The Pruffian army being compofed chiefly of ftrangers of different countries, manners, and religion, are united only by the ftrong chain of military difcipline; this, and a moft rigid attention to keep up all the forms of difcipline eftablished, constitutes a valt and regular machine; which, being animated by the vigorous and powerful genius of their leader, may be justly accounted one of the most respect able armies in Europe: but should this fpring, however, languish but for an instant only, the machine itfelf being compofed of fuch heterogeneous matter, would probably fall to pieces, and leave nothing but the traces of its ancient glory behind.

They have a facility in manoeuvring, beyond any other troops whatever; and their victories muft be afcribed to this chiefly; for all

they would furpafs, at leaft equal, any troops in the world.

The Turks, and every government founded on military force, muft neceffarily decay, unless the fame fanaticifm which gave it birth be kept up by continual wars. Mahomet understood this principle fo well, that he has made a religious precept of it, commanding his followers never to make peace with their enemies. As the force of this army depends entirely on numbers and enthufiafm, if this laft is ever extinguifhed, which now feems to be much the cafe, the other will avail them nothing; and that immenfe fabric, being no longer animated with the only fpirit which could fupport it, muft fink under its own weight.

printed at Paris, 1766.

HE defign of this perform

THE

ance is to fhew, that preach ing has contributed very little, in any age of the world, to the reformation of mankind, and that it is in the power of government alone to produce this happy effect. The author appears to be a man of fenfe and genius, a friend to virtue, and a lover of mankind; his manner of writing is fprightly and agreeable: and though many will, no doubt, look upon every thing that is faid in regard to improving the manners and morals of mankind, as idle and visionary, yet the difcerning reader, who is acquainted with the nature and hiftory of man, wil be convinced of the weight and importance of many things which he advances.

He

He fets out with obferving, that men, ever fince they have formed themselves into focieties, have been preaching to one another, though with little fuccefs. He fhews briefly from the hiftory of the Old Teftament, that the preachers both before and after the flood made few Converts. When he comes to the ime of our Saviour, he fays,

It is not for us, worms of the arth, the children of darkness, lind in the book of life, to ask, hy the Light of the world did not urify the world by the fire of his ord; why, after his death, both ews and Gentiles continued what ey were before? We know that e fent his apoftles to preach to the itions; but we know likewife, at the nations, instead of attendg to the apoftles, put them to ath, and that, till the days of onftantine, preaching made few ofelytes.

"Here we must carefully diftinith between the converfion of e understanding, and that of the art; the establishment of a new orship, and the establishment of anners. This is an important diaction, and I shall have occafion return to it by and by. "Conftantine fpread Chriftianity er thofe extenfive countries that ere fubject to the Roman empire, lovis introduced it into Gaul, harlemagne into Germany, Eelbert into Great Britain, &c. fine triumph for the ecclefiafti1 hiftorians! Methinks I hear regory of Tours fay to me, Caft your eye over Gaul, and hold in the temples which are ing every where in honour of the Je God, thofe altars, that crofs, at facrifice, thofe facraments, ofe public prayers, thofe humiliVOL. IX.

ations, thofe marks of penitence that hierarchy of pastors to preferve the facred depofitum of the faith."

"I fee them, but I fee at the fame time kings and queens with crosses on their foreheads, and crimes in their hearts. I fee a Clovis, with the crofs on his face, fhedding the blood of five princes, his own relations, in order to invade their little territories; I fee, &c. &c.

"The number of preachers, fince the ages of Chriftianity, is prodigiously increased, together with the number of the faithful. At a certain hour of a certain day of the week, fifty thousand preachers, in the different countries of Europe, affemble the people, and fay to them whatever they pleafe; and to thefe preachers fovereigns truft the important bufinefs of manners. In reading the Roman history, it is obfervable, that the magiftrate alone fpoke to the people jure regali. In the days of Conftantine, the magiftrate was filent, and the priest spoke."

