Whilst his real
views were little known, he became a popular memory; but some
complained that his force was centrifugal, and that a church can no
more be preserved by suavity and distinction than a state by liberty
and justice. Lewis XVI., we are often told, perished in expiation of
the sins of his forefathers. He perished, not because the power he
inherited from them had been carried to excess, but because it had
been discredited and undermined. One author of this discredit was
Fenelon. Until he came, the ablest men, Bossuet and even Bayle,
revered the monarchy. Fenelon struck it at the zenith, and treated
Lewis XIV. in all his grandeur more severely than the disciples of
Voltaire treated Lewis XV. in all his degradation. The season of scorn
and shame begins with him. The best of his later contemporaries
followed his example, and laid the basis of opposing criticism on
motives of religion. They were the men whom Cardinal Dubois describes
as dreamers of the same dreams as the chimerical archbishop of
Cambray. Their influence fades away before the great change that came
over France about the middle of the century.

From that time unbelief so far prevailed that even men who were not
professed assailants, as Montesquieu, Condillac, Turgot, were
estranged from Christianity. Politically, the consequence was this:
men who did not attribute any deep significance to church questions
never acquired definite notions on Church and State, never seriously
examined under what conditions religion may be established or
disestablished, endowed or disendowed, never even knew whether there
exists any general solution, or any principle by which problems of
that kind are decided. This defect of knowledge became a fact of
importance at a turning-point in the Revolution. The theory of the
relations between states and churches is bound up with the theory of
Toleration, and on that subject the eighteenth century scarcely rose
above an intermittent, embarrassed, and unscientific view. For
religious liberty is composed of the properties both of religion and
of liberty, and one of its factors never became an object of
disinterested observation among actual leaders of opinion. They
preferred the argument of doubt to the argument of certitude, and
sought to defeat intolerance by casting out revelation as they had
defeated the persecution of witches by casting out the devil. There
remained a flaw in their liberalism, for liberty apart from belief is