6 VOLTAIRE. 



those countries and in those times. It would be the 

 fate of any young scholar in the Roman colleges at 

 this day, especially were he to maintain his doubts 

 with a show of cleverness ; and were he to mingle 

 the least wit with his argument, he would straight- 

 way be charged with blasphemy. But it must be 

 added that an impression unfavourable to the truths of 

 religion, and its uses, was made upon Voltaire's mind 

 by the sight of its abuses, and by a consideration of the 

 manifest errors inculcated in the Romish system. It is 

 not enough to bring him within the blame above stated 

 under the third head, that he was prejudiced in conduct- 

 ing his inquiries, if that prejudice proceeded from the 

 errors of others which he had unjustly been summoned 

 to believe. He is not to be blamed for having begun 

 to doubt of the truths of Christianity in consequence 

 of his attention having originally been directed to the 

 foundations of the system by a view of the falsehoods 

 which had been built upon those truths. Even if the 

 bigotry of priests, the persecutions of sovereigns, the 

 absurdities of a false faith, the grovelling superstitions 

 of its votaries, their sufferings, bodily as well as mental, 

 under false guides and sordid pastors, roused his 

 indignation and his pity, and these alternating emotions 

 first excited the spirit of inquiry, afterwards too much 

 guided its course, we are not on that account to con- 

 demn him as severely as we should one who, from 

 some personal spleen or individual interest, had 

 suffered his judgment to be warped, and thus, as it 

 were, lashed himself into disbelief of a system alto- 

 gether pure, administered by a simple, a disinterested, 

 a venerable hierarchy. 



