who in all things eminently favours and pro|tects the race of man.
If your clergy, or any clergy, should shew them|selves vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those professional faults which can hardly be separated from professional vir|tues, though their vices never can countenance the exercise of oppression, I do admit, that they would naturally have the effect of abating very much of our indignation against the tyrants who exceed measure and justice in their punishment. I can al|low in clergymen, through all their divisions, some tenaciousness of their own opinion; some over|flowings of zeal for its propagation; some predi|lection to their own state and office; some attach|ment to the interest of their own corps; some preference to those who listen with docility to their doctrines, beyond those who scorn and deride them. I allow all this, because I am a man who have to deal with men, and who would not, through a vio|lence of toleration, run into the greatest of all in|tolerance. I must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes.
Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the pas|sions, from frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it true that the body of your clergy had past those limits of a just allowance? From the general style of your late publications of all sorts, one would be led to believe that your clergy in France were a sort of monsters; an horrible composition of superstition, ignorance, sloth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But
