An Assembly in which sat a multitude
of priests and prelates was obliged to suffer this indignity at its
door. The author was not sent to the galleys, nor the players to the
house of correction. Not long after this exhibition, those players came
forward to the Assembly to claim the rites of that very religion which
they had dared to expose, and to show their prostituted faces in the
senate, whilst the Archbishop of Paris, whose function was known to his
people only by his prayers and benedictions, and his wealth only by
alms, is forced to abandon his house, and to fly from his flock, (as
from ravenous wolves,) because, truly, in the sixteenth century, the
Cardinal of Lorraine was a rebel and a murderer.[113]
Such is the effect of the perversion of history by those who, for the
same nefarious purposes, have perverted every other part of learning.
But those who will stand upon that elevation of reason which places
centuries under our eye and brings things to the true point of
comparison, which obscures little names and effaces the colors of little
parties, and to which nothing can ascend but the spirit and moral
quality of human actions, will say to the teachers of the Palais
Royal,--The Cardinal of Lorraine was the murderer of the sixteenth
century; you have the glory of being the murderers in the eighteenth;
and this is the only difference between you.
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