When the
persecutions in France had succeeded in extinguishing this middle
element, then commenced a series of oscillations between religious
despotism and atheistic license, which have continued ever since. The
suppression of all reasonable religious inquiry, and the consequent
corruption of the church, produced the school of Voltaire and his
followers. The excesses of that school have made devout Catholics
afraid of the very beginning of religious rationalism; and these
causes act against each other to this day.
The revolution in England, under Cromwell, succeeded, because it had
an open Bible and liberty of conscience for its foundation, and united
both the elements of faith and of reason. The French revolution had,
as Lamartine says, Plutarch's Lives for its Bible, and the great
unchaining of human passion had no element of religious control. Plad
France, in the time of her revolution, had leaders like Admiral
Coligny, her revolution might have prospered as did England's under
Cromwell. But these revolutions, needlessly terrible as they have
been, still have accomplished something; without them France might
have died away into what Spain is.
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