en fashioned by the slavery of
the empire? I contest nothing, and I am not sufficiently well-informed
to pronounce with confidence upon the action of all these historic
causes. But this I venture to affirm,--that if any one thinks to fix
definitely the hour when liberty was born in history, he is mistaken:
for it has no other date than that of the human conscience, and I will
say with M. Lamartine:

Give me the freedom which that hour had birth,
With the free soul, when first in conscious worth
The just man braved the stronger![31]

Liberty had birth the first time that, urged by his fellow men to acts
which wounded his conscience, a man, relying upon God, felt himself
stronger than the world. That Socrates had not studied, I fancy, in the
school of the Encyclopedists, and was no German either, that I know of,
who said to the judges of Athens, with death in prospect: "It is better
to obey God than men." And when those words were repeated by the
Apostles of the universal truth, the death of Socrates, that noble death
which has justly gained for him the admiration of the universe, was
reproduced in thousands and thousands of instances. Children, women,
young girls, old men, perished in tortures to attest the rights of
conscience; and the blood of martyrs, that seed of Christians, as a
father of the Church called it,[32] was not less a seed of liberty.
Liberty was not born in history; but if you wish to fix a date to its
grandest outburst, you have it here; there is no other which can be
compared with it.

Some of you are thinking perhaps, without saying so, that I am
maintaining a hard paradox. To look for the source of liberty of
conscience in religion, is not this to forget that the Christian Church
has often marked its passage in history by a long track of blood
rendered visible by the funereal light of the stake? I forget nothing,
Sirs, and I beg of you not to forget anything either. There are three
remarks which I commend to your attention.

It must not be forgotten that the Gospel first obtained extensive
success when Roman society was in the lowest state of corruption, and
that its representatives were but too much affected by the evils which
it was their mission to combat.

It must not be forgotten that there came afterwards hordes of barbarians
who in a certain sense renovated the worn-out society, but who poured
over the new leaven a coarse paste hard to penetrate.

It must not be forg