causes of enthusiasm. When anything
concerning it becomes an object of much meditation, it cannot be
indifferent to the mind. They who do not love religion hate it. The
rebels to God perfectly abhor the Author of their being. They hate Him
"with all their heart, with all their mind, with all their soul, and
with all their strength." He never presents Himself to their thoughts,
but to menace and alarm them. They cannot strike the sun out of heaven,
but they are able to raise a smouldering smoke that obscures him from
their own eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves on God, they have a
delight in vicariously defacing, degrading, torturing, and tearing in
pieces His image in man. Let no one judge of them by what he has
conceived of them, when they were not incorporated, and had no lead.
They were then only passengers in a common vehicle. They were then
carried along with the general motion of religion in the community, and,
without being aware of it, partook of its influence. In that situation,
at worst, their nature was left free to counterwork their principles.
They despaired of giving any very general currency to their opinions:
they considered them as a reserved privilege for the chosen few. But
when the possibility of dominion, lead, and propagation presented
themselves, and that the ambition which before had so often made them
hypocrites might rather gain than lose by a daring avowal of their
sentiments, then the nature of this infernal spirit, which has "evil for
its good," appeared in its full perfection. Nothing, indeed, but the
possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the
bottom is the true character of any man. Without reading the speeches of
Vergniaud, Francais of Nantes, Isnard, and some others of that sort, it
would not be easy to conceive the passion, rancor, and malice of their
tongues and hearts. They worked themselves up to a perfect frenzy
against religion and all its professors. They tore the reputation of the
clergy to pieces by their infuriated declamations and invectives, before
they lacerated their bodies by their massacres. This fanatical atheism
left out, we omit the principal feature in the French Revolution, and a
principal consideration with regard to the effects to be expected from a
peace with it.

The other sort of men were the politicians. To them, who had little or
not at all reflected on the subject, religion was in itself no object of
love or hatred. They dis