the time he was crowned in the theatre, until his decease. Such a silence expresses, how great their humiliation was in his death!

It was in his return from the theatre, and in the midst of the toils he was resuming in order to acquire fresh applause, when VOLTAIRE was warned, that the long career of his impiety was drawing to an end.

In spite of all the Sophisters, flocking around him, in the first day of his illness, he gave signs of wishing to return to the GoD whom he had so often blasphemed. He calls for the priest, who ministered to Him, whom he had sworn to crush, under the appellation of THE WRETCH*. His danger increasing, he wrote the following note to the Abbe GUALTIER:-You had promised me, Sir, to come and hear me." I intreat you would take the trouble of calling as soon as possible."-Signed VOLTAIRE. Paris, the 26th Feb. 1778.

A few days after this, he wrote the following declaration, in presence of the same Abbe GUALTIER, the Abbe MIGNOT, and the Marquis de VILLEVIEILLE, copied from the minutes deposited with Mr. MoMET, notary at Paris:

"I, the underwritten, declare, that for these four days past, having been afflicted with a vomiting of blood, at the age of eighty-four, and not having been able to drag myself to the church, the Rev. the Rector of St. SULPICE, having been pleased to add to his good works, that of sending to me the Abbe GUALTIER, a priest; I confessed to him; and if it please God to dispose of me, I die in the Holy Catholic Church, in which I was born; hoping that the divine mercy will deign to pardon all my faults. If ever I have scandalized the Church, I ask pardon of God and of the Church. Second of March, 1778." Signed VOLTAIRE; in presence of the Abbe MiGNOT, my nephew, and the Marquis de VILLEVIEILLE, my friend."

After the two witnesses had signed this declaration, VOLTAIRE added these words, copied from the same minutes :"The Abbe GUALTIER, my confessor, having apprized me, that it was said among a certain set of people, I should

* It had been customary during many years, for VOLTAIRE to call our blessed SAVIOUR-THE WRETCH. And he vowed that he would crush him. He closes many of his letters to his infidel-friends with the same words-Crush the WRETCH!

protest against every thing I did, at my death;' I declare I never made such a speech, and that it is an old jest, attributed long since to many of the learned, more enlightened than I

Was this declaration a fresh instance of his former hypocrisy? for he had the mean hypocrisy, even in the midst of his efforts against Christianity, to receive the sacrament regularly, and to do other acts of religion, merely to be able to deny his Infidelity, if accused of it.

Unfortunately, after the explanations we have seen him give of his exterior acts of religion, might there not be room for doubt? Be that as it may, there is a public homage paid to that religion in which he declared he meant to die, notwithstanding his having perpetually conspired against it during his life. This declaration is also signed by that same friend and adept the Marquis de VILLEVIELLE, to whom, eleven years before, VOLTAIRE was wont to write, "Conceal your march from the enemy, in your endeavours to CRUSH THE WRETCH!"

VOLTAIRE had permitted this declaration to be carried to the Rector of St. SULPICE, and to the archbishop of Paris, to know whether it would be sufficient. When the Abbe GUALTIER returned with the answer, it was impossible for him to gain admittance to the patient. The conspirators had strained every nerve to hinder the CHIEF from consummating his recantation; and every avenue was shut to the priest, whom VOLTAIRE himself had sent for. The dæmons haunted every access; rage succeeds to fury, and fury to rage again, during the remainder of his life.

Then it was that D'ALEMBERT, DIDEROT, and about twenty others of the conspirators, who had beset his apartment, never approached him, but to witness their own ignominy; and often he would curse them, and exclaim: "Retire! It is you that have brought me to my present state! Begone! I could have done without you all; but you could not exist without me! And what a wretched glory have you procured me!”

Then would succeed the horrid remembrance of his conspiracy. They could hear him, the prey of anguish and dread, alternately supplicating or blaspheming that GOD, against whom he had conspired; and in plaintive accents

he would cry out, "Oh CHRIST! Oh JESUS CHRIST!" And then complain that he was abandoned by God and man. The hand which had traced in ancient writ the sentence of an imbefore his eyes, In vain he turned

pious and reviling king, seemed to trace CRUSH THEN, DO CRUSH THE WRETCH. his head away; the time was coming apace when he was to appear before the tribunal of Him whom he had blasphemed; and his physicians, particularly Mr. TRONCHIN, calling in to administer relief, thunderstruck, retire, declaring that the death of the impious man was terrible indeed. The pride of the conspirators would willingly have suppressed these declarations, but it was in vain. The Mareschal de RICHELIEU flies from the bed-side, declaring it to be a sight too terrible to be sustained; and Mr. TRONCHIN, that the furies of ORESTES, could give but a faint idea of those of VOLTAIRE."

6. Mr. ADDISON mentions a Gentleman in France, who was so zealous a promoter of Infidelity, that he had got together a select company of disciples, and travelled into all parts of the kingdom to make converts. In the midst of his fantastical success he fell sick, and was reclaimed to such a sense of his conduct, that after he had passed some time in great agonies and horrors of mind, he begged those who had the care of burying him, to dress his body in the habit of a Capuchin, that the

* DIDEROT and D'ALEMBERT also, his friends and companions in Infidelity, are said to have died with remorse of conscience somewhat similar to the above.

This account of the unhappy end of VOLTAIRE is confirmed by a letter from M. de Luc, an eminent philosopher, and a man of the strictest honour and probity.

