Clootz was elected president of the Jacobin Club. Hereupon Robespierre, as a good disciple of Rousseau, and with his eye on Europe, prevailed on the Convention to issue a public declaration that the French people acknowledged the existence of the Supreme Being; and he moreover persuaded the Jacobins to present a petition to the Convention, praying that assembly to do all that was in its power to restore belief in God and in the immortality of the soul. He denounced the iconoclasts as fanatics of the Catholic type, and atheism as aristocratic. When, in May 1794, he mounted the tribune to urge the Convention to celebrate a festival in honour of the Supreme Being, he proceeded, after saying a few enthusiastic words in praise of Rousseau, to make a deliberate attack on Christianity. "All men's imaginings disappear in presence of the truth, and all follies succumb to reason.... What have the priests to do with God? The position of priests to morality is the same as that of quacks to the science of medicine." Assuming, in the manner of his century, that religions are the inventions of their priests, he says: "The priests have made of God a fire-ball, a bull, a tree, a man, a king. The Supreme Being's true priest is nature, his temple the universe, his worship virtue." He goes on to show that priests have everywhere supported tyranny: "It is you who have said to kings: Ye are the representatives of God on earth; it is from Him ye hold your authority! And the kings in their turn have said to you: In very truth ye are God's messengers; let us divide the incense and the spoils!" The result of these endeavours was the Convention's proclamation to all the nations of the earth that it countenanced free worship of God, and that it censured "the excesses of philosophy as strongly as the crimes of fanaticism." One paragraph of this proclamation runs: "Your rulers will tell you that the French nation has banished all religions and has ordained the worship of certain men instead of the worship of the Deity; they represent us to you as an idolatrous and insane people. They lie. The French people and its representatives favour liberty of worship of every kind." It was decided to celebrate a certain number of religious festivals--the festivals of liberty, of equality, of humanity, one in honour of the great men who in their day had been liberators, &c.,&c.