ch a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these
barbarous ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates not to
retaliate upon the speculative and inactive atheists of future times
the enormities committed by the present practical zealots and furious
fanatics of that wretched error, which, in its quiescent state, is more
than punished, whenever it is embraced. It will teach posterity not to
make war upon either religion or philosophy for the abuse which the
hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable blessings
conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all
things eminently favors and protects the race of man.

If your clergy, or any clergy, should show themselves vicious beyond the
fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those professional faults
which can hardly be separated from professional virtues, though their
vices never can countenance the exercise of oppression, I do admit that
they would naturally have the effect of abating very much of our
indignation against the tyrants who exceed measure and justice in their
punishment. I can allow in clergymen, through all their divisions, some
tenaciousness of their own opinion, some overflowings of zeal for its
propagation, some predilection to their own state and office, some
attachment to the interest of their own corps, some preference to those
who Us ten with docility to their doctrines beyond those who scorn and
deride them. I allow all this, because I am a man who have to deal with
men, and who would not, through a violence of toleration, run into the
greatest of all intolerance. I must bear with infirmities, until they
fester into crimes.

Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the passions, from frailty to vice,
ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it true
that the body of your clergy had passed those limits of a just
allowance? Prom the general style of your late publications of all
sorts, one would be led to believe that your clergy in France were a
sort of monsters: an horrible composition of superstition, ignorance,
sloth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But is this true? Is it true that
the lapse of time, the cessation of conflicting interests, the woful
experience of the evils resulting from party rage, have had no sort of
influence gradually to meliorate their minds? Is it true that they were
daily renewing invasions on the civil power, troubling the domestic
quiet of their countr