[239] Gaberel's _Rousseau et les Genevois_, p. 62. _Conf._, viii. 212. [240] The venerable Company of Pastors and Professors of the Church and Academy of Geneva appointed a committee, as in duty bound, to examine these allegations, and the committee, equally in duty bound, reported (Feb. 10, 1758) with mild indignation, that they were unfounded, and that the flock was untainted by unseasonable use of its mind. See on this Rousseau's _Lettres écrites de la Montagne_, ii. 231. [241] See Picot's _Hist. de Genève_, ii. 415. [242] _Letters containing an account of Switzerland, Italy, etc., in 1685-86._ By G. Burnet, p. 9. [243] J.A. Turretini's complete works were published as late as 1776, including among much besides that no longer interests men, an _Oratio de Scientiarum Vanitate et Proestantia_ (vol. iii. 437), not at all in the vein of Rousseau's Discourse, and a treatise in four parts, _De Legibus Naturalibus_, in which, among other matters, he refutes Hobbes and assails the doctrine of Utility (i. 173, etc.), by limiting its definition to [Greek: to pros heauton] in its narrowest sense. He appears to have been a student of Spinoza (i. 326). Francis Turretini, his father, took part in the discussion as to the nature of the treaty or contract between God and man, in a piece entitled _Foedus Naturæ a primo homine ruptum, ejusque Proevaricationem posteris imputatam_ (1675). [244] Gaberel's _Eglise de Genève_, iii. 188. [245] _Corr._, i. 223 (to Vernes, April 5, 1755). [246] _Conf._, viii. 215, 216. _Corr._, i. 218 (to Perdriau, Nov. 28, 1754). [247] _Conf._, viii. 218. [248] _Conf._, viii. 217. It is worth noticing as bearing on the accuracy of the Confessions, that Madame d'Epinay herself (_Mém._, ii. 115) says that when she began to prepare the Hermitage for Rousseau he had never been there, and that she was careful to lead him to believe that the expense had not been incurred for him. Moreover her letter to him describing it could only have been written to one who had not seen it, and though her Memoirs are full of sheer imagination and romance, the documents in them are substantially authentic, and this letter is shown to be so by Rousseau's reply to it. [249] _Mém._, ii. 116. [250] _Corr._ (1755), i. 242. [251] _Corr._, i. 245. [252] _Phædrus_, 230. [253] _Conf._, viii. 221, etc. CHAPTER VII. THE HERMITAGE.