e Greve, a voice instantly went forth from the banks of
Lake Leman, which made itself heard from Moscow to Cadiz, and which
sentenced the unjust judges to the contempt and detestation of all
Europe. The really efficient weapons with which the philosophers
assailed the evangelical faith were borrowed from the evangelical
morality. The ethical and dogmatical parts of the Gospel were unhappily
turned against each other. On one side was a church boasting of the
purity of a doctrine derived from the Apostles, but disgraced by the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, by the murder of the best of kings, by the
war of Cevennes, by the destruction of Port Royal. On the other side was
a sect laughing at the Scriptures, shooting out the tongue at the
sacraments, but ready to encounter principalities and powers in the
cause of justice, mercy, and toleration.

Irreligion, accidentally associated with philanthropy, triumphed for a
time over religion accidentally associated with political and social
abuses. Everything gave way to the zeal and activity of the new
reformers. In France, every man distinguished in letters was found in
their ranks. Every year gave birth to works in which the fundamental
principles of the Church were attacked with argument, invective, and
ridicule. The Church made no defence, except by acts of power. Censures
were pronounced; books were seized; insults were offered to the remains
of infidel writers; but no Bossuet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter
Voltaire. There appeared not a single defence of the Catholic doctrine
which produced any considerable effect, or which is now even remembered.
A bloody and unsparing persecution, like that which put down the
Albigenses, might have put down the philosophers. But the time for De
Montforts and Dominics had gone by. The punishments which the priests
were still able to inflict were sufficient to irritate, but not
sufficient to destroy. The war was between power on one side and wit on
the other; and the power was under far more restraint than the wit.
Orthodoxy soon became a synonym for ignorance and stupidity. It was as
necessary to the character of an accomplished man that he should despise
the religion of his country, as that he should know his letters. The new
doctrines spread rapidly through Christendom. Paris was the capital of
the whole Continent. French was everywhere the language of polite
circles. The literary glory of Italy and Spain had departed. That of
Germany