bled our Pennsylvanians, anabaptists, and Memnonists of the present day, who take a pride in following the literal meaning of the gospel. For although there are in the gospel many passages which, when incorrectly understood, might breed violence,—as the case of the merchants scourged out of the temple avenues, the phrase "compel them to come in," the dangers into which they were thrown who had not converted their master's one talent into five talents, and the treatment of those who came to the wedding without the wedding garment, although, I say, all these may seem contrary to the pacific spirit of the gospel, yet there are so many other passages which enjoin sufferance instead of contest, that it is by no means astonishing that, for a period of two hundred years, christians held war in absolute execration.

Upon this foundation was the numerous and respectable society of Pennsylvanians established, as were also the minor sects which have imitated them. When I denominate them respectable, it is by no means in consequence of their aversion to the splendour of the catholic church. I lament, undoubtedly, as I ought to do, their errors. It is their virtue, their modesty, and their spirit of peace, that I respect.

Was not the great philosopher Bayle right, then, when he remarked, that a christian of the earliest times of our religion would be a very bad soldier, or that a soldier would be a very bad christian?

This dilemma appears to be unanswerable; and in this point, in my opinion, consists the great difference between ancient christianity and ancient judaism. The law of the first Jews expressly says: "As soon as you enter any country with a view to possess it, destroy everything by fire and sword; slay, without mercy, aged men, women, and children at the breast; kill even all the animals; sack everything and burn everything. It is your God who commands you so to do." This injunction is not given in a single instance, but on twenty different occasions, and is always followed.

Mahomet, persecuted by the people of Mecca, de

fends himself like a brave man. He compels his vanquished persecutors to humble themselves at his feet and become his disciples. He establishes his religion by proselytism and the sword.

Jesus, appearing between the times of Moses and Mahomet, in a corner of Galilee, preaches forgiveness of injuries, patience, mildness, and forbearance, dies himself under the infliction of capital punishment, and is desirous of the same fate for his first disciples.

I ask candidly, whether St. Bartholomew, St. Andrew, St. Matthew, and St. Barnabas, would have been received among the cuirassiers of the emperor, or among the royal guards of Charles XII.?

Would St. Peter himself, though he cut off Malchus's ear, have made a good officer? Perhaps St. Paul, accustomed at first to carnage, and having had the misfortune to be a bloody persecutor, is the only one who could have been made a warrior. The impetuosity of his temperament, and the fire of his imagination, would have made him a formidable commander. But, notwithstanding these qualities, he made no effort to revenge himself on Gamaliel by arms. He did not act like the Judases, the Theudases, and the Barchochebases, who levied troops: he followed the precepts of Jesus Christ; he suffered; and, according to an account we have of his death, he was beheaded.

Το compose an army of christians, therefore, in the early period of christianity, was a contradiction in

terms.

It is certain that christians were not enlisted among the troops of the empire till the spirit by which they were animated was changed. In the two first centuries they entertained a horror for temples, altars, tapers, incense, and lustral water. Porphyry compares them to the foxes who said " the grapes are sour. "If," said he, "you could have had beautiful temples burnished with gold, and large revenues for a clergy, you would then have been passionately fond of temples." They afterwards addicted themselves to all that they had abhorred. Thus, having detested the profession

of arms, they at length engaged in war. The christians in the time of Dioclesian were as different from those of the time of the apostles as we are from the christians of the third century.

I cannot conceive how a mind so enlightened and bold as Montesquieu's, could severely censure another genius much more accurate than his own, and oppose the following just remark made by Bayle,* "that a society of real christians might live happily together, but that they would make a bad defence on being attacked by an enemy."

"They would," says Montesquieu, "be citizens infinitely enlightened on the subject of their duties, and ardently zealous to discharge them. They would be fully sensible of the rights of natural defence. The more they thought they owed religion, the more they would think they owed their country. The principles of christianity deeply engraven on their hearts would be infinitely more powerful than the false honour of monarchies, the human virtues of republics, or the servile fear which operates under despotism.'

