heir being.
They hate Him 'with all their heart, with all their mind, with all
their soul, and with all their strength.' He never presents Himself to
their thoughts but to menace and alarm them. They cannot strike the
sun out of heaven, but they are able to raise a smouldering smoke that
obscures Him from their own eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves
on God, they have a delight in vicariously defacing, degrading,
torturing, and tearing in pieces, His image in man. Let no one judge
of them by what he has conceived of them, when they were not
incorporated, and had no lead. They were then only passengers in a
common vehicle. They were then carried along with the general motion
of religion in the community, and, without being aware of it, partook
of its influence. In that situation, at worst, their nature was left
free to counterwork their principles. They despaired of giving any
very general currency to their opinions. They considered them as a
reserved privilege for the chosen few. But when the possibility of
dominion, lead, and propagation, presented itself, and that the
ambition, which before had so often made them hypocrites, might rather
gain than lose by a daring avowal of their sentiments, then the nature
of this infernal spirit, which has 'evil for its good,' appeared in
its full perfection. Nothing indeed but the possession of some power
can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true
character of any man. Without reading the speeches of Vergniaux,
Francias of Nantz, Isnard, and some others of that sort, it would not
be easy to conceive the passion, rancour, and malice of their tongues
and hearts. They worked themselves up to a perfect phrensy against
religion and all its professors. They tore the reputation of the
clergy to pieces by their infuriated declamations and invectives,
before they lacerated their bodies by their massacres. This fanatical
atheism left out, we omit the principal feature in the French
Revolution, and a principal consideration with regard to the effects
to be expected from a peace with it.

The other sort of men were the politicians. To them, who had little or
not at all reflected on the subject, religion was in itself no object
of love or hatred. They disbelieved it, and that was all. Neutral with
regard to that object, they took the side which in the present state
of things might best answer their purposes. They soon found that they
could not do without the philosop