The philosophers had one predominant object, which they pursued with a fanatical fury,—­that is, the utter extirpation of religion.  To that every question of empire was subordinate.  They had rather domineer in a parish of atheists than rule over a Christian world.  Their temporal ambition was wholly subservient to their proselytizing spirit, in which they were not exceeded by Mahomet himself.

They who have made but superficial studies in the natural history of the human mind have been taught to look on religious opinions as the only cause of enthusiastic zeal and sectarian propagation.  But there is no doctrine whatever, on which men can warm, that is not capable of the very same effect.  The social nature of man impels him to propagate his principles, as much as physical impulses urge him to propagate his kind.  The passions give zeal and vehemence.  The understanding bestows design and system.  The whole man moves under the discipline of his opinions.  Religion is among the most powerful 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.