that God had given him.  How much to be regretted that he took for masters men who were not worthy to be his disciples, and was foolish enough to think Arnauld, De Sacy, and Nicole, better men than himself.” (Sec. 14.) The Philosophic Thoughts are designed for an answer in form to the more famous Thoughts of this champion of popular theology.  The first of the following extracts, for instance, recalls a memorable illustration of Pascal’s sublime pessimism.  A few passages will illustrate sufficiently the line of argument which led the foremost men at the opening of the philosophic revolution to reject the pretensions of Christianity:—­

What voices! what cries! what groans!  Who is it that has shut up in dungeons all these piteous souls?  What crimes have the poor wretches committed?  Who condemns them to such torments? The God whom they have offended.  Who then is this God? A God full of goodness.  But would a God full of goodness take delight in bathing himself in tears?  If criminals had to calm the furies of a tyrant, what would they do more?...  There are people of whom we ought not to say that they fear God, but that they are horribly afraid of him....  Judging from the picture they paint of the Supreme Being, from his wrath, from the rigour of his vengeance, from certain comparisons expressive of the ratio between those whom he leaves to perish and those to whom he deigns to stretch out a hand, the most upright soul would be tempted to wish that such a being did not exist. (Sec.Sec. 7-9.)

You present to an unbeliever a volume of writings of which you claim to show him the divinity.  But, before going into your proofs, he will be sure to put some questions about your collection.  Has it always been the same?  Why is it less ample now than it was some centuries ago?  By what right have they banished this work or that, which another sect reveres, and preserved this or that, which the other has repudiated?...  You only answer all these difficulties by the avowal that the first foundations of the faith are purely human; that the choice between the manuscripts, the restoration of passages, finally the collection, has been made according to rules of criticism.  Well, I do not refuse to concede to the divinity of the sacred books a degree of faith proportioned to the certainty of these rules. (Sec. 59.)

People agree that it is of the last importance to employ none but solid arguments for the defence of a creed.  Yet they would gladly persecute those who attempt to cry down the bad arguments.  What then, is it not enough to be a Christian?  Am I also to be one upon wrong grounds? (Sec.57.)

The less probability a fact has, the more does the testimony of history lose its weight.  I should have no difficulty in believing a single honest man who should tell me that the king had just won a complete victory over the allies.  But if all Paris were to assure me that a dead man had come to life again, I should not believe a word of it.  That a historian should impose upon us, or that a whole people should be mistaken—­there is no miracle in that. (Sec.46.)