not openly mock; the weak disapproved of this outrage,
but only from the feeling of not making weak men err, or become
unhappy, who though had nothing better themselves, or were not able to
produce any thing but the old, miserable tale, that, without a
connexion, one often contradicts the other. Many forcibly denied
altogether the history of the Saviour, with others still worse, he was
merely an unfortunate rebel, and to the best, a moral man, but who
indeed, according to their views must be far inferior to Socrates,
whose life was clearer, and whose doctrines seemed more comprehensible.
Several of these free-thinkers, to whom the catholic church was a
stumbling block, and who, that they might not be considered as
antichristians, turned all the strength of their mind, under pretext of
protecting the protestant freedom, to tear to atoms and to disfigure
their catholic brethren, the history of the church, spiritual and
temporal ordinances, in the most barbarous manner: thus behind this
rampart, they imagined under false names, to be able to annihilate
Christianity itself, for this it was which was hateful to them, not
this, or that party. All this was very evident to me, and I lent my aid
as much as my limited power would permit. I arrived at the age of
maturity, and my opinions only became still more deeply rooted. I
travelled, I saw the world, but only on the side, which confirmed my
prejudices. If I met with pious enlightened Christians, they appeared
to me only as strange disordered spirits, worthy of remark perhaps, of
pity assuredly. In a German town I took out of sheer insolence the book
of a German mystic from the library to my own dwelling, that I might
for want of better amusement, divert myself in the spirit of derision
with the madness of the absurd and the foolish. Unconsciously, I had
brought the fire-brand into my house, which soon set in flames all this
edifice of pride and worldly impiety. I turned over the leaves, read
and laughed, read again and found the puerility at least poetical. The
book left me no rest, I felt as it were attracted to it, it tortured
me, and to my shame I was soon forced to confess to myself, that it
contained connexion, strength, and spirit, that it instructed me, and
that gardens, flowers, and trees of love bloomed, where I had only seen
a waste desert. The presentiment seized me, that another God might rule
the universe than he, whom in my enthusiastic views of nature, or in my