10 VOLTAIRE. 



which he had himself taken, the wound would have 

 been inconsiderable. But he must have written with 

 the absolute certainty that their religious belief would 

 long survive his assaults, and that consequently, to the 

 vast majority of readers, they could only give pain. 

 Indeed he must, in the moments of calm reflection, 

 have been aware that reasoning, and not ridicule, is the 

 proper remedy for religious error, and that no one can 

 heartily embrace the infidel side of the great question 

 merely because he has been made to join in a laugh at 

 the expense of absurdities mixed up with the doctrines 

 of believers ; nay, even if he has been drawn into a 

 laugh at the expense of some portion of those doctrines 

 themselves It is no vindication for Voltaire against 

 this heavy charge, but it may afford some palliation of 

 his offence, if we reflect on the very great difference 

 between the ecclesiastical regimen under which he 

 lived, and that with which we are acquainted in our 

 Protestant community. Let no man severely condemn 

 the untiring zeal of Voltaire, and the various forms of 

 attack which he employed without measure, against 

 the religious institutions of his country, who is not 

 prepared to say that he could have kept entire possession 

 of his own temper, and never cast an eye of suspicion 

 upon the substance of a religion thus abused, nor ever 

 have employed against its perversions the weapons of 

 declamation and of mockery ; had he lived under the 

 system which regarded Alexander Borgia as one of its 

 spiritual guides, which bred up and maintained in all 

 the riot of criminal excess an aristocracy having for 

 one branch of its resources the spoils of the altar, which 

 practised persecution as a favourite means of conviction, 



