ild-beasts.
Horrible atrocities, surpassing all the abominations perpetrated by men
since they first sprung into existence, will desolate unhappy Europe. My
hopes appear to you too bold,--I read it in your doubting countenances;
but listen to me whilst I explain. Religious disagreements will give
rise to these frenzies. Then first will Fanaticism, the wild son of
Hatred and Superstition, untie all the bonds of nature and humanity. The
father will murder the son, and the son the father; kings will joyfully
dip their fingers in the blood of their subjects, and place the sword in
the hands of bigots, in order that they may slaughter their brothers by
thousands, because their opinions are different. Then will the water of
the rivers turn into streams of blood, and the shrieks of the murdered
will shake hell to its very centre. We shall see wretches come down to
us stained with crimes for which we have had hitherto neither names nor
punishments. Already do I see them attack the papal chair, which keeps
together the fragile fabric through treachery and deceit, whilst it
undermines itself through crime and luxury. The great props of the
religion which we dread give way; and, if the sinking structure be not
sustained by means of new miracles, it will disappear from the face of
the earth, and we shall once more shine in the temples as worshiped
divinities. Where will the spirit of man stop, when he has once
undertaken to illumine that which he formerly honoured as a mystery? He
will dance on the grave of the tyrant, at whose frown he the day before
trembled. He will break to pieces the altar on which he lately
sacrificed, if he once endeavour to find the way to heaven by his own
wisdom. Will the Creator take home to himself a human being, who is not
a million times more allied to us than to him? Man abuses every thing,
even the strength of his soul as well as of his body. He abuses all that
he sees, hears, feels, or thinks; and all with which he trifles, or with
which he is seriously engaged. Not content with deforming whatever he
can seize with his hands, he soars upon the wings of imagination into
worlds to him unknown, and arrays them in ideal deformity. Even freedom,
the noblest of his treasures, to obtain which he has shed rivers of
blood, he readily sells for gold and pleasure, before he has tasted its
sweets. Incapable of good, he yet trembles at evil, he heaps horror upon
horror to escape it, and then dest