Note 53 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The ferment thus kept up was indeed so great that about 1748 the ecclesiastical authorities decided on the remarkable step of adopting for their purposes the apologetic treatise adapted by Jacob Vernet, professor of belles lettres at Geneva, from the works of Jean-Alphonse Turrettin,53 not only a Protestant but a substantially Socinian professor of ecclesiastical history at the same university. The treatise is itself a testimony to the advance of rationalism in the Protestant world; and its adoption, even under correction, by the Catholic Church in France tells of a keen consciousness of need. But the dreaded advance, as we have seen, was only to a small extent yet traceable by new literature. The Examen critique des apologistes de la religion chrétienne of Lévesque de Burigny was probably written about 1732, and then and thereafter circulated in manuscript, but it was not published till 1766; and even in manuscript its circulation was probably small, though various apologetic works had testified to the increasing uneasiness of the orthodox world. Such titles as La religion chrétienne demontrée par la Resurrection (by Armand de la Chapelle, 1728) and La religion chrétienne prouvée par l’accomplissement des prophéties (by Père Baltus, 1728) tell of private unbelief under the Regency. In 1737 appeared the voluminous treatise (anonymous) of the Abbé de la Chambre, Traité de la véritable religion contre les athées, les déistes, etc. (5 vols.). In 1747, again, there appeared a learned, laborious, and unintelligent work in three volumes (authorized in 1742), Le Libertinage combattu par la témoignage des auteurs profanes, by an unnamed Benedictine54 of the Congregation of St. Vanne. It declares that, between atheism and deism, there has never been so much unbelief as now; but it cites no modern books, and is devoted to arraying classic arguments in support of theism and morals. Part of the exposition consists in showing that Epicurus, Lucian, and Euripides, whom modern atheists are wont to cite as their masters, were not and could not have been atheists; and the pious author roundly declares in favour of paganism as against atheism.