Furthermore, in the controversy which had been going on since 1793, Jefferson had been submitted to fierce criticism on every possible ground: as he wrote to McGregory, "the floodgates of calumny had been opened upon him." It had been particularly distressing to him to see that the religious issue had been injected into politics. There is no doubt that his Bill for Religious Freedom proceeded, not from hostility to religion, but from a deep and sincere conviction, reached after careful study of the evidence available that "in law" there ought to be no connection between the Church and the State and that if any had ever been established, it was due to monkish fabrications and usurpations. That he had turned against himself some of the Episcopalian clergy of Virginia was quite natural, but before he went to France these attacks were necessarily limited and did not extend beyond the borders of the State or take the aspect of a national question. When, on the contrary, he began to be criticized for his supposed foible for the French Revolution, such attacks became far more pressing. The excesses of the Revolution were attributed to the infidel doctrines of the French philosophers; and, being "contaminated" by French political philosophy, Jefferson was naturally accused of having brought back from France its atheism. These views received confirmation when he befriended Volney and Priestley, one a confirmed atheist, as Priestley himself had demonstrated, the other a Unitarian--which in the eyes of the orthodox clergy was possibly worse. The attacks from the pulpit became more numerous, and a clergyman of New York, a close friend of Hamilton, even published a pamphlet entitled "The voice of Warning to Christians on ensuing election", in which Jefferson was accused of having answered to a certain Doctor Smith, who expressed his surprise at the condition of a church: "It is good enough for Him who was born in a manger." Considering, on the other hand, that a large portion of the clergy were enrolled under the Federalist banner, Jefferson had come to the conclusion that the clergy had "a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hopes for his own, especially the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists." Whether this was so absolutely untrue or impossible, as some historians seem to believe, is a question far too difficult to answer and one which probably cannot be solved. On the face of things it does seem that there was in it a grain of truth, for no human organization, whether ecclesiastical or civil, ever relinquishes voluntarily the smallest particle of power or prestige.