such a presumption be borne out by Scripture and by facts, then, so far as hitherto brought down, the prophetic, political, and ecclesiastical records would jointly bring us to the same point, and lead us to the entrance on a new order of events. These, however, like all that preceded them, have not to be tried by verisimilitude alone, but each must exhibit its own defined character, as well as occupy its appointed place, if the judgments of God be indeed so manifest that not a word could be wrested in accordance with a fancy, without distorting the figure set before us in the oracles of God. Returning, then, to the exact point to which history had brought us down, we may trace the analogy anew, but in a defined and more distinctive form, between the words of prophecy and the records of history. The "state of Europe," in respect both to the character of the philosophy which prevailed at that very period, and the political excitements which betokened an approaching convulsion, is thus summarily described;-of the former, it is said, "A set of men, many of them of talents of the first order, arrogating to themselves the exclusive title of philosophers, and actuated at first, perhaps, by a zeal for the truth, carried on an incessant warfare against all that they were pleased to designate as superstition and vulgar prejudice. But theirs was not that philosophy which elevated above all low and grovelling passions, and, irradiated by light from heaven, views with pity rather than contempt the aberrations of man, and seeks by mild and gentle methods to lead him into the way of truth. It was heartless, cold, and cheerless; its summum bonum was sensual indulgence or literary fame, and few of its professors displayed any real dignity of soul; its favourite weapon was ridicule; it attacked not only the absurdities of the popular faith, but it levelled its shafts at the sublimest truths of religion; it shook the firmest bases of social order, and sought to rob man of all lofty hopes and aspirations. Every mode of composition, from highest science and most serious history, down to the slightest tale, with which was often joined a sickly affected sensibility, calculated to gain it admittance into the female bosom. The consequence was, as might be expected, a general laxity of principle. "The chief seat of this philosophy was France, where a court corrupt and profligate, beyond, perhaps, any which Europe had yet witnessed, had utterly degraded the minds of the upper classes of society. The efforts of the virtuous Louis XVI. to stem this torrent were unavailing; national vice was not to escape its merited chastisement. The middle orders were disgusted and galled by the privileges of the noblesse, and their excessive pride and insolence; the writings of the philosophers, and the scandalous lives of many of the clergy, had shaken their reverence for religion; the abuses and oppression of arbitrary and extravagant government were keenly felt; the glorious struggle of the English for liberty in the last century, and the dignity and prosperity consequent on it, awakened the aspirations of the better disposed; the achievement of American independence filled the minds of many enthusiasts with vague ideas of freedom and happiness beneath republican institutions; and the lower orders in general looked forward to any change as a benefit. "IT WAS A TIME OF INNOVATION, TURMOIL, AND VIOLENT CHANGE. The English colonies had thrown off the bridle of the mother country, whom she curbed too straitly. The kingdom of Poland had been most nefariously dismembered. Gustavus III. of Sweden had overthrown the aristocracy, and made himself absolute. A contest arose in the United Provinces, between the party of the stadtholder and those who wished to make the government of a more republican form, which drew the attention of all the principal powers; the respective parties appealed to arms, and by the Prussian aid the republicans were crushed. All these were but preludes to the storm that was soon to burst over Europe."* "The peace concluded at Versailles in 1783 was reasonably supposed," says Sir Walter Scott, "to augur a long repose to Europe." But the oracles of God spake not of repose as suited to the time. And only ten years elapsed, marked as a time of innovation, turmoil, and violent change, till a revolution, characterised by "unheard of enormities," and affecting the destinies of the world, more, perhaps, than any single event in history, was perfected in one of the chief nations of Europe. The whole history of the world would be searched in vain for any parallel to such a period. Never was such a combination heard of against altars and thrones. But it came not without a cause, nor without an object to fulfil. And the historian can scarcely refrain from regarding it as the manifestation of judgment, without any allusion to the word of Revelation; nor can he withhold the admission that the judgment was righteous. The unasked concession is extorted by facts. And, while innumerable witnesses, trained up in scepticism, were actors in the scene, a modern writer, of unequalled popularity and fame, who is not prone to introduce religion, takes up, when needful, the