Such is the effect of the perversion of history, by those, who, for the
same nefarious purposes, have perverted every other part of learning.
But those who will stand upon that elevation of reason, which places
centuries under our eye, and brings things to the true point of
comparison, which obscures little names, and effaces the colours of
little parties, and to which nothing can ascend but the spirit and
moral quality of human actions, will say to the teachers of the Palais
Royal,--the cardinal of Lorraine was the murderer of the sixteenth
century, you have the glory of being the murderers in the eighteenth;
and this is the only difference between you. But history, in the
nineteenth century, better understood, and better employed, will, I
trust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these
barbarous ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates not to
retaliate upon the speculative and inactive atheists of future times,
the enormities committed by the present practical zealots and furious
fanatics of that wretched error, which, in its quiescent state, is more
than punished, whenever it is embraced. It will teach posterity not to
make war upon either religion or philosophy, for the abuse which
the hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable blessings
conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all
things eminently favours and protects the race of man.