Therefore the foregoing narration of the personal conduct of these instructors and reformers of the world, is highly useful. All this is to be brought about by the native loveliness of pure virtue, purged of the corruptions which superstitious fears have introduced, and also purged of the selfish thoughts which are avowed by the advocates of what their opponents call true religion. This is said to hold forth eternal rewards to the good, and to threaten the wicked with dreadful punishment. Experience has shown how inefficient such motives are. Can they be otherwise? say our Illuminators. Are they not addressed to a principle that is ungenerous and selfish? But our doctrines, say they, touch the hearts of the worthy. Virtue is beloved for her own sake, and all will yield to her gentle sway. But look, Reader, look at Spartacus the murderer, at Cato the keeper of poisons and the thief—Look at Tiberius, at Alcibiades, and the rest of the Bavarian Pandemonium. Look at poor Bahrdt. Go to France—look at Lequinio, at Condorcet8. Look at the Monster Orleans.——All were liars. Their divinity had no influence on their profligate minds. They only wanted to wheedle you, by touching the strings of humanity and goodness which are yet braced up in your heart, and which still yield sweet harmony if you will accompany their notes with those of religion, and neither clog them with the groveling pleasures of sense, nor damp the whole with the thought of eternal silence.
A most worthy and accomplished gentleman, who took refuge in this country, leaving behind him his property, and friends to whom he was most tenderly attached, often said to me that nothing so much affected him as the revolution in the hearts of men.—Characters which were unspotted, hearts thoroughly known to himself, having been tried by many things which search the inmost folds of selfishness or malevolence—in short, persons whose judgments were excellent, and on whose worth he could have rested his honour and his life, so fascinated by the contagion, that they came at last to behold, and even to commit the most atrocious crimes with delight.—He used sometimes to utter a sigh which