In the midst of those prolonged cries of distress, we have no word of recognition that the only remedy for a moral disease is a moral remedy. The single resource that occurred to their debilitated souls was the familiar armoury of suppression, menace, violence, and tyranny. "Sire," they cried, "it is time to put a term to this deplorable lethargy." They reminded the king of the declaration of 1757, which inflicted on all persons who printed or circulated writings hostile to religion, the punishment of death. But "their paternal bowels shuddered at the sight of these severe enactments;" all that they sought was plenty of rigorous imprisonment, ruinous fining, and diligent espionage.[197] If the reader is revolted by the rashness of Diderot's expectation of the speedy decay of the belief in a God,[198] he may well be equally revolted by the obstinate infatuation of the men who expected to preserve the belief in a God by the spies of the department of police. Much had no doubt been done for the church in past times by cruelty and oppression, but the folly of the French bishops, after the reign of Voltaire and the apostolate of the Encyclopaedia, lay exactly in their blindness to the fact that the old methods were henceforth impossible in France, and impossible for ever. How can we wonder at the hatred and contempt felt by men of the social intelligence of Diderot and D'Alembert for this desperate union of impotence and malignity? [197] See for abundant matter of the same kind, M. Rocquain's _L'Esprit Revolutionnaire avant la Revolution_, bk. x. pp. 382, 390, etc. [198] Montesquieu more sensibly had given the Church not more than five hundred years to live. _Let. Pers._, 117. One hundred and fifty of them have already passed.