Voltaire. Circumstances were favourable. He did not

foresee all that he has done, but he has done all that we now see."+ In order moreover, that we may not too candidly fancy, that Voltaire's zeal was only directed against the abuses of Popery, while he respected genuine Christianity, he himself unequivocally informs us, that

Cited by Kett from Esquisse d'un tableau bistorique des progrès de l'esprit humain, par Condorcet. For the original, see the Annual Register, p. 200; for the extract, Barruel's Mem, of Jacobinism, Vol. ii. p. 133.

+ Life of Voltaire, cited by Kett.

the very Gospel of the Messiah, whether embraced by protestants or papists, was the real object of his animosity. "I am weary," says the pseudo-philosopher of Ferney, "of hearing people repeat, that twelve men have been sufficient to establish Christianity and I will prove, that one may suffice to overthrow it-Strike, but conceal your hand-The mysteries of Mithras are not to be divulged the monster must fall pierced by a thousand invisible hands: yes, let it fall beneath a thousand repeated blows-I fear you are not sufficiently zealous; you bury your talents; you seem only to contemn, whilst you should abhor and destroy the monster-Crush the wretch."

By the incessant labours of Voltaire, his diabolical principles, even before the foundation of Weishaupt's order of the Illuminated, were protected by the sovereigns of Russia, Poland, and Prussia, and by an innumerable host of Landgraves, Margraves, Dukes, and Princes. They had penetrated into Bohemia, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy. They had many zealous advocates in England: they had thoroughly impregnated France and, in short, had more or less pervaded the whole Roman earth, where the dragon had now taken his station after his expulsion from the symbolical heaven.

It is not however perfectly ascertained, that Voltaire wished for more than the overthrow of religion and royalty. Proud of his talents, he at first "did not pretend to enlighten housemaids and shoemakers, equally contemning the rabble, whether for or against him :" but, after the German union, a yet more extensive plan of mischief was resolved upon. The infernal ingenuity of Weishaupt contrived a method of subverting not only religion and royalty, but all governments whatsoever : and Jacobinism, that consummation of united German and French villany, proposed to set mankind free from every restraint both of human and divine law, and to let them loose like wild beasts upon each other, an infuriated herd of anarchists and atheists.

• The reader will have observed, that, in one of the clauses of the foregoing declamation of Condorcet, religion is used as the synonym of religious absurdities; and government and religion are declared to be the two pests, which the new philosophy combats in their very principles.