of arms, they at length engaged in war. The christians in the time of Dioclesian were as different from those of the time of the apostles as we are from the christians of the third century.

I cannot conceive how a mind so enlightened and bold as Montesquieu's, could severely censure another genius much more accurate than his own, and oppose the following just remark made by Bayle," that a society of real christians might live happily together, but that they would make a bad defence on being attacked by an enemy."

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They would," says Montesquieu, "be citizens infinitely enlightened on the subject of their duties, and ardently zealous to discharge them. They would be fully sensible of the rights of natural defence. The more they thought they owed religion, the more they would think they owed their country. The principles of christianity deeply engraven on their hearts would be infinitely more powerful than the false honour of monarchies, the human virtues of republics, or the servile fear which operates under despotism."

Surely the author of the "Spirit of Laws" did not reflect upon the words of the gospel, when saying that real christians would be fully sensible of the rights of natural defence. He did not recollect the command to deliver up the coat after the cloak had been taken; and, after having received a blow upon one cheek, to present the other also. Here the principle of natural defence is most decidedly annihilated. Those whom we call quakers have always refused to fight; but in the war of 1756, if they had not received assistance from the other English, and suffered that assistance to operate, they would have been completely crushed.

Is it not unquestionable, that men who thought and felt as martyrs would fight very ill as grenadiers? Every sentence of that chapter of the "Spirit of Laws " appears to me false. "The principles of christianity, deeply engraven on their hearts, would be infinitely more powerful," &c. Yes, more powerful to prevent

* Combination of " Divers Thoughts," art. cxxiv.

their exercise of the sword, to make them tremble at shedding their neighbour's blood, to make them look on life as a burden of which it would be their highest happiness to be relieved.

"If," says Bayle, "they were appointed to drive back veteran corps of infantry, or to charge regiments of cuirassiers, they would be seen like sheep in the midst of wolves."

Bayle was perfectly right. Montesquieu did not perceive that, while attempting to refute him, he contemplated only the mercenary and sanguinary soldiers of the present day, and not the early christians. It would seem as if he had been desirous of preventing the unjust accusations which he experienced from the fanatics, by sacrificing Bayle to them. But he gained nothing by it. They are two great men, who appear to be of different opinions, but who, if they had been equally free to speak, would have been found to have the same.

"The false honour of monarchies, the human virtues of republics, the servile fear which operates under despotism;" nothing at all of this goes towards the composition of a soldier, as the "Spirit of Laws" pretends. When we levy a regiment, of whom a quarter part will desert in the course of a fortnight, not one of the men enlisted thinks about the honour of the monarchy: they do not even know what it is. The mercenary troops of the republic of Venice know their country; but nothing about republican virtue, which no one ever speaks of in the place of St. Mark. In one word, I do not believe that there is a single man on the face of the earth who has enlisted in his regiment from a principle of virtue.

Neither, again, is it out of a servile fear that Turks and Russians fight with the fierceness and rage of lions and tigers. Fear does not inspire courage. Nor is it by devotion that the Russians have defeated the armies of Mustapha. It would, in my opinion, have been highly desirable that so ingenious a man should have sought for truth rather than display. When we wish to instruct mankind, we ought to forget ourselves, and have nothing in view but truth.

ETERNITY.

In my youth I admired all the reasonings of Samuel Clarke. I loved his person, although he was a determined Arian as well as Newton, and I still revere his memory, because he was a good man; but the impression which his ideas had stamped on my yet tender brain was effaced when that brain became more firm. I found, for example, that he had contested the eternity of the world with as little ability as he had proved the reality of infinite space.

I have so much respect for the book of Genesis, and for the church which adopts it, that I regard it as the only proof of the creation of the world five thousand seven hundred and eighteen years ago, according to the computation of the Latins, and seven thousand and seventy-eight years, according to the Greeks.

All antiquity believed matter, at least, to be eternal; and the greatest philosophers attributed eternity also to the arrangement of the universe.

