the favoured
religion of the State.

It is true there were the Jansenists--declared to be heretical by the
Popes, and distinguished for their opposition to the doctrines and
moral teaching of the Jesuits--who were suffering from a persecution
which then drove some of the members of Port Royal into exile, and
eventually destroyed them. But even the Jansenists approved the
persecution of the Protestants. The great Arnault, their most
illustrious interpreter, though in exile in the Low Countries,
declared that though the means which Louis XIV. had employed had been
"rather violent, they had in nowise been unjust."

But Protestantism being declared destroyed, and Jansenism being in
disgrace, there was virtually no legal religion in France but
one--that of the Roman Catholic Church. Atheism, it is true, was
tolerated, but then Atheism was not a religion. The Atheists did not,
like the Protestants, set up rival churches, or appoint rival
ministers, and seek to draw people to their assemblies. The Atheists,
though they tacitly approved the religion of the King, had no
opposition to offer to it--only neglect, and perhaps concealed
contempt.

Hence it followed that the Court and the clergy had far more
toleration for Atheism than for either Protestantism or Jansenism. It
is authentically related that Louis XIV. on one occasion objected to
the appointment of a representative on a foreign mission on account of
the person being supposed to be a Jansenist; but on its being
discovered that the nominee was only an Atheist, the objection was at
once withdrawn.[7]

[Footnote 7: _Quarterly Review._]

At the time of the Revocation, when the King and the Catholic Church
were resolved to tolerate no religion other than itself, the Church
had never seemed so powerful in France. It had a strong hold upon the
minds of the people. It was powerful in its leaders and its great
preachers; in fact, France has never, either before or since,
exhibited such an array of preaching genius as Bossuet, Bourdaloue,
Flechier, and Massillon.

Yet the uncontrolled and enormously increased power conferred upon the
French Church at that time, most probably proved its greatest
calamity. Less than a hundred years after the Revocation, the Church
had lost its influence over the people, and was despised. The Deists
and Atheists, sprung from the Church's bosom, were in the ascendant;
and Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and Mirabeau, were regarded as