from the
resentment of his spiritual tyrants, unconscious as they were of the
full value of the prize, which they had lost. Had Bayle adhered to the
catholic church, had he embraced the ecclesiastical profession, the
genius and favour of such a proselyte might have aspired to wealth and
honours in his native country: but the hypocrite would have found less
happiness in the comforts of a benefice, or the dignity of a mitre,
than he enjoyed at Rotterdam in a private state of exile, indigence, and
freedom. Without a country, or a patron, or a prejudice, he claimed the
liberty and subsisted by the labours of his pen: the inequality of his
voluminous works is explained and excused by his alternately writing for
himself, for the booksellers, and for posterity; and if a severe critic
would reduce him to a single folio, that relic, like the books of the
Sibyl, would become still more valuable. A calm and lofty spectator of
the religious tempest, the philosopher of Rotterdam condemned with equal
firmness the persecution of Lewis the Fourteenth, and the republican
maxims of the Calvinists; their vain prophecies, and the intolerant
bigotry which sometimes vexed his solitary retreat. In reviewing the
controversies of the times, he turned against each other the arguments
of the disputants; successively wielding the arms of the catholics and
protestants, he proves that neither the way of authority, nor the way
of examination can afford the multitude any test of religious truth; and
dexterously concludes that custom and education must be the sole grounds
of popular belief. The ancient paradox of Plutarch, that atheism is
less pernicious than superstition, acquires a tenfold vigor, when it is
adorned with the colours of his wit, and pointed with the acuteness of
his logic. His critical dictionary is a vast repository of facts and
opinions; and he balances the false religions in his sceptical scales,
till the opposite quantities (if I may use the language of algebra)
annihilate each other. The wonderful power which he so boldly exercised,
of assembling doubts and objections, had tempted him jocosely to assume
the title of the {Greek expression} Zeus, the cloud-compelling Jove;
and in a conversation with the ingenious Abbe (afterwards Cardinal) de
Polignac, he freely disclosed his universal Pyrrhonism. "I am most
truly (said Bayle) a protestant; for I protest indifferently against all
systems and all sects."

The academical resentment,