task of commentator. "The Catholic church had GROWN OLD, and unfortunately did not possess the means of renovating her doctrines, or improving her constitution, so as to keep pace with the enlarge Outlines of History, Lardner's Cyclop. ment of the human understanding. The lofty claims to infallibility which she had set up and maintained during the middle ages, claims which she could neither renounce nor modify, now threatened in more enlightened times, like battlements too heavy for the foundation, to be the means of ruining the edifice they were designed to defend. Vestigia nullu retrorsum, continued to be the motto of the church of Rome. She could explain nothing, soften nothing, renounce nothing consistently with her assertion of impeccability. The whole trash which had been accumulated for ages of darkness and ignorance, whether consisting of extravagant pretensions, incredible assertions, absurd doctrines which confounded the understanding, or puerile ceremonies which revolted the taste, were alike incapable of being explained away or abandoned. Infidelity, in attacking the absurd claims and extravagant doctrines of the church of Rome, had artfully availed herself of those abuses, as if they had been really a part of the Christian religion; and they whose credulity could not digest the grossest articles of the papist creed, thought themselves entitled to conclude, in general, against religion itself, from the abuses engrafted on it by ignorance and priesthood.* "The mask of religion has been often used to cover more savage and extensive persecutions, but at no time did the spirit of intrigue, of personal malice, of slander and circumvention, appear more disgustingly from under the sacred disguise; and in the eyes of the thoughtless and the vulgar the general cause of religion suffered in proportion.† 66 Partaking of the licence of its professors, the degraded literature of modern times called into its alliance that immorality, which not only Christian, but even heathen philosophy had considered as the greatest obstacle to a wise, great, and happy state of existence. The licentiousness which walked abroad in such disgusting and undisguised nakedness, was a part of the unhappy bequest left by the Regent Duke of Orleans to the country which he governed. The conduct of Orleans and his minions was marked with open infamy, deep enough to have called down in the age of miracles an immediate JUDGMENT from heaven; and crimes which the worst of the Roman emperors would have at least hidden in the solitary isle of Caprea, were acted as publicly as if men had no eyes and God no thunderbolts.‡ * Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. i. pp. 26, 27. "From this filthy Cocytus flowed those streams of impurity which disgraced France during the reign of Louis XV., and which continued in that of Louis XVI. to affect society, morals, and above all, literature.*-Religion cannot exist where immorality generally prevails, any more than a light can burn where the air is corrupted; and, accordingly, infidelity was so general in France, as to predominate in almost every rank of society. The errors of the church of Rome, connected as they are with her ambitious attempts towards dominion over men, in their temporal as well as spiritual capacity, had long become the argument of the philosopher and the jest of the satirist; but in exploding these pretensions, and holding them up to ridicule, the philosophers of the age involved with them the general doctrines of Christianity itself; nay, some went so far as not only to deny inspiration, but to extinguish by their sophistry the lights of natural religion, implanted in our bosoms as a part of our birthright. Like the disorderly rabble at the time of the Reformation, (but with infinitely deeper guilt,) they not only pulled down the symbols of idolatry, which ignorance or priestcraft had introduced into the Christian church, but sacrilegiously defaced and desecrated the altar itself. This work the philosophers, as they termed themselves, carried on with such unlimited and eager zeal, as plainly to show that infidelity, as well as divinity, hath its fanaticism.-An envenomed fury against religion and all its doctrines; a promptitude to avail themselves of every circumstance by which Christianity could be misrepresented; an ingenuity in mixing up their opinions in works, which seemed the least fitting to involve such discussions; above all, a pertinacity in slandering, ridiculing and vilifying all who ventured to oppose their principles, distinguished the correspondents in this celebrated conspir acy against a religion, which, however it may be defaced by human inventions, breathes only that peace on earth, and good will to the children of men, which was proclaimed by Heaven at its divine origin."+ The age of miracles indeed was past, and pretension to them was one of the marks of an apostate church. Yet God had not left himself without a witness: nor, at the time when infidelity gave proof of its fanaticism, and even the literature of the age was distinguished by an "envenomed fury against re "Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. i. pp. 54, 55. + Ibid. pp. 58, 59. |