[163] The vanity and egoism of rationalistic
sects can be as fatal to candour, justice, and compassion as the
intolerant pride of the great churches.

Persecution came nearer to Rousseau and took more inconvenient shapes
than this. A terrible libel appeared (Feb. 1765), full of the coarsest
calumnies. Rousseau, stung by their insolence and falseness, sent it
to Paris to be published there with a prefatory note, stating that it
was by a Genevese pastor whom he named. This landed him in fresh
mortification, for the pastor disavowed the libel, Rousseau declined
to accept the disavowal, and sensible men were wearied by acrimonious
declarations, explanations, protests.[164] Then the clergy of
Neuchatel were not able any longer to resist the opportunity of
inflicting such torments as they could, upon a heretic whom they might
more charitably have left to those ultimate and everlasting torments
which were so precious to their religious imagination. They began to
press the pastor of the village where Rousseau lived, and with whom he
had hitherto been on excellent terms. The pastor, though he had been
liberal enough to admit his singular parishioner to the communion, in
spite of the Savoyard Vicar, was not courageous enough to resist the
bigotry of the professional body to which he belonged. He warned
Rousseau not to present himself at the next communion. The philosopher
insisted that he had a right to do this, until formally cast out by
the consistory. The consistory, composed mainly of a body of peasants
entirely bound to their minister in matters of religion, cited him to
appear, and answer such questions as might test his loyalty to the
faith. Rousseau prepared a most deliberate vindication of all that he
had written, which he intended to speak to his rustic judges. The eve
of the morning on which he had to appear, he knew his discourse by
heart; when morning came he could not repeat two sentences. So he fell
back on the instrument over which he had more mastery than he had over
tongue or memory, and wrote what he wished to say. The pastor, in whom
irritated egoism was probably by this time giving additional heat to
professional zeal, was for fulminating a decree of excommunication,
but there appears to have been some indirect interference with the
proceedings of the consistory by the king's officials at Neuchatel,
and the ecclesiastical bolt was held back.[165] Other weapons were not
wanting. The pastor proceeded to spread