"If that author had set forth only affected characterisations, and had stuck entirely to doublets and large frills, he would not have brought upon himself any public censure and he would not have roused the indignation of every religious-minded person. But who can stand the boldness of a farce-writer who makes jokes at religion, who upholds a school of libertinism, and who treats the majesty of God as the plaything of a stage-manager or a call-boy. To do so would be to betray the cause of religion openly at a time when its glory is publicly attacked and when faith is exposed to the insults of a buffoon who trades on its mysteries and profanes its holy things; who confounds and upsets the very foundations of religion in the heart of the Louvre, in the home of a Christian prince, before wise magistrates zealous in God's cause, holding up to derision numberless good pastors as no better than Tartuffes! And this under the reign of the greatest, the most religious monarch in the world, whilst that gracious prince is exerting every effort to uphold the religion that Molière labours to destroy! The king destroys temples of heresy, whilst Molière is raising altars to atheism, and the more the prince's virtue strives to establish in the hearts of his subjects the worship of the true God, by the example of his own acts, so much the more does Molière's libertine humour try to ruin faith in people's minds by the license of his works. "Surely it must be confessed that Molière himself is a finished Tartuffe, a veritable hypocrite! If the true object of comedy is to correct men's faults while amusing them, Molière's plan is to send them laughing to perdition. Like those snakes the poison of whose deadly bite sends a false gleam of pleasure across the face of its victim, it is an instrument of the devil; it turns both heaven and hell to ridicule; it traduces religion, under the name of hypocrisy; it lays the blame on God, and brags of its impious doings before the whole world! After spreading through people's minds deadly poisons which stifle modesty and shame, after taking care to teach women to become coquettes and giving girls dangerous counsel, after producing schools notoriously impure, and establishing others for licentiousness--then, when it has shocked all religious feeling, and caused all right-minded people to look askance at it, it composes its _Tartuffe_ with the idea of making pious people appear ridiculous and hypocritical. It is indeed all very well for Molière to talk of religion, with which he had little to do, and of which he knew neither the practice nor the theory.