Our author goes on to obferve, that the prefent manner of preaching is ill calculated to warm the imagination, or reach the heart; that the preachers of other religions have been as unsuccessful as thofe of the true; and that preaching, in every age and country, has been more fuccessful in recommending evil than good. He then proceeds thus:

"But there have been preachers of another fort, who, without attending at the altar, have preached good morals; let us fee what fuccefs they have had. I begin with the poets, the first inftructors of mankind, who have the best claim to the attention of their hearN

ers,

ers, as they always fpeak a divine language, os divina fonans. We have nothing left of the works of Orpheus, who fung his morals before the days of the prophets. But if fable, in order to give us a high idea of them, tells us, that he tamed the fiercest animals, and even foftened the heart of Pluto, it tells us at the fame time, that he could not calm the amorous rage of the women of Thrace, who tore him in pieces on account of his indifference; a bad omen for those poets who were to preach virtue after him. "Among the poets we are acquainted with, fome have preached in heroics, fuch as Homer, Virgil, Lucan, Taffo, Camöens, Milton, and the author of the Henriade. When the Iliad appeared, Greece was divided into as many parties, as there were states in it. They were continually attacking each other, and intestine convulfions fhook the general conftitution. Homer forefaw the fatal confequences of their divifions, and employed the voice of reafon, the force of example, the majelly of ftyle, the pomp of words, the charms of poetry, to thew them the danger of difcord: but union no where appeared. Never perhaps was the Iliad more read, or more admired, than in the days of Pericles; becaufe at that period, the taste and genius of the Greeks were at their height: even the vulgar were truck with the beauties of poetry and eloquence. It is not neceflary to cite the paffages, where Homer, always attentive to the great point he had in view, paints difcord in the form of a famished monfter feeding on blood and carnage. It is fufficient for my purpose to obferve, that the Greeks, while they were finging

the verfes of Homer, extolling his poetry and the moral he inculcated to the fkies, were tearing one another in pieces.

"The wife Virgil, whilst he flattered the Romans in his Æneid. purpofed to himself, no doubt, to || rekindle expiring virtue in the breafts of his countrymen. Accordingly he fings of a hero ever juft, ever patient, ever brave, ever full of piety towards the gods. This is the principal character with which he marks him, pious Eneas, &c. and in order to infpire the greater horror of irreligion, and thofe other vices, which were haftening the ruin of Rome, even under her own triumphal arches, with what dreadful noife, with what horrid apparatus, does he open the infernal regions to their view? In that abyss of tortures, nine times deeper than the diftance between earth and heaven, he fhews profane mortals, thofe mifers who accumulated wealth without fharing it with the indigent; brothers who lived in enmity with brothers; fubjects who took up arms against their rightful tovereigns; traitors who fold their country for money; magistrates who enacted or abolithed laws from views of intereft; fathers guilty of inceft, and children of parricide.

Was Auguftus, was Tiberios, was Caligula, was Nero, were the grandees of their courts, was that multitude of corrupt wretches who difgraced all the different orders of the empire, frighted at the fight of this picture of Tartarus? Did they change their conduct? Alas, no! Was Virgil himself ftruck with the picture he drew? Three lines in his Georgics incline me to doubt of it.

"I might fay a great deal upon the Henriade; what a fermon ! name to me a fingle moral virtue; a virtue beneficial to fociety; a real virtue, which is not there placed in its ftrongeft light. Valour, juftice, humanity, generofity, obedience to the laws, loyalty to the prince, appear in their moft beautiful and affecting forms; the fame true and ftrong pencil draws, in the most terrible colours, thofe follies which ruined our fathers; that fanaticism, for example, that blind and ftupid fury which reafon never tamed. This poem has now been preaching to us for the space of forty years; what impreffion has it made on our theological difputes, wherein our divines pelt one another with the ftones of the fanctutry! What has lately happened a a great city, where public clanour, furprizing the attention of uftice, made an innocent old mant e put to death? The annual hanksgivings that are offered up o Almighty God in the fame city or a religious malfacre, fhew that anaticism is ftill cherished in our reafts, and that this monfter would ill commit dreadful ravages, if de wisdom of government did not hain it down.

