I shall not stop to observe, that religion has oftener been the pretext, than the true motive, of the unhappy convulsions of which it appears at present the sole origin; or stop to recal the various political advantages, which could only arise from such a grand principle of action; those august testimonies are commemorated in history: I shall only borrow the support of reason, and shall bound my discussion to a few simple reflections. Do you think, that by relating the different abuses of authority we could prove the advantage of anarchy? Could we decry every species of jurisprudence, by recounting all the ills which have been produced by chicane? Should we be able to throw an odium on the sciences, by recalling all the fatal discoveries which are owing to our researches? Would it be proper to stifle every kind of self-love and activity, by reciting the different crimes which covetousness, pride, and ambition have given rise to? And ought we, then, to desire to annihilate religion, because fanaticism has made an instrument of it to distress the human species? All these questions are similar, and all should be resolved in the same manner: thus we may say with respect to them, that in all our interests and passions, it is by acquired knowledge, and the light of reason, that right is separated from wrong; but we ought never to confound their proximity with a real identity. Fanaticism and religion have not any connection, though very often these ideas are found united. It is not the worship of the common Father of men; it is not the morality of the gospel, whose precepts lead to goodness and forbearance, which inspires the spirit of persecution; we should attribute it to a blind madness, resembling all those wild errors and crimes which dishonour humanity. But since, at present, the excesses to which men abandon themselves do not induce us to condemn, as a misfortune, all the sentiments of which the criminal passions are only the extreme, why do we wish to refuse religion the gratitude which is its due, because sometimes it has given birth to hatred and unhappy divisions? It would be necessary rather to remark, that intolerant zeal is, of all the errors of the human mind, that on which the progress of our knowledge appears to have had most influence. In fact, whilst fanaticism, gradually weakened, seems to be now verging to its decline, the disorders connected with the common passions of ambition, love of wealth, and thirst of pleasure, remain in all their force. However, what sentiment, what predominant idea, has a greater claim to pardon for its mistakes than devotion? By what an infinite number of benefits the pure spirit of religion makes amends for the abuses which spring from the false interpretation of its precepts. It is to this spirit, as we have shown, that men owe the stability of public order and the firm principles of justice: it procures the indigent the succours of charity,