"While in England, as a preparation for war, a day of humiliation and prayer is held, on which the Clergy exhort the people to look into their own breasts, and to discover and forsake those sins which might provoke God's punishments; while the most powerful nation of the world commences war by humbling itself before God, on the part of Russia a new manifesto appears, the arrogance of which can scarcely be exceeded by anything human. The Czar speaks as if he were the representative of God upon earth. His affair is God's affair. He carries on war for God, and for His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour. God is for him, who can be against him! "Such a document has not proceeded from the cabinet of any European power since the Middle Ages. It exceeds all which even Russian diplomacy has accomplished, in its zeal for Christianity, during the last century. For it is worthy of notice that nowhere is religion so much publicly talked about, as in the place where least of it remains, among the higher classes in St. Petersburgh. Religion there is _inter instrumenta regni_. When Catherine II. permitted her husband Peter III. to be imprisoned, in order to rob him of his throne and life, the cause of this was communicated to the Russian people on July 9, 1762, as follows:--'First of all, the foundation of your orthodox Greek religion has been shaken and its principles are drawing near to a total overthrow; so that we ought to dread exceedingly lest we should see a change in the true ruling faith transmitted from antiquity in Russia, and a foreign religion introduced.' So wrote Catherine II., 'the greatest of the queens, and of the ----,' the friend of Voltaire, the greatest lady-freethinker of her age. But she wrote still farther:--'Secondly, the honour of Russia as a state, which has been brought to the highest pinnacle of her victorious arms with the loss of so much blood, is actually trodden under foot through the newly-concluded peace _with her bitterest enemy_.' And who is this bitterest enemy of the orthodox Russia? The King of Prussia, Frederick II.! Yes, the King of Prussia was once declared to be the bitterest enemy of orthodox Russia; and nothing stands in the way but at some future time he may again be declared to be so, just as at the decree of the incorporation of the provinces of Preutzen and Posen. The politicians of St. Petersburgh know that the Russian people, living on in animal dulness, are susceptible of no other intellectual impression except a religious one; and so without reflection, the cross is torn from the high altar, and used as a military signal. Religion was employed as a pretext, in order to lead the unhappy Poles step by step into ruin; and Russia was just so employed in Turkey, when the 'heathen' undertook to disturb her in her Christian work.