Let the reader consult D'ALEMBERT's account of the death of VOLTAIRE in a letter to the King of Prussia, and his Eulogium at Berlin, where it is partly denied: but denied in such a way as to give strong reason to suppose his end was without honour. See King of Prussia's Works, vol. 12, p. 130~152; and vol. 13. p. 517.

Mr CowPER, in his Poem on Truth, has alluded to the above circumstances, in the character of this Arch-infidel:

"The Frenchman first in literary fame,

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(Mention him if you please-VOLTAIRE?-The same.)
With spirit, genius, eloquence supplied,

Liv'd long, wrote much, laugh'd heartily, and died:
The Scripture was his jest-book, whence he drew
Bon-mots to gall the Christian and the Jew.
An Infidel in health; but what when sick?
Oh then, a text would touch him at the quick!”

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Devil might not run away' with it: and, to do further justice upon himself, he desired them to tie a halter about his neck, as a mark of that ignominious punishment, which in his own thoughts, he had so justly deserved.

7. The last days of DAVID HUME, that celebrated Infidel, were spent in playing at whist, in cracking his jokes about CHARON and his boat, and in reading LUCIAN, and other ludicrous books. This is a consummatum est worthy of a clever fellow, whose conscience was seared as with a hot iron! Dr. JOHNSON observes upon this impenitent death-bed scene- "HUME Owned he had never read the New Testament with attention. Here then was a man, who had been at no pains to enquire into the truth of religion, and had continually turned his mind the other way. It was not to be expected that the prospect of death should alter his way of thinking, unless Gop should send an angel to set him right. He had a vanity in being thought easy.' DIVES fared sumptuously every day, and saw no danger: butthe next thing we hear of him is-In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments* !

It is much to be lamented that a man of HUME's abilities should have prostituted his talents in the manner it is well known he did. With all his pretensions to philosophy, he was an advocate for adultery and suicide. The reader will find a sufficient answer to his sophistry in HORNE'S Letters on Infidelity, BEATTIE'S Essay onthe Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism, and CAMPBELL on the Miracles of Christ. See also some very just and striking reflections concerning HUME, in the Eclectic Review for February 1808.

Mr. GIBBON was one of the most respectable Deists of the present age, and more like HUME, in several respects, than any other of the opposers of Christianity. Very sufficient reasons, however, may be given for his Infidelity, without in the least impeaching the credit of the evangelical system. Mr. PORSON, in the preface to his Letters to Mr. Archdeacon TRAVIS, after giving a very high, and, indeed, just character of Mr. GIBBON'S celebrated History, seems to account for his rejecting the Gospel in a satisfactory manner, from the state of his mind. "He shews," says this learned Gentleman," so strong a dislike to Christianity, as visibly disqualifies him for that society, of which he has created AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS president. I confess that I see nothing wrong in Mr. GIBBON's attack on Christianity. It proceeded, I doubt not, from the purest and most virtuous motive. We can only blame him for carrying on the attack in an insidious manner, and with improper motives. He often makes, when he cannot readily find, an occasion to insult our religion; which he hates so cordially that

This seems a culpable excess of candour amounting almost to indifference.

Mr. GIBBON says, "He died the Death of a Philosopher Bravo! Bravo! If Philosophers die in such a manner, may it be my lot to die like an old-fashioned and enthusiastic Christian!

8. Of all the accounts which are left us, of the latter end of those, who are gone before into the eternal state, several are more horrible, but few so affecting as that which is given us, by his own pen, of the late all accomplished Earl of CHESTERFIELD. It shews incontestibly, what a poor creature man notwithstanding the highest polish he is capable of receiving, without the knowledge and experience of those comforts, which true religion yields; and what egregious fools all those persons are, who squander away their precious time in what the world, by a strange perversion of language, calls pleasure.

"I have enjoyed," says this finished character," all the pleasures of this world, and consequently know their futility, he might seem to revenge some personal injury. Such is his eagerness in the cause, that he stoops to the most despicable puń, or to the most awkward perversion of language, for the pleasure of turning Scripture into ribaldry, or of calling JESUS an impostor. A rage for indecency pervades the whole work, but especially the last volumes.-If the history were anonymous, I should guess that these disgraceful obscenities were written by some debauchee, who, having from age, or accident, or excess, survived the practice of lust, still indulged himself in the luxury of speculation; and exposed the impotent imbecility, after he had lost the vigour of the passions." * Such are the opposers of JESUS and his Gospel!—Let us see how this sneering antagonist of Christianity terminated his own mortal

career.

Eager for the continuation of his present existence, having little expectation of any future one, he declared to a friend about twentyfour hours previous to his departure, in a flow of self-gratulation, that he thought himself a good life for ten, twelve, or perhaps twenty years. And during his short illness, it is observable, that he never gave the least intimation of a future state of existence, This insensibility at the hour of dissolution, is, in the language of scepticism, dying like a clever fellow, the death of a Philosopher!

See EVANS'S Attempt to account for the Infidelity of EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ.

Among all the numerous volumes that Mr. GIBBON read, it does not appear that he ever perused any able defence, or judicious explication of the Christian religion.-Consult his Memoirs and Diary written by himself. His conversion and reconversion terminated in Deism; or rather, perhaps, in a settled indifference to all religion. He never more gave himself much concern about it.

D