fit of illness throws them back into the bosom of credulity, and like Gresset[168] they die in sackcloth. The claims of the Romish Church are stronger upon the imagination than those of the more purified sects of Protestants. The priests found it so much to their interests to pervert the understanding, that the love of power made them hold their empire beyond the grave--hence their Purgatory. [Sidenote: EFFECT OF RELIGIOUS WARS] The Christian priests, with all their subtlety and policy, from vanity gave the staff out of their own hands. Proud of the praise centred upon them for being the preservers of learning, they weakly taught the laity the valuable treasures they had preserved, and by enlightening them the progress has been such as we see. Had they, like the priests of Egypt, confined all knowledge to their own body, society would still have been dependent upon them, and whilst there was no contention, they might have been a harmless theocracy. Certainly during the middle ages they were serviceable even to the cause of humanity, for those very Crusades eventually benefited Europe. They drew forth many turbulent spirits, who, had they remained at home, would have fallen into intestine broils, and kept up the feudal governments. Whereas, though two-thirds of the vast armies that issued out never returned, yet the one-third that did introduced a taste for foreign productions to which commerce became the consequence, and the manners of every country in Europe by degrees softened and civilised. Yet this good they did was severely bought by the horrors of the religious wars after the Reformation in Germany when Gustavus Adolphus was called in. That embraces a horrid period in the annals of history: it was an awful struggle between reason and bigotry. Fortunately for the advantage (perhaps) of mankind the former conquered to a degree, and but for the absurd excesses which have disgraced morality in this French Revolution, the cause of common sense would have completely succeeded. But we are nearer a relapse into old errors than a reformation.