S4S 



VOLTERRA VOLUNTARY CONTROVERSY. 



prose writer, he is unequalled, so beautiful and 

 polished is his expression, so copious his wit. 

 Among all the French writers, he, perhaps, displays, 

 in the fullest degree, the peculiarities of his nation. 

 The accomplished marchioness du Chatelet, as we 

 have already said, was his intimate friend ; hence 

 the Lettres inedites de la Murq. du Chatelet et Sup- 

 plement A la Correspondence de Voltaire avec le Roi 

 de Prtute, A-c., avec des Note histor. (Paris, 

 1818), is an important addition to his biography. 



See La Vie de Voltaire par Condorcet ; also La 

 Vie de Voltaire par M. [Mercier] (Geneva, 1788) ; 

 Examen des Ouvraget de M. de Voltaire par M. 

 Linauet (Brussels, 1788); Vie litteraire de Poltaire 

 rfdigfe par de Luchet. The abbe Duvernet de- 

 scribes him more particularly as a man, and a pri- 

 vate man, in his Vie de Voltaire suivie d" Anecdotes 

 qui composent sa Vie privee (Paris, 1797) ; see also 

 Afemoires sur Voltaire et aur ses Ouvrages par 

 Wagniere et Longchamp, sea Secretaire! ( 1826, two 

 vols.). Wagniere wa directed by the empress 

 Catharine, who bought Voltaire's library, to arrange 

 it in St Petersburg, as it had stood in Ferney. 

 The Vie de Voltaire, by Mazure, is very partial. 

 His works were published by Beaumarchais, at 

 Kehl, 1784, seq. in 70 vols. 4to and 8vo, and 92 

 vols. 12mo ; and, by Palissot, with notes, at Paris, 

 1796, seq. The Pieces inedites appeared at Paris 

 in 1820. Since 1817, many editions of the works 

 of Voltaire have been published (the cheapest by 

 Touquet, 1820). In 1823, some unpublished works 

 of his were found in the imperial hermitage, at 

 Petersburg : the most important are a bitter com- 

 mentary upon Rousseau's Contrat Social, and a 

 tale; the latter has since been published. Dupont 

 has lately published an edition of Voltaire's works, 

 in 70 volumes. A tolerably complete, but perhaps 

 not entirely impartial review of the numerous 

 literary contests of Voltaire, is given in the Tableau 

 philosophic/He de V Esprit de M. de Voltaire (Geneva, 

 1771). 



VOLTERRA; a town of Tuscany, twenty-four 

 miles south-west of Florence, with 5000 inhabitants. 

 It is the see of a bishop, and has a public seminary 

 of education. The ancient Volattera was one of 

 the twelve principal cities of Etruria, and had 

 100,000 inhabitants. Some Etruscan monuments 

 still remain : among these are its walls, with a gate, 

 dedicated to Hercules; and the fish-pond, construct- 

 ed of enormous blocks of stone. See Etruria. 



VOLUME (Latin volumen). The volume of a 

 body has reference to the space which it occupies. 

 To have a correct idea of this, imagine a body im- 

 mersed entirely in a liquid, which neither changes 

 nor penetrates it. If it is now taken out, and we 

 add new liquid, to raise the contents of the vessel 

 as high as they were when the body was immersed, 

 the amount of the newly-added liquid will give us 

 the volume of the body. Thus we have a simple 

 means of ascertaining the volume of small bodies, 

 the irregularity of which presents some difficulty 

 in the way of determining it by ordinary means. 

 J'olime must not be confounded with mass. On 

 the volume also depends the difference of the abso- 

 lute and specific gravity. 



VOLUMNIA. See Coriolanus. 



VOLUNTARY CONTROVERSY. The prin- 

 ciples involved in this controversy are not new in 

 the history of the church ; though it began under 

 its present peculiar designation in the year 1832. 

 A certain portion of those called Evangelical Dis- 

 senters met in Edinburgh, in September of that 



year, and formed themselves into a society in sup- 

 port of what they styled Voluntary Church Princi- 

 ples, the avowed object of which was the overthrow 

 of all civil establishments of religion. They as- 

 sumed the description of" voluntary," in opposition 

 to what they maintained was the compulsory prin- 

 ciple of an establishment, viz. the exertion of the 

 civil authority to compel payment of the endow- 

 ments of the clergy, either secured or allotted to 

 them by the law of the land. It would be alto- 

 gether out of place to enumerate, far less to illus- 

 trate, the various arguments adduced by the respec- 

 tive parties in this doubtless very important contro- 

 versy. It may be enough to state very shortly the 

 general grounds assumed and maintained. The as- 

 sailing party affirmed that a civil establishment of 

 religion was contrary to scripture, not only unau- 

 thorized but condemned in the New Testament, 

 contrary to the spirituality of the kingdom of Christ, 

 unjust in its nature, an invasion of the rights of con- 

 science, and most injurious, in its practical effects, 

 both to religion and to the rights and interests of 

 society; while it was altogether unnecessary to 

 afford religious instruction to the people, there 

 being, in the inherent power of the gospel, enough 

 to secure its diffusion and support in the earth ; and 

 that these views were amply confirmed by the 

 history of the church in ancient and modern times, 

 and especially by the condition of religion in the 

 United States of America, where it is left by the 

 state altogether to itself. The others maintained, 

 with equal confidence, just the very reverse of these 

 principles, and affirmed that states and nations 

 were bound, by the principles of natural and revealed 

 religion, to honour God and support and encourage 

 his truth; that an establishment of the true religion, 

 and its encouragement by the civil magistrate, is 

 enjoined in the precepts, and authorized by the ex- 

 amples, of the Old Testament, and is not forbidden 

 nor repealed in the New, but authorized by its 

 principles and intimated in its prophecies ; that 

 conscience has no claims that interfere with the 

 law of God and duty to him, and men have no 

 right to plead an erring and sinful conscience as a 

 bar to the support and encouragement of his reli- 

 gion ; that to prevent a state from acknowledging 

 God and the Christian religion, would be to un- 

 christianize and render it atheistical, to divest the 

 Lord Jesus Christ of his spiritual headship, and of 

 his rights and glory as the King of kings and Lord 

 of lords ; and would be destructive of the highest 

 interests of the community, whose moral and politi- 

 cal well-being, which the state is bound to promote, 

 can only be secured by the universal prevalence of 

 the true religion ; that to obtain its diffusion 

 ameng all classes of the people, the aid and en- 

 couragement of the state are, in the natural de- 

 pravity of mankind, which has no desire for the 

 gospel, absolutely necessary ; that these views are 

 supported by an appeal to the beneficial effects of 

 the establishment in this country, by the history ot 

 the church in past times, and more especially by 

 the extreme destitution of religious instruction in 

 the United States of America. 



It would be imprudent in us to give an opinion, 

 in a work of this kind, on either side of this much 

 agitated and deeply important question. Ample 

 information may be obtained by consulting the 

 works of the respective parties, published especially 

 since the date above specified ; though the same 

 general principles may be found in many writings 

 in every period since the Reformation. 



