the
west, to investigate the causes of the agitation and the feelings of the
people, the discussion commenced. Fauchet, a conforming priest and
celebrated preacher, subsequently constitutional bishop of Calvados,
opened the debate. He was one of those men who, beneath an
ecclesiastical garb, conceal the heart of a philosopher. Reformers from
feeling, priests by the state, sensible of the wide discrepancy between
their opinions and their character, a national religion, a revolutionary
Christianity, was the sole means remaining to them to reconcile their
interest and their policy: their faith, wholly academic, was only a
religious convenience. They desired to transform Catholicism insensibly
into a moral code, of which the dogma was now but a symbol, which, in
the people's eyes, comprised sacred truths; and which, gradually
stripped of holy fictions, would allow the human understanding to glide
insensibly into a symbolic deism, whose temple should be flesh, and
whose Christ should be hardly more than Plato rendered a divinity.
Fauchet had the daring mind of a sectarian and the intrepidity of a man
of resolution.

VII.

"We are accused of a desire to persecute. It is calumny. No persecution.
Fanaticism is greedy of it, real religion repulses it, philosophy holds
it in horror. Let us beware of imprisoning the nonjurors; of exiling,
even of displacing them. Let them think, say, write all they please
against us. We will oppose our thoughts to their thoughts; our truths to
their errors; our charity to their hatred. Time will do the rest. But in
awaiting its infallible triumph we must find an efficacious and prompt
mode of hindering them from prevailing over weak minds, and propagating
ideas of a counter-revolution. A counter-revolution! This is not a
religion, gentlemen! Fanaticism is not compatible with liberty. Look
else at these ministers--they would have swum in the blood of patriots.
This is their own expression. Compared with these priests, atheists are
angels. (Applause.) However, I repeat, let us tolerate them, but do not
let us pay them. Let us not pay them to rend our country in pieces. It
is to this measure only that we should confine ourselves. Let us
suppress all salary from the national treasury to the nonjuring priests.
Nothing is due to them but in their clerical capacity. What service do
they render? They invoke ruin on our laws; and they say they follow
their consciences! Must we pay consciences which pus