"With regard to the love of God, so far, I conceive, is this idea from tending to weaken it, that no other is more calculated to increase it; since, through it, I know that God is intimate with my being; that He gives me existence and my every property; but He gives me them liberally, without reproach, without interest, without subjecting me to anything but my own nature. It banishes fear, uneasiness, distrust, and all the effects of a vulgar or interested love. It informs me that this is a good which I cannot lose, and which I possess the more fully, as I know and love it." Are these the words of the virtuous and tender Fénelon, or those of Spinoza? How is it that two men so opposed to each other, have, with such different notions of God, concurred in the idea of loving God for Himself? It must be acknowledged that they went both to the same end--the one as a Christian, the other as a man who had the misfortune not to be so; the holy archbishop, as philosopher, convinced that God is distinct from nature; the other as a widely-erring disciple of Descartes, who imagined that God is all nature. The former was orthodox, the latter was mistaken, I must assent; but both were honest, both estimable in their sincerity, as in their mild and simple manners; though there is no other point of resemblance between the imitator of the "Odyssey," and a dry Cartesian fenced round with arguments; between one of the most accomplished men of the court of Louis XIV. invested with what is called a _high_ divinity, and a poor unjudaïzed Jew, living with an income of three hundred florins, in the most profound obscurity. If there be any similitude between them, it is that Fénelon was accused before the Sanhedrim of the new law, and the other before a synagogue without power or without reason; but the one submitted, the other rebelled. _Foundation of Spinoza's Philosophy._ The great dialectician Bayle has refuted Spinoza. His system, therefore, is not demonstrated, like one of Euclid's propositions; for, if it were so, it could not be combated. It is, therefore, at least obscure. I have always had some suspicion that Spinoza, with his universal substance, his modes and accidents, had some other meaning than that in which he is understood by Bayle; and consequently, that Bayle may be right, without having confounded Spinoza. And, in particular, I have always thought that often Spinoza did not understand himself, and that this is the principal reason why he has not been understood. It seems to me that the ramparts of Spinozism might be beaten down on a side which Bayle has neglected. Spinoza thinks that there can exist but one substance; and it appears throughout his book that he builds his theory on the mistake of Descartes, that "nature is a plenum."