him to persecution which they
escaped. Voltaire and the infidel party were indignant at Rousseau's
partial acceptance of Christianity. The French clergy were angry at his
rejection of the remainder. The parliament ordered the book to be burned,
and the author to be imprisoned. Rousseau had to seek refuge in
Switzerland, and there defended his views of Christianity and miracles in
a series of celebrated letters, which in their political effects have been
compared with the letters of Junius. Driven out from Switzerland, he found
a shelter in England, with Hume; and, until he could safely return to
France, employed his time in writing his _Confessions_;(580)--the
celebrated work, a mixture of romance and fact, which takes its place in
the first rank of autobiographies,--a sad witness to the desperate
wickedness of the human heart, and to the impotence of even a high moral
creed, which we know Rousseau elsewhere expressed,(581) in creating
morality, without Christian motives to give practical efficacy to it.

Such was Rousseau, an enemy of artificial society, of Roman catholic
education, and of supernatural revelation; yet far removed from Voltaire
and the other infidels, both in tone and literary character.(582) While
Voltaire aimed only to destroy, Rousseau sought to reconstruct. Voltaire
was a flippant, hasty reviler of Christianity, without originality in the
material of his works, without depth of soul: Rousseau was serious, fresh,
full of pathos. Voltaire either had no creed, or thought one unimportant,
and was actuated by malignant hatred against Judaism and Christianity:
Rousseau had a firm creed, and spoke with decency of the religion which he
rejected. Voltaire was devoid of taste for ancient literature, witty under
a mask, a selfish sycophant to the ancient political regime: Rousseau
never denied the authorship of his writings, was democratic in tastes, and
was the means of exciting a love for antiquity. Finally rejecting to a
great degree the sensational philosophy; rising above it in heart, if not
in thought, Rousseau taught a spiritual philosophy, destined to bear fruit
when the dreams of the revolution had passed. He stands alone however at
present in this respect, like Montesquieu in politics(583) and Buffon in
science; and the course of our history again brings before us men who must
be classed with the materialists that preceded him.

We have stated that by the middle of the century the infidel writers
tur