of every species of tyranny, even such as are not religious. What surprized me more is their retrenching from my pastoral, some images very lively and natural; such as that in which Paul and Virginia, suckled alternately by their unfortunate mothers, are compared to two buds grafted on trees, all whose branches have been broken off by the tempest; and that in which the two children shelter themselves from the rain under the same petticoat.

The Inquisition is an enemy to Nature and to mankind. I think therefore that mankind is bound to make reprisals. As she has every where emissaries and fraternities, it appears to me that the National Assembly, which has established the rights of humanity as the basis of the Constitution, would act very wisely in decreeing: That every man allied to the Inquisition should be prohibited to enter France; even though invested with a public character, and that every book approved by them should be forbidden to enter, as being, by that very approbation, liable to suspicion of containing maxims favourable to her own interests, and incompatible with those of mankind. It becomes every generous Nation to make perpetual war on the enemies of the rights of human nature.

Though there may have been among us, at all times, Priests who attempted to introduce the Inquisition, beginning with a demand of certificates of confession and of paschal communion, and though there still remain some traces of it in our hospitals, it may be affirmed that the generality of our Clergy possesses a large share of patriotism. Of this we have just had experience in the revo

lution.

lution. A great number of ecclesiastics the most enlightened, and of manners the most pure, have taken the side of the People. We ought therefore to attach them more and more to the general interests, and nothing is so likely to effect this as public pay and marriages. They will become Citizens in becoming stipendiary Ministers of the public, and fathers of families.* But it is not sufficient to unite the Priesthood to the People by the bonds Society and of Nature, it is necessary to unite the People to the Priesthood and to Religion by the bonds of intelligence and feeling. For this purpose, we must substitute the French language in room of the Latin, in the prayers of our Gallican Church.

To what absurd practices may not habit subject reasonable beings? Is it not strange that the People of France should pray to God in Latin? What would they say were their preachers to address them in the same language? It would be nothing more however than a consequence of the prevailing custom : the sermon being, like the service of the church, the word of God, it would be natural to make God speak to the People in the same language that the People speaks to God. This practice has in truth existed

* On this subject I must observe, that it does not appear to me just to deprive Priests who have not taken the oaths, of their pensions, because they refuse to come under this civic obligation. These pensions have been granted merely in consideration of that refusal, and of their having consequently forfeited all right to exercise their public functions, that they might not be left destitute of all means of subsistence. It would therefore be a violation of the spirit of the first deeree, to exact the civic oath as a qualification to receive those very pensions; it is sufficient to deprive such as enter into cabals to overset the Constitu

tion.

during many ages. There was a time when the Church of Rome permitted not a translation of the Holy Scriptures into the vulgar tongue. What communication then could subsist between God and men who spoke to each other in a language which they did not understand? It was said that the Ro mish Clergy, to maintain the respectability of religion; but what a strange religion must that be from which the love of God is banished! for no such feeling can exist in prayers which the understanding comprehends not, and by which the heart is incapable of expressing it's emotions. It is long since St. Paul condemned this abuse; and what is very extraordinary, and which as far as I know has never been remarked, it was in describing the case of the primitive Christians, who had received the gift of tongues, and who did not themselves understand them. Hear what he says on the subject in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, xiv. 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16. "If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? "so likewise you, except ye utter by the tongue "words easy to be understood, how shall it be "known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into "the air....therefore if I know not the meaning of "the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a "barbarian ; and he that speaketh shall be a barba"rian unto me.... Wherefore let him who speaketh "in an unknown tongue, pray that he may inter

pret. For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my

spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruit"ful....Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, "How shall he that occupieth the room of the unVOL. IV. "learned

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"learned say Amen at thy giving thanks, seeing he "understandeth not what thou sayest?"

Since we must speak out, though we had not the example of St. Paul, the use of the Latin tongue, like the celibacy of the Clergy, is an effect of the policy of modern Rome, to subject the nations to her empire. By precluding priests from having wives and children, she detached them from family and country, and attached them proportionally to the aggrandizement of her own power, by inspiring them with an exclusive affection for her service. Conquering Princes exact similar sacrifices from their soldiers; they permit them not to marry. On the other hand, Rome, reserving to Priests alone the knowledge of the sacerdotal language, subjected by means of it, the People who comprehended it not, to a blind obedience: it is thus that the despots of the East employ, in the execution of their commands, eunuchs and mutes.

It is nevertheless very much the interest of the Romish Church to propagate religion in all the dialects of the world. Religions are diffused only by languages; our nurses are our first apostles, and among most nations, women have been the first missionaries. I shall make on this subject an observation of considerable importance: it is this, that in every country religions have shared the fate of the languages in which they originated. The first religion of the Romans perished with the Tuscan dialect which gave it birth. That of the God Lama, in Tartary, overspread the Chinese Empire with the Tartars, who introduced their language on effecting the conquest of it. Judaism remained long shut

up

up among the Hebrews alone, because they had little communication with other nations. But when Christianity was preached to them, it penetrated with them southward into Africa, and there formed a religion mixed with Judaism, as we see to this day in Ethiopia. When afterward it was announced toward the East, to the Greeks, it extended successively, with the broken remains of their language, over the Greeks of the Archipelago, among the Greeks properly so called, and to Constantinople; to Moldavia, Russia, part of Poland, and to all the countries where the Sclavonian language is spoken, which is derived from the Greek. When it was preached to the Romans, it spread to the West among the Nations which spake languages derived from the Latin tongue, such as the Italians, Spaniards, Portugueze and French. Finally, having penetrated northward among the nations who speak the Celtic language, it settled with that tongue among those who use the different dialects of it, such as the Germans, the Swiss, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Danes, the English. Thus, as there are three primitive languages in Europe, the Greek, the Latin and the Celtic, the Christian religion is divided into three great churches, the Greek, the Roman, and the Dissident or Protestant, which may be denominated the Celtic. Each of them produces different communions, conformably to the different dialects of the mother-tongue: thus the Greek church subdivided into the different patriarchates of Constantinople, of Russia, into Maronite...; the Latin, into Roman, into Gallican, &c.; the Dissident or Celtic, into Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican

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