Nevertheless, this family had still some enemies to encounter, for it is to be considered that this was an affair of religion. Several persons, whom in France we call _dévots_,[6] declared publicly that it was much better to suffer an old Calvinist, though innocent, to be broken alive upon the wheel, than to expose eight counsellors of Languedoc to the mortification of being obliged to own that they had been mistaken; nay, these people made use of this very expression: “That there were more magistrates than Calases”; by which it would seem they inferred that the Calas family ought to be sacrificed to the honor of the magistracy. Alas! they never reflected that the honor of a judge, like that of another man, consists in making reparation for the faults he may have committed. In France no one believes that the pope, even when assisted by his cardinals, is infallible; ought they then to have believed that eight judges of Toulouse were so? Every sensible and disinterested person did without scruple declare that the decree of the court of justice of Toulouse would be looked upon as void by all Europe, even though particular considerations might prevent it from being declared so by the council. Such was the state of this surprising affair when it occasioned certain impartial, but sensible, persons to form the design of laying before the public a few reflections upon toleration, indulgence, and commiseration, which the Abbé Houteville in his bombastic and declamatory work, which is false in all the facts, calls a _monstrous doctrine_, but which reason calls the portion of human nature. Either the judges of Toulouse, carried away by popular enthusiasm, caused the innocent master of a family to be put to a painful and ignominious death, a thing which is without example; or this master of a family and his wife murdered their eldest son, with the assistance of another son and a friend, which is altogether contrary to nature. In either case, the most holy of all religions has been perverted to the production of an enormous crime. It is therefore to the interest of mankind to examine how far charity or cruelty is consistent with true religion. CHAPTER II. CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXECUTION OF JOHN CALAS.