he auspices of the Supreme Being" (against which only one voice
protested). The Declaration laid down that no one was to be vexed on
account of his religious opinions provided he did not thereby trouble
public order. Catholicism was retained as the "dominant" religion;
Protestants (but not Jews) were admitted to public office. Mirabeau, the
greatest statesman of the day, protested strongly against the use of
words like "tolerance" and "dominant." He said: "The most unlimited
liberty of religion is in my eyes a right so sacred that to express it
by the word 'toleration' seems to me itself a sort of tyranny,

[112] since the authority which tolerates might also not tolerate." The
same protest was made in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man which appeared two
years later: "Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the
counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes itself the right
of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it."
Paine was an ardent deist, and he added: "Were a bill brought into any
parliament, entitled 'An Act to tolerate or grant liberty to the
Almighty to receive the worship of a Jew or a Turk,' or 'to prohibit the
Almighty from receiving it,' all men would startle and call it
blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The presumption of toleration in
religious matters would then present itself unmasked."

The Revolution began well, but the spirit of Mirabeau was not in the
ascendant throughout its course. The vicissitudes in religious policy
from 1789 to 1801 have a particular interest, because they show that the
principle of liberty of conscience was far from possessing the minds of
the men who were proud of abolishing the intolerance of the government
which they had overthrown. The State Church was reorganized by the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy (1790), by which French citizens were
forbidden to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and

[113] the appointment of Bishops was transferred to the Electors of the
Departments, so that the commanding influence passed from the Crown to
the nation. Doctrine and worship were not touched. Under the democratic
Republic which succeeded the fall of the monarchy (1792-5) this
Constitution was maintained, but a movement to dechristianize France was
inaugurated, and the Commune of Paris ordered the churches of all
religions to be closed. The worship of Reason, with rites modelled on
the Catholic, was organized in Paris and the province