Note 29 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

To the general public, however, he was never known save by the “Extract”—really a deistic adaptation—made by Voltaire,29 and the re-written summary by d’Holbach and Diderot entitled Le Bon Sens du Curé Meslier (1772).30 Even this publicity was delayed for a generation, since Voltaire, who heard of the Testament as early as 1735, seems to have made no use of it till 1762. But the entire group of fighting freethinkers of the age was in some sense inspired by the old priest’s legacy.