Surely the author of the "Spirit of Laws" did not reflect upon the words of the gospel, when saying that real christians would be fully sensible of the rights of natural defence. He did not recollect the command to deliver up the coat after the cloak had been taken; and, after having received a blow upon one cheek, to present the other also. Here the principle of natural defence is most decidedly annihilated. Those whom we call quakers have always refused to fight; but in the war of 1756, if they had not received assistance from the other English, and suffered that assistance to operate, they would have been completely crushed.

Is it not unquestionable, that men who thought and felt as martyrs would fight very ill as grenadiers? Every sentence of that chapter of the "Spirit of Laws appears to me false. "The principles of christianity, deeply engraven on their hearts, would be infinitely more powerful," &c. Yes, more powerful to prevent

* Combination of " Divers Thoughts," art. cxxiv.

their exercise of the sword, to make them tremble at shedding their neighbour's blood, to make them look on life as a burden of which it would be their highest happiness to be relieved.

"If," says Bayle, "they were appointed to drive back veteran corps of infantry, or to charge regiments of cuirassiers, they would be seen like sheep in the midst of wolves."

Bayle was perfectly right. Montesquieu did not perceive that, while attempting to refute him, he contemplated only the mercenary and sanguinary soldiers of the present day, and not the early christians. It would seem as if he had been desirous of preventing the unjust accusations which he experienced from the fanatics, by sacrificing Bayle to them. But he gained nothing by it. They are two great men, who appear to be of different opinions, but who, if they had been equally free to speak, would have been found to have the same.

"The false honour of monarchies, the human virtues of republics, the servile fear which operates under despotism;" nothing at all of this goes towards the composition of a soldier, as the "Spirit of Laws" pretends. When we levy a regiment, of whom a quarter part will desert in the course of a fortnight, not one of the men enlisted thinks about the honour of the monarchy: they do not even know what it is. The mercenary troops of the republic of Venice know their country; but nothing about republican virtue, which no one ever speaks of in the place of St. Mark. In one word, I do not believe that there is a single man on the face of the earth who has enlisted in his regiment from a principle of virtue.

Neither, again, is it out of a servile fear that Turks and Russians fight with the fierceness and rage of lions and tigers. Fear does not inspire courage. Nor is it by devotion that the Russians have defeated the armies of Mustapha. It would, in my opinion, have been highly desirable that so ingenious a man should have sought for truth rather than display. When we wish to instruct mankind, we ought to forget ourselves, and have nothing in view but truth.

ETERNITY.

In my youth I admired all the reasonings of Samuel Clarke. I loved his person, although he was a determined Arian as well as Newton, and I still revere his memory, because he was a good man; but the impression which his ideas had stamped on my yet tender brain was effaced when that brain became more firm. I found, for example, that he had contested the eternity of the world with as little ability as he had proved the reality of infinite space.

I have so much respect for the book of Genesis, and for the church which adopts it, that I regard it as the only proof of the creation of the world five thousand seven hundred and eighteen years ago, according to the computation of the Latins, and seven thousand and seventy-eight years, according to the Greeks.

All antiquity believed matter, at least, to be eternal; and the greatest philosophers attributed eternity also to the arrangement of the universe.

They are all mistaken, as we well know; but we may believe, without blasphemy, that the eternal former of all things made other worlds beside ours.

EUCHARIST.

On this delicate subject, we shall not speak as theologians. Submitting in heart and mind to the religion in which we are born, and the laws under which we live, we shall have nothing to do with controversy; it is too hostile to all religions which it boasts of supporting, to all laws which it makes pretensions to explain, and especially to that harmony which in every period it has banished from the world.

One half of Europe anathematises the other on the subject of the Eucharist; and blood has flowed in torrents from the Baltic sea to the foot of the Pyrenees, for nearly two centuries, on account of a single word, which signifies gentle charity.