Note 136 — Chapter XV · FRENCH AND DUTCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

But nothing could turn Bayle from his loyalty to reason and toleration; and the malice of the bigots could not deprive him of his literary vogue, which was in the ratio of his unparalleled industry. As a mere writer he is admirable: save in point of sheer wit, of which, however, he has not a little, he is to this day as readable as Voltaire. By force of unfailing lucidity, wisdom, and knowledge, he made the conquest of literary Europe; and fifty years after his death we find the Jesuit Delamare in his (anonymous) apologetic treatise, La Foi justifiée de tout reproche de contradiction avec la raison (1761), speaking of him to the deists as “their theologian, their doctor, their oracle.”136 He was indeed no less; and his serene exposure of the historic failure of Christianity was all the more deadly as coming from a master of theological history.