Other stories of Ruffhead's against Voltaire are equally improbable and ill-vouched--as Mr. Collins incidentally admits, though he forgets the admission. They all come from Warburton, himself convicted of double-dealing with Pope; and they finally stand for the hatred of Frenchmen which was so common in eighteenth-century England, and is apparently not yet quite extinct. Those who would have a sane, searching, and competent estimate of Voltaire, leaning humanely to the side of goodwill, should turn to the Voltaire of M. Champion. A brief estimate was attempted by the present writer in the R. P. A. Annual for 1912. 11. It is difficult to realize how far the mere demand for tolerance which sounds from Voltaire's plays and poems before he has begun to assail credences was a signal and an inspiration to new thinkers. Certain it is that the principle of toleration, passed on by Holland to England, was regarded by the orthodox priesthood in France as the abomination of desolation, and resisted by them with all their power. But the contagion was unquenchable. It was presumably in Holland that there were printed in 1738 the two volumes of Lettres sur la religion essentielle à l'homme, distinguée de ce qui n'en est que l'accessoire, by Marie Huber, a Genevese lady living in Lyons; also the two following parts (1739), replying to criticisms on the earlier. In its gentle way, the book stands very distinctly for the "natural" and ethical principle in religion, denying that the deity demands from men either service or worship, or that he can be wronged by their deeds, or that he can punish them eternally for their sins. This was one of the first French fruits, after Voltaire, of the English deistic influence; [995] and it is difficult to understand how the authoress escaped molestation. Perhaps the memory of the persecution inflicted on the mystic Madame Guyon withheld the hand of power. As it was, four Protestant theologians opened fire on her, regarding her doctrine as hostile to Christianity. One pastor wrote from Geneva, one from Amsterdam, and two professors from Zurich--the two last in Latin. [996]