th, with circumstances of cruelty and insult
fitting only at the death stake of an Indian encampment; and in
imitation of literal cannibals, there were men, or rather monsters
found, not only to tear asunder, the limbs of their victims, but to eat
their hearts, and drink their blood."

Croly, in his new interpretation of the Apocalypse, holds the following
language.

The primary cause of the French revolution was the exile of
Protestantism.

Its decency of manners had largely restrained the licentious tendencies
of the higher orders; its learning had compelled the Romish
Ecclesiastics to similar labours; and while christianity could appeal to
such a church in France, the progress of the infidel writers was checked
by the living evidence of the purity, peacefulness and wisdom of the
Gospel. It is not even without sanction of scripture and history to
conceive that, the presence of such a body of the servants of God was a
divine protection to their country.

But the fall of the church was followed by the most palpable, immediate,
and ominous change. The great names of the Romish priesthood, the
vigorous literature of Bossnett, the majestic oratory of Massillon, the
pathetic and classic elegance of Fenelon, the mildest of all
enthusiasts; a race of men who towered above the genius of their country
and of their religion; passed away without a successor. In the beginning
of the 18th century, the most profligate man in France was an
ecclesiastic, the Cardinal Dubois, prime minister to the most profligate
prince in Europe, the Regent Orleans. The country was convulsed with
bitter personal disputes between Jesuit and Jansenist, fighting even to
mutual persecution upon points either beyond or beneath the human
intellect. A third party stood by, unseen, occasionally stimulating
each, but equally despising both, a potential fiend, sneering at the
blind zealotry and miserable rage that were doing its unsuspected will.
Rome, that boasts of her freedom from schism should blot the 18th
century from her page.

The French mind, subtle, satirical, and delighting to turn even matters
of seriousness into ridicule, was immeasurably captivated by the true
burlesque of those disputes, the childish virulence, the extravagant
pretensions, and the still more extravagant impostures fabricated in
support of the rival pre-eminence in absurdity; the visions of half-mad
nuns and friars; the Convulsionaries; the miracles at the tomb of the
Abbe