"But of all the epic poets, filton has chofen the grandeft bject, and the fitteft for a preach: his plan is immenfe! it comrehends the counfels of the Alighty, and the whole creation;

those torrents of light and pleasure. which flowed from the angels, whilft they continued in their allegiance; that fea of fire into which their rebellion hurled them; their rage against man when innocent and happy in the garden of Eden! It comprehends their efforts to rain him, and their fatal fuccefs; the terrible confequences of his tranfgreffion, the air covered with black clouds, winds let loofe, terms, tempefts, volcanoes; earth refufing her fruits, war preparing her fcourges, force, tyranny, famine, with numberlefs plagues; and this horrid fcene not even terminated by death itself; heaven fhut and hell opened for the mifer-, able, who are born only to fuffer, and to fuffer becaufe defcended from a guilty progenitor.

"But I weaken Milton; his poem, from the beginning to the end, is a fublime fermon, a difcourfe of the Almighty, a language of fire, a facred enthusiasm ! his countrymen began to read it in the reign of Charles the Second; and in this reign, more than in any other, the allurements of riches, luxury and debauchery, made England forget both the fall and the punishment of man. But it is not one nation only that is interefted in this poem; it relates to the moft important intereft of all nations. Accordingly, all Europe reads Paradife loft It, ftrikes, it aftonishes; but does it reform? alas no!"

Our author now proceeds to confider what influence the dramatic writers, and the fatirifts of ancient and modern times, have had upon the morals of mankind.

He fhews, in a fprightly and agreeable manner, that men, whether they cry or laugh, ftill continue the fame; that laws are not better obeyed, focial virtues more practifed, juftice more refpected, or faith better kept. Hiftory too, which is more natural, more fimple than poetry, though it has always endeavoured to correct the manners of mankind by facts, and reflections arifing from them, has, he obferves, never attained its end; whilft it continues to relate the calamities that cover the earth, it fhews the inefficacy of its own efforts.

"If the force of inftruction," continues he, "could produce good morals, this glory, next to the preaching of the gospel, fhould feem to be peculiarly referved for philofophy. The philofopher, in order to establish morality, neither borrows the bitterness of fatire, nor the enchantment of the theatre; neither the thunder of eloquence, nor the fublime of infpiration. He difdains to make ufe of any inftrument of furprife; he confines himself to the fimplicity of reafon; he opens before us the book of nature, which fpeaks an intelligent language to every underftanding; he looks for the foundation of morality in the conftitution of things; he fuppofes nothing, but proves every thing. Is an action hurtful to fociety? it is bad, and he profcribes it. Is it beneficial to fociety? it is good, and he recommends it. Thus it is that he lays the line, and afcertains the boundaries between vice and virtue. He allows us the use of all the gifts of nature, and only deures us not to abuse them: he - means not to form a man without

paffions, but a worthy man with paffions.

"Does he fpeak of God? He takes care not to represent him as an arbitrary lawgiver, who commands or forbids, without any other motive but that of being obeyed. He does not fay, Honour and love your father and mother, becaufe God commands it; but he fays, God commands it, becaufe, if you refufe to hearken to this firft call of nature, there is no other being whom you will honour, none whom you will love. He does not fay, Abflain from violence, becaufe God forbids it, but he fays, God forbids it, because with it, towns and countries would foon become an immenfe theatre of confufion, horror, and blood. He teaches us, after Cicero, that law is not a human invention, but the expreffion of that univerfal reafon which governs the world; that, like it, it is eternal and unchangeable; that it does not vary according to times and places that what it commanded or forbid in the beginning of the world, it still com mands or forbids to every nation on earth and after having fixed the boundaries between vice and virtue, far from seeing in the Deity an implacable judge, the philo pher fees in him a father who never punishes, but in order to reform.

"Now, this fublime, this fimple philofophy, this torch of reafon herfelf, which, after being extinguished in Greece, was lighted up agan in Italy, in England, and is France, and has spread knowledge to the remotest boundaries of the north, what effects has it produ ced upon morals? it has happy banished fome barbarous preju