spiritual tyrants, unconscious as they were of the full value of the
prize, which they had lost. Had Bayle adhered to the catholic
church, had he embraced the ecclesiastical profession, the genius
and favour of such a proselyte might have aspired to wealth and
honours in his native country: but the hypocrite would have found
less happiness in the comforts of a benefice, or the dignity of a
mitre, than he enjoyed at Rotterdam in a private state of exile,
indigence, and freedom. Without a country, or a patron, or a
prejudice, he claimed the liberty and subsisted by the labours of
his pen: the inequality of his voluminous works is explained and
excused by his alternately writing for himself, for the booksellers,
and for posterity; and if a severe critic would reduce him to a
single folio, that relic, like the books of the Sibyl, would become
still more valuable. A calm and lofty spectator of the religious
tempest, the philosopher of Rotterdam condemned with equal firmness
the persecution of Lewis the Fourteenth, and the republican maxims
of the Calvinists; their vain prophecies, and the intolerant bigotry
which sometimes vexed his solitary retreat. In reviewing the
controversies of the times, he turned against each other the
arguments of the disputants; successively wielding the arms of the
catholics and protestants, he proves that neither the way of
authority, nor the way of examination can afford the multitude any
test of religious truth; and dexterously concludes that custom and
education must be the sole grounds of popular belief. The ancient
paradox of Plutarch, that atheism is less pernicious than
superstition, acquires a tenfold vigor, when it is adorned with the
colours of his wit, and pointed with the acuteness of his logic.
His critical dictionary is a vast repository of facts and opinions;
and he balances the false religions in his sceptical scales, till
the opposite quantities (if I may use the language of algebra)