ose the
accomplishment of all their other views. The French Revolution, impious
at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestic power and foreign
empire. Look at all the proceedings of the National Assembly, from the
first day of declaring itself such, in the year 1789, to this very hour,
and you will find full half of their business to be directly on this
subject. In fact, it is the spirit of the whole. The religious system,
called the Constitutional Church, was, on the face of the whole
proceeding, set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, and
so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should
come when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all
religion whatsoever, and persecute Christianity throughout Europe with
fire and sword. The Constitutional clergy are not the ministers of any
religion: they are the agents and instruments of this horrible
conspiracy against all morals. It was from a sense of this, that, in the
English addition to the articles proposed at St. Domingo, tolerating all
religions, we very wisely refused to suffer that kind of traitors and
buffoons.

This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect, as
formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions. The question is
not, whether you are to overturn the Catholic, to set up the Protestant.
Such an idea, in the present state of the world, is too contemptible.
Our business is, to leave to the schools the discussion of the
controverted points, abating as much as we can the acrimony of
disputants on all sides. It is for Christian statesmen, as the world is
now circumstanced, to secure their common basis, and not to risk the
subversion of the whole fabric by pursuing these distinctions with an
ill-timed zeal. We have in the present grand alliance all modes of
government, as well as all modes of religion. In government, we mean to
restore that which, notwithstanding our diversity of forms, we are all
agreed in as fundamental in government. The same principle ought to
guide us in the religious part: conforming the mode, not to our
particular ideas, (for in that point we have no ideas in common,) but to
what will best promote the great, general ends of the alliance. As
statesmen, we are to see which of those modes best suits with the
interests of such a commonwealth as we wish to secure and promote. There
can be no doubt but that the Catholic religion, which is fundamentally
the rel