harity, and they interest
themselves so greatly in the salvation of souls, that they like rather
to risk their own health beside the sick bed of persons afflicted with
the most contagious diseases, than lose the opportunity of
administering their salutary ointment.

_Ordination_ is another very mysterious ceremony, by which the Deity
secretly bestows his invisible grace on those whom he has selected to
fill the office of the holy priesthood. According to the Catholic
religion, God gives to the priests the power of making God himself, as
we have shown above; a privilege which without doubt cannot be
sufficiently admired. With respect to the sensible effects of this
sacrament, and of the visible grace which it confers, they are
enabled, by the help of some words and certain ceremonies, to change a
profane man into one that is sacred; that is to say, who is not
profane any longer. By this spiritual metamorphosis, this man becomes
capable of enjoying considerable revenues without being obliged to do
any thing useful for society. On the contrary, heaven itself confers
on him the right of deceiving, of annoying, and of pillaging the
profane citizens, who labor for his ease and luxury.

Finally, _Marriage_ is a sacrament that confers mysterious and
invisible graces, of which we in truth have no very precise ideas.
Protestants and Infidels, who look upon marriage as a civil contract,
and not as a sacrament, receive neither more nor less of its visible
grace than the good Catholics. The former see not that those who are
married enjoy by this sacrament any secret virtue, whence they may
become more constant and faithful to the engagements they have
contracted. And I believe both you and I, Madam, have known many
people on whom it has only conferred the grace of cordially detesting
each other.

I will not now enter upon the consideration of a multitude of other
magic ceremonies, admitted by some Christian sectaries and rejected by
others, but to which the devotees who embrace them, attach the most
lofty ideas, in the firm persuasion, that God will, on that account,
visit them with his invisible grace. All these ceremonies, doubtless,
contain great mysteries, and the method of handling or speaking of
them is exceedingly mysterious. It is thus that the water on which a
priest has pronounced a few words, contained in his conjuring book,
acquires the invisible virtue of chasing away wicked spirits, who are
invisible by their natur