stupid and ferocious animals. When we measure the interval between a Scotus and a Newton, or rather between the works of Scotus and those of Newton, we must cry out with Terence, _Homo homini quid præstat!_ “What difference there is between man and man!” Or must we only attribute this immense distance to the enormous difference of ages, and think with sorrow that the _subtile_ and _absurd doctor_, who wrote so many chimeras, admired by his contemporaries, had perhaps been a Newton in an age more enlightened? Let us weigh well all these reflexions; let us add thereto the perusal of ecclesiastical history, those kalendars of the virtue of some men, and the weak wickedness of so many others; let us behold in that history the usurpations, without number, of the spiritual power; the robberies and the violences exercised under the pretext of religion; so many bloody wars, so many cruel persecutions, so many murders committed in the name of a God who abhors them; and we shall have pretty nearly an exact catalogue of the advantages which the disputes of Christianity have brought upon mankind. To return to the Jesuits, the nomination of father le Tellier to the place of confessor to Louis XIV. furnished them with an opportunity of wreaking fully their vengeance. This violent and inflexible man, hated by his very brethren, whom he governed with a rod of iron, made the Jansenists drink “to the very dregs,” according to his own expression, “of the cup of the society’s indignation.” Scarce was he in place, but they foresaw the evils of which he would be the cause: and Fontenelle the philosopher said, on learning his nomination, “the Jansenists have sinned.” The first exploit of this ferocious and fiery Jesuit, was the destruction of Port-Royal, where not one stone was left upon another, and from whence they dug up the very corpses that were interred there. This violence, executed with the last barbarity, against a house respectable for the celebrated persons who had inhabited it, and against poor nuns, more worthy of compassion than of hatred, excited clamours throughout the whole kingdom: these clamours have re-echoed down even to our times; and the Jesuits themselves confessed, on seeing the spectacle of their destruction, that the stones of Port-Royal were falling on their own heads to crush them.