Note 272 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Histoire du mariage des prêtres en France, par M. Grégoire, ancien évêque de Blois, 1826, p. v. Compare the details in the Appendice to the Etudes of M. Gazier, before cited. That writer’s account is the more decisive seeing that his bias is clerical, and that, writing before M. Aulard, he had to a considerable extent retained the old illusion as to the “decreeing of atheism” by the Convention (p. 313). See pp. 230–260 as to the readjustment effected by Grégoire, while the conservative clergy were still striving to undo the Revolution. ↑