In his communications with the religious authority in France, he proved imperious and insolent. "If the morality of the gospel is insufficient to direct a bishop," he wrote Portalis, "he must act by policy, and by fear of the prosecution which government might institute against him as a disturber of the public peace. I could not be otherwise than full of sorrow at the conduct of certain bishops. Why have you not informed the _préfets_?" The ecclesiastical organization in France would have been incomplete, had Bonaparte not extended his care to the Protestant churches. In a kindly report addressed to him on the subject, it was stated that "the government, in declaring that Catholicism was in a majority in France, had no wish to authorize in its favor any political or civil pre-eminence. Protestanism is a Christian communion, bringing together, in the same faith and to the same rites, a very large number of Frenchmen. In recent times the Protestants were in the foremost ranks under the standards of liberty, and have never abandoned them. All that is secured to the various Christian communions by the articles of agreement between his Holiness and the Government of the Republic is equally guaranteed to the Protestants, _with the exception of the pecuniary subvention_." The original idea of Bonaparte had, in fact, been to leave to the Protestants the full liberty of their internal government, as well as the charge of their worship. The principle, admitted by the Constituent Assembly, of compensating the Catholic clergy for the confiscation of their property, was not applicable to the Protestant Church. On a consideration of the administrative advantages of a church paid by the state, Bonaparte decided that the law of the 18th Germinal, year X., should be drawn up, regulating the nomination of pastors and consistories after the manner of the interior government of the Protestant Church. The principle which, in this respect, equalized the Protestant and Catholic modes of worship was hailed with satisfaction by the reformers. The Jews established in France were admitted to enjoy the same privileges. At the same time that an alliance between religion and the state was being re-established in France, Chateaubriand, still a very young man, published his "Genius of Christianity." The sense of the poetic beauty of Christianity then reawakening in men's minds, the success of the book was deservedly great. It marked in recent history the epoch of literary admiration for the greatness and beauty of the gospel. We have since sadly learnt that it was only a shallow and barren admiration.