SHOWING HOW IRRELIGION HAD BECOME A GENERAL AND DOMINANT PASSION AMONGST THE FRENCH OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND WHAT INFLUENCE THIS FACT HAD ON THE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION. From the time of the great Revolution of the sixteenth century, when the spirit of free inquiry undertook to decide which were false and which were true among the different traditions of Christianity, it had never ceased to engender certain minds of a more curious or a bolder stamp, who contested or rejected them all. The same spirit that, in the days of Luther, had at once driven several millions of Catholics out of the pale of Catholicism, continued to drive in individual cases some few Christians out of the pale of Christianity itself. Heresy was followed by unbelief. It may be said generally that in the eighteenth century Christianity had lost over the whole of the continent of Europe a great part of its power; but in most countries it was rather neglected than violently contested, and even those who forsook it did so with regret. Irreligion was disseminated among the Courts and wits of the age; but it had not yet penetrated into the hearts of the middle and lower classes. It was still the caprice of some leading intellects, not the opinion of the vulgar. ‘It is a prejudice commonly diffused throughout Germany,’ said Mirabeau, in 1787, ‘that the Prussian provinces are full of atheists; when, in truth, although some freethinkers are to be met with there, the people of those parts are as much attached to religion as in the most superstitious countries, and even a great number of fanatics are to be found there.’ To this he added, that it was much to be regretted that Frederick II. had not sanctioned the marriage of the Catholic clergy, and, above all, had refused to leave those priests who married in possession of the income of their ecclesiastical preferment; ‘a measure,’ he continued, ‘which we should have ventured to consider worthy of the great man.’ Nowhere but in France had irreligion become a general passion, fervid, intolerant, and oppressive.