To begin, then, with the unworthy manner in which your authors speak of holy things, whether in their sportive and gallant effusions, or in their more serious pieces, do you think that the parcel of ridiculous stories, which your father Binet has introduced into his “Consolation to the Sick,” are exactly suitable to his professed object, which is that of imparting Christian consolation to those whom God has chastened with affliction? Will you pretend to say, that the profane, foppish style in which your Father Le Moine has talked of piety in his “Devotion made Easy,” is more fitted to inspire respect than contempt for the picture that he draws of Christian virtue? What else does his whole book of “Moral Pictures” breathe, both in its prose and poetry, but a spirit full of vanity, and the follies of this world? Take, for example, that ode in his seventh book, entitled, “Eulogy on Bashfulness, showing that all beautiful things are red, or inclined to redden.” Call you that a production worthy of a priest? The ode is intended to comfort a lady, called Delphina, who was sadly addicted to blushing. Each stanza is devoted to show that certain red things are the best of things, such as roses, pomegranates, the mouth, the tongue; and it is in the midst of this badinage, so disgraceful in a clergyman, that he has the effrontery to introduce those blessed spirits that minister before God, and of whom no Christian should speak without reverence:— “The cherubim—those glorious choirs— Composed of head and plumes, Whom God with his own Spirit inspires, And with his eyes illumes. These splendid faces, as they fly, Are ever red and burning high, With fire angelic or divine; And while their mutual flames combine, The waving of their wings supplies A fan to cool their extacies! But redness shines with better grace, Delphina, on thy beauteous face, Where modesty sits revelling— Arrayed in purple, like a king,” &c.