last to acquiesce in any dispiriting prospects of either the present or future destinies of mankind; while, on the other hand, the boundless views of intellectual and moral, as well as material, relations which open on him on all hands in the course of these pursuits, the knowledge of the trivial place he occupies in the scale of creation, and the sense continually pressed upon him of his own weakness and incapacity to suspend or modify the slightest movement of the vast machinery he sees in action around him, must effectually convince him that humility of pretension, no less than confidence of hope, is what best becomes his character.'-pp. 7, 8.

ART. IV.-Doctrine de Saint Simon. Exposition. Première Année. 1828-1829. Seconde édition. Paris. 1830.

WE alluded at the close of our late article on Babœuf's

Conspiracy,' to the progress in France of a new sect, avowing religious and political views alike blasphemous and dangerous. That an adventurer-half profligate, half madmanshould have met with any considerable measure of success in the attempt to found a sect in that country in these days, is of itself a most remarkable circumstance. But the political branch, at least, of the heresy is so likely to find favour at this time among certain classes of our own population, that we have considered it our duty to devote a separate paper to the history and character of this Doctrine de Saint Simon.'

Some of those continental statesmen and men of letters, whose hearts and understandings have been corrupted by the false philosophy of the age, have acted in our own days upon an opinion which they did not affect to disguise, that all religions are false, but that some religion is necessary for the well-being of society, and that the Roman Catholic, as being the most widely extended, and holding out the greatest attractions to the multitude, is the one which a politic government ought to encourage in preference to all others. Upon such an understanding it was that popery and atheism used formerly to fraternize in all Roman Catholic countries. The reigning Harlot tolerated no heresy, no open contradiction; but she exacted nothing more than a decent observance of forms, and was abundantly indulgent, both in theory and practice, to every imaginable license in other things. Nothing has yet occurred to interrupt this amicable understanding in Spain, nor in Italy, in which latter country it originated, and may be said to be established; it prevails, also, to a considerable extent in Romish Germany, and in a less degree in the Netherlands, for superstition has still a strong hold there upon the clergy and

2E 2

middle

middle classes. The Gallican Church, though equally well disposed to a compromise of this kind, was never able to effectuate it so completely as to make it work well; profligate and irreligious men, who belonged to its ranks, were not disturbed, either on account of their lives or their opinions, and they were liberally beneficed according to their pretensions; but while it thus secured these persons, it could not deter those who were not enlisted in its service from acting against it. When Henri IV. was reconciled to the Romish Church, religion received a shock in France from which it never recovered. The motives for the numerous conversions which followed in that and in the succeeding generation were so gross and obvious, that few of the converts obtained credit for sincerity either from those whom they left or those to whom they went over; and most of such converts, who belonged to the higher and educated ranks, thought it the best excuse toward others, and the most consolatory one for themselves, to have it supposed that they had made no other change than that of forsaking the party of the esprits foibles to join that of the esprits forts.

To this cause, even more than to the atrocious spirit with which the religious wars were carried on, on both sides, or than to the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, we must ascribe the early growth and progress of an anti-Christian feeling in France. The corruption of manners had prepared the way for it. The profligacy of the French court, from the time of Louis XI.'s death, was without even the restraint of shame, and it infected with a lasting contagion the literature of the country. That of Spain had never been thus defiled; and the reformation, by its indirect effects, put a stop to the turpitudes of the Italian press; but in France, the most licentious writers were under little or no check, till the vigorous despotism of Louis XIV. was established. Grotius, writing in 1627 from Paris, and alluding to his Treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion, says,* certè adversus impietatem remediis Gallia non parum indiget; ipse nisi expertus vix crederem.' In another letter, from the same capital, he says,†'apertè in impietatem ruit Gailia, cujus ego pestis tam multa quotidia naboyama video, ut vivere me pene tædeat, inter tales vivere tædeat omnino. Etiam libri plurimi prodeunt nihil credere docentes! Et hæc vident feruntque oi avaμáρτnto, per quos quæ Tertullianei loci fuerit sententia, dicere non licet!' The Jesuits are the 'impeccables' here spoken of; and it was more likely for want of power at that time than of will that they made no attempt at preventing the circulation of such books. Irreligion had been held in the utmost

6

ἀναμάρτητοι,

* Hugonis Grotii Epistolæ, p. 78.

† lb. p. 100.

abhorrence

abhorrence by the French in the preceding century; as is shown by a remarkable anecdote in the literary history of that nation. At the time when seven of the most distinguished French poets then living were known by the name of the Pleiades, their company was frequented by a person of insinuating manners and no ordinary talents, who, when he had become sufficiently intimate with them, let them know that he was an atheist, and endeavoured to proselyte them to his own miserable state of unbelief. Three of the seven gave ear to him; and he was proceeding successfully to corrupt the minds of many others who moved in the same circle of society, when his doctrines shocked those whom he was not able to pervert. Nicolas Rapin was the first whose zeal was kindled against him. Ronsard, Tournebe, and Saint Marthe, partaking the same indignation, brought back the three wandering stars, and attacked the propagandist vehemently both in prose and verse; nor did they cease to exert themselves against him in every way, till they had brought him under the cognizance of the law, and he was put to death,-being hanged in the Place de Grêve, and his body burnt. M. Duchat supposes that Geoffroi Vallée was the person who thus fell a victim to his own pernicious opinions and to the spirit of the age; but this is not certain, for in none of the invectives against him is he named. Rapin, when he was on his death-bed, declared that the part which he had taken in bringing this unhappy man to execution was the only thing in his life on which he could look back with satisfaction: *Sans nostre forte opposition je me craindrois, disoit-il, que la France ne fust maintenant un esgoust d'Atheisme, si principalement il eust trouvé du support dans nos esprits, pour authoriser ces maximes.'

