ministry, but how often have I not suffered within myself when I was
forced to preach to you those pious lies which I despised in my heart.
What a disdain I had for my ministry, and particularly for that
superstitious Mass, and those ridiculous administrations of sacraments,
especially if I was compelled to perform them with the solemnity which
awakened all your piety and all your good faith. What remorse I had for
exciting your credulity! A thousand times upon the point of bursting
forth publicly, I was going to open your eyes, but a fear superior to my
strength restrained me and forced me to silence until my death."

The abbot Meslier had written two letters to the curates of his
neighborhood to inform them of his Testament; he told them that he had
consigned to the chancery of St. Minnehould a copy of his manuscript in
366 leaves in octavo; but he feared it would be suppressed, according to
the bad custom established to prevent the poor from being instructed and
knowing the truth.

The curate Meslier, the most singular phenomenon ever seen among all the
meteors fatal to the Christian religion, worked his whole life secretly
in order to attack the opinions he believed false. To compose his
manuscript against God, against all religion, against the Bible and the
Church, he had no other assistance than the Bible itself, Moreri
Montaigne, and a few fathers.

While the abbot Meslier naively acknowledged that he did not wish to be
burned till after his death, Thomas Woolston, a doctor of Cambridge,
published and sold publicly at London, in his own house, sixty thousand
copies of his "Discourses" against the miracles of Jesus Christ.

It was a very astonishing thing that two priests should at the same time