They are all mistaken, as we well know; but we may believe, without blasphemy, that the eternal former of all things made other worlds beside ours.

EUCHARIST.

On this delicate subject, we shall not speak as theologians. Submitting in heart and mind to the religion in which we are born, and the laws under which we live, we shall have nothing to do with controversy; it is too hostile to all religions which it boasts of supporting, to all laws which it makes pretensions to explain, and especially to that harmony which in every period it has banished from the world.

One half of Europe anathematises the other on the subject of the Eucharist; and blood has flowed in torrents from the Baltic sea to the foot of the Pyrenees, for nearly two centuries, on account of a single word, which signifies gentle charity.

Various nations in this part of the world view with. horror the system of transubstantiation. They exclaim against this dogma as the last effort of human folly. They quote the celebrated passage of Cicero, who says that men, having exhausted all the mad extravagancies they are capable of, have yet never entertained the idea of eating the God whom they adore. They say, that as almost all popular opinions are built upon ambiguities and abuse of words, so the system of the Roman catholics concerning the eucharist and transubstantiation, is founded solely on an ambiguity; that they have interpreted literally what could only have been meant figuratively; and that for the sake of mere verbal contests, for absolute misconceptions, the world has for six hundred years been drenched in blood.

Their preachers in the pulpits, their learned in their publications, and the people in their conversational discussions, incessantly repeat that Jesus Christ did not take his body in his two hands to give his disciples to eat; that a body cannot be in a hundred thousand places at one time, in bread and in wine; that the God who formed the universe cannot consist of bread which is converted into fæces, and of wine which flows off in urine; and that the doctrine may naturally expose christianity to the derision of the least intelligent, and to the contempt and execration of the rest of mankind.

In this opinion the Tillotsons, the Smallridges, the Claudes, the Dailles, the Amyrauts, the Mestrezats, the Dumoulins, the Blondels, and the numberless multitude of the reformers of the sixteenth century, are all agreed; while the peaceable mahometan, master of Africa, and of the finest part of Asia, smiles with disdain upon it our disputes, and the rest of the world are totally ignorant of them.

Once again I repeat, that I have nothing to do with controversy. I believe with a lively faith all that the catholic apostolic religion teaches on the subject of

* See Cicero on Divination.

the eucharist, without comprehending a single word of it.

. The question is, how to put the greatest restraint upon crimes. The stoics said that they carried God in their heart. Such is the expression of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, the most virtuous of mankind, and who might be almost called gods upon earth. They understood by the words "I carry God within me," that part of the divine universal soul which animates every intelligent being.

"You

The catholic religion goes farther. It says, shall have within you physically what the stoics had metaphysically. Do not set yourselves about enquiring what it is that I give you to eat and drink, or merely to eat. Only believe that what I so give you is God. He is within you. Shall your heart then be defiled by anything unjust or base?-Behold then men receiving God within them, in the midst of an august ceremonial, by the light of a hundred tapers, under the influence of the most exquisite and enchanting music, and at the footstool of an altar of burnished gold. The imagination is led captive, the soul is rapt in extasy and melted! The votary scarcely breathes; he is detached from every terrestrial object, he is united with God, he is in our flesh, and in our blood!-Who will dare, or who even will be able, after this, to commit a single fault, or to entertain even the idea of it? It. was clearly impossible to devise a mystery better calculated to retain mankind in virtue."

Yet Louis XI. while receiving God thus within him, poisons his own brother; the archbishop of Florence, while making God, and the Pazzi while receiving him, assassinate the Medici in the cathedral. Pope Alexander VI., after rising from the bed of his bastard daughter, administers God to Cæsar Borgia his bastard son, and both destroy by hanging, poison, and the sword, all who are in possession of two acres of land which they find desirable.

Julius II. makes and eats God; but, with his cuirass on his back and his helmet on his head, he imbrues his hands in blood and carnage. Leo X. contains God in