tyr, however, for he afterwards retracted his
heresies, got a benefice, and was put into prison by Frederick for
giving information to his French countrymen during the Seven Years'
War.[129] Unfortunately neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy has any
exclusive patent for monopoly of rascals.

Meanwhile Diderot wrote on his behalf an energetic and dignified reply
to the aggressive pastoral. This apology is not such a masterpiece of
eloquence as the magnificent letter addressed by Rousseau ten years
later to the archbishop of Paris, after the pastoral against Emilius.
But Diderot's vindication of De Prades is firm, moderate, and closely
argumentative. The piece is worth turning to in our own day, when great
dignitaries of the churches too often show the same ignorance, the same
temerity, and the same reckless want of charity, as the bishop of
Auxerre showed a hundred and twenty years ago. They resort to the very
same fallacies by way of shield against scientific truths or
philosophical speculations that happen not to be easily reconcilable
with their official opinions. "I know nothing so indecent," says
Diderot, "and nothing so injurious to religion as these vague
declamations of theologians against reason. One would suppose, to hear
them, that men could only enter into the bosom of Christianity as a herd
of cattle enter into a stable; and that we must renounce our common
sense either to embrace our religion or to remain in it.... Such
principles as yours are made to frighten small souls; everything alarms
them, because they perceive clearly the consequences of nothing; they
set up connections among things which have nothing to do with one
another; they spy danger in any method of arguing which is strange to
them; they float at hazard between truths and prejudices which they
never distinguish, and to which they are equally attached; and all
their life is passed in crying out either miracle or impiety." In an
eloquent peroration, which is not more eloquent than it is instructive,
De Prades is made to turn round on his Jansenist censor, and reproach
him with the disturbance with which the intestine rivalries of Jansenist
and Jesuit had afflicted the faithful. "It is the abominable testimony
of your convulsions," he cries, "that has overthrown the testimony of
miracles. It is the fatuous audacity with which your fanatics have
confronted persecution, that has annihilated the evidence of the
martyrs. It is your declamations against