e admiration of Europe, by
the novelty and magnificence of its design, and by the comprehensive and
solid extent of its knowledge; but in its principles utterly evil, a
condensation of all the treasons of the school of anarchy, the _lex
scripta_ of the Revolution.

All those men were open infidels; and their attacks on religion, such as
they saw it before them, roused the Gallican church. But the warfare was
totally unequal. The priesthood came armed with the antiquated and
unwieldy weapons of old controversy, forgotten traditions and exhausted
legends. They could have conquered them only by the bible; they fought
them only with the breviary. The histories of the saints, and the
wonders of images were but fresh food for the most overwhelming scorn.
The bible itself, which popery has always laboured to close, was brought
into the contest, and used resistlessly against the priesthood. They
were contemptuously asked, in what part of the sacred volume had they
found the worship of the Virgin, of the Saints, or of the Host? where
was the privilege that conferred Saintship at the hands of the pope?
where was the prohibition of the general use of scripture by every man
who had a soul to be saved? where was the revelation of that purgatory,
from which a monk and a mass could extract a sinner? where was the
command to imprison, torture, and slay men for their difference of
opinion with an Italian priest and the college of cardinals? To those
formidable questions the clerics answered by fragments from the fathers,
angry harangues, and more legends of more miracles. They tried to enlist
the nobles and the court in a crusade. But the nobles were already among
the most zealous, though secret, converts to the Encyclopedia; and the
gentle spirit of the monarch was not to be urged into a civil war. The
threat of force only inflamed contempt into vengeance. The populace of
Paris, like all mobs, licentious, restless, and fickle; but beyond all,
taking an interest in public matters, had not been neglected by the deep
designers who saw in the quarrel of the pen the growing quarrel of the
sword. The Fronde was not yet out of their minds; the barrier days of
Paris; the municipal council which in 1648, had levied war against the
government; the mob-army which had fought, and terrified that government
into forgiveness; were the strong memorials on which the anarchists of
1793 founded their seduction. The perpetual ridicule of the national
beli