His religion is not founded on the love of virtue and the detestation of
vice; on a sense of that obedience which is due to the will of the
Supreme Being, and a sense of those obligations which creatures formed to
live in a mutual dependence on one another lie under. The spring of his
whole conduct is fear. Fear of the horns of the devil and of the flames
of hell. He has been taught to believe that nothing but a blind
submission to the Church of Rome and a strict adherence to all the terms
of that communion can save him from these dangers. He has all the
superstition of a Capuchin, but I found on him no tincture of the
religion of a prince. Do not imagine that I loose the reins to my
imagination, or that I write what my resentments dictate: I tell you
simply my opinion. I have heard the same description of his character
made by those who know him best, and I conversed with very few among the
Roman Catholics themselves who did not think him too much a Papist.
Nothing gave me from the beginning so much uneasiness as the
consideration of this part of his character, and of the little care which
had been taken to correct it. A true turn had not been given to the
first steps which were made with him. The Tories who engaged afterwards,
threw themselves, as it were, at his head. He had been suffered to think
that the party in England wanted him as much as he wanted them. There
was no room to hope for much compliance on the head of religion when he
was in these sentiments, and when he thought the Tories too far advanced
to have it in their power to retreat; and little dependence was at any
time to be placed on the promises of a man capable of thinking his
damnation attached to the observance, and his salvation to the breach, of
these very promises. Something, however, was to be done, and I thought
that the least which could be done was to deal plainly with him, and to
show him the impossibility of governing our nation by any other expedient
than by complying with that which would be expected from him as to his
religion. This was thought too much by the Duke of Ormond and Mr.
Leslie; although the duke could be no more ignorant than the minister how
ill the latter had been used, how far the Chevalier had been from keeping
the word which he had given, and on the faith of which Mr. Leslie had
come over to him. They both knew that he not only refused to hear
himself, but that he sheltered the ignorance of his priests, or the
badness of his cause, or both, behind his authority, and absolutely
forbade all discourse concerning religion. The duke seemed convinced
that it would be time enough to talk of religion to him when he should be
restored, or, at soonest, when he should be landed in England; that the
influence under which he had lived being at a distance, the
reasonableness of what we might propose, joined to the apparent necessity
which would then stare him in the face, could not fail to produce all the
effects which we could desire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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