2 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

Voltaire has been called the Apostle of Infidelity.He denied the truths of revealed religion — he desiredto subvert Christianity . He disbelieved its divineorigin ; he was blind to the excellence of its morality— insensible to its sublime tenets. , It is easy to makehis life one diatribe against the wickedness and folly ofsuch principles and intentions—to intersperse the pagesthat compose his history with various epithets of con-demnation of a man so lost to the knowledge of truth.But we do not intend to do this. We consider that Vol-taire had many excuses, and he had also his uses. Wedo not mean, on the other hand, to write an elaboratedefence of a system that cannot be defended ; but wewill mention the heads of those topics which we con-sider available for his justification to a certain limitedextent.

In the first place, Catholicism is not Christianity .Voltaire's great war was against the church of Rome ,and more particularly against the Gallican church,which was one of great persecution, bigotry, and mis-used power. We turn to the pages that record thehistory of his country, during the years that imme-diately preceded him, and of his own age, and we findthem stained with brawls and cruelties, excited andexercised by the priesthood. The quarrels of theMolinists, the Jansenists, the Quietists , and the dis-graceful exhibitions of the convulsionaries, absorbedso much of the talent, and perverted so much theuprightness and charity, of men of first-rate genius,that we turn with pity and loathing from the historyof the misuse of one of the best gifts of God. Vol-taire had it deeply at heart to put an end to thesediscussions — to prevent such men as Bossuet andFenelon from expending their vast talents on unworthysquabbles, and to prevent such men as Pascal andRacine from sacrificing their talents at the altars ofsuperstition. He wished to redeem such of his coun-trymen as were slaves to the priests, from the miseriesof bigotry and ignorance; and he most ardently desired to