the Jews borrowed their ideas of a symbolic system,
he regards the incarnation and life of Christ as the mistaken
literalization on the part of contemporaries of their preconceived
opinions. The conclusions to which Volney makes his interlocutor come(616)
is, that nothing can be true, nothing be a ground of peace and union,
which is not visible to the senses. Truth is conformity with sensations.
The book is interesting as a work of art; but its analysis of Christianity
is so shocking, that its absurdity alone prevents its becoming dangerous.
It is the most unblushing attempt to resolve the noblest of effects into
the most absurd of origins; and embodies in the consideration of religion
the school of philosophy which he represented.

We have now completed the history of unbelief in France during the
eighteenth century. We have seen how literature gradually emancipated
itself from the power of the court, and, under the influence of a
sceptical stimulus received from the importation of English free thought,
was changed into political and ecclesiastical antipathy, and acquired a
mastery over the public mind, until it involved the state, the church, and
Christianity, in a common ruin. History offers no parallel instance of the
victory of unbelief, through the power of the pen, nor of the union of the
political with the theological movement, and of the intimate connexion of
both with the current philosophy of the time.

The theological movement has contributed nothing of permanent literary
value. The few apologies written were unimportant; and the thoughts of
those who attacked Christianity were neither new nor characterised by
depth. Their criticism was shallow, and was marked by the feature of which
traces were observed in a few English authors, the disposition to charge
imposture on the writers of the holy scriptures; so that they not only
failed to appreciate the literary excellence of the works, but scarcely
even allowed the possibility of unintentional deception on the part of the
writers. The doubts were chiefly the reproduction of the English point of
view, with the addition of a few physical difficulties;(617) protests of
free thought against dogma in natural science. The view entertained
concerning deity was eventually grovelling; the greatness of nature seemed
to inspire no reverence. Unbelief gradually lost hold of monotheism; and
in doing so never ascended in grandeur to the idea of pantheism, but fell
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