In that age men were as much in earnest in their religion, or what they supposed to be their religion, as they are now at a contested election in their political opinions, or in those passions, prejudices, and private considerations, which they dignify or conceal under that name. Death was suffered cheerfully, and it was inflicted in good faith. But after the great example of insincerity in religious profession which had been given by the French court, that excitement was at an end and though the blood of the martyrs in that age, as in the primitive ages, proved the seed of the church, there sprang up in later times a noxious growth from their ashes. Men, whose loose lives predisposed them to impiety, found in the horrors which had been perpetrated during the religious struggle, a pretext for disbelieving the religion under the name of which such crimes had been committed: and it was not difficult for them to throw off their belief wherever the Romish church was triumphant, and with its gross legends and monstrous dogmas

* Garasse, Doctrine Curieuse, p. 124—6.

insulted

insulted the credulity of mankind. For among the many unhappy effects which that church has produced wherever its dominion is established, this has uniformly appeared, that the very persons whom it has provoked to infidelity regarded it as the true, or, more correctly speaking, as the only authentic form of Christianity: they have looked to its councils and rituals for the standard of Christian faith; they have formed their estimate of Christian philosophy and Christian morals from its convents and confessionals; and of Christian charity from its inquisition and its autos-da-fe. It was seldom that they condescended to bestow the slightest consideration upon the Protestant churches; towards them they retained in full force the inveterate prejudice in which they had been trained up. The variations of those churches were to them sufficient evidence against them at first sight; and they were still so far enthralled in mind by the self-styled Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, that they acknowledged its pretensions to be conclusive against all others. Persons, who living in Roman Catholic countries have honestly rejected Christianity in the revolting form wherein it has always been presented to them, will not believe that any man, for whose understanding they have any respect, can possibly be a Christian, though born and bred in a reformed church; if they are convinced of this, the only effect which the unwelcome conviction seems to produce is, that instead of despising Protestantism as they used to do, they regard it with a hostile and vindictive feeling, as if the possibility of its being sincerely received disturbed the tranquillity of their unbelief. This is affirmed, not as what might be inferred in fair probability, but upon personal observation and certain knowledge.

It was in France, more than in any other country, that the spirit of infidelity prevailed, because it accorded with the manners of the court, and with the national character. We know what effect was produced in England by the example of Charles the Second's Frenchified court; but the Parisians had always such examples before them. The days of Louis the Fourteenth's bigotry can hardly be said to form an exception; and from his revocation of the edict of Nantes, and the atrocious persecution which ensued, the double evil resulted,-that the kingdom was deprived of a great number of its most virtuous and religious subjects; and that another most deep and bloody stain was fixed upon what the persecutors in that country called Christianity, and what all who became infidels believed to be such. This fatal mispersuasion has led to the perversion of many a brilliant intellect, and thence to the corruption of many a generous heart. Revolting against the outrages to humanity, which were committed in the name of the church, and the insults which in the same name were offered

to

to the reasonable understanding, they at once abhorred and despised the religion of the Vatican, and the Escurial, and the Louvre; and because they loathed the impudent figments of Franciscanism, and Dominicanism, and Loyolism, they loathed that faith in which alone they that are weary and heavy laden can find rest,-in which alone there is consolation, and support, and strength, and sure and certain hope. As often as infidelity has manifested itself in England, it has been confounded and put to shame. The immeasurable superiority of our great English divines over those writers by whom Christianity has been assailed, cannot be imagined by those who are not conversant with their works. But in France it was far otherwise; infidelity was there described, in the early part of the seventeenth century, as tenant le haut du pavé sans contradiction. The Romish religion had fallen into utter disrespect, and no wonder;-many of its higher clergy notoriously did not believe its doctrines, and its charity had been shown in the dragonades. Its practices were superstitious, its intolerance was merciless, its history was wicked.

But if ever there was a philosophy which deserves to be called earthly, sensual, devilish, it is that which allied itself with infidelity and attacked this church, — attacking at the same time the foundations of private morals and of public order. Gray compares the zeal of a man who had taken up some new theory on medicine, to that of a French atheist. Atheism,' says he, in one of his letters, is a vile dish; though all the cooks in France combine to make new sauces to it. I have long been sick at it in their authors and hated them for it but I pity their poor innocent people of fashion: they were bad enough when they believed everything! Gray might well feel this, who was a poet, a philosopher, and a Christian,-a wise good man; but even Chesterfield, who had at one time predicted and hoped, from the symptoms of reason and good sense' which were breaking out all over France, that before the end of that century, the trade of both king and priest would not be half so good a one as it had been,'-even Chesterfield foresaw and feared the consequences. A spirit of licentiousness,' said he, as to all matters of religion and government is spread throughout the whole kingdom. If the neighbours of France are wise they will be quiet, and let these seeds of discord germinate, as they certainly will do if no foreign object checks their growth, and unites all parties in a common cause.' But he saw that other nations also had something to apprehend from the same demoralizing philosophy; speaking of Voltaire, whom he greatly admired, in a letter to Crebillon, he

says,

6

He is not the first writer who has been carried away, by a lively imagination,