Note 155 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

When Buffon155 in 1749–50 published his Histoire Naturelle, the delight which was given to most readers by its finished style was paralleled by the wrath which its Théorie de la Terre aroused among the clergy. After much discussion Buffon received early in 1751 from the Sorbonne an official letter specifying as reprehensible in his book fourteen propositions which he was invited to retract. He stoically obeyed in a declaration to the effect that he had “no intention to contradict the text of Scripture,” and that he believed “most firmly all there related about the creation,” adding: “I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth.”156 Still he was attacked as an unbeliever by the Bishop of Auxerre in that prelate’s pastoral against the thesis of de Prades.157 During the rest of his life he outwardly conformed to religious usage, but all men knew that in his heart he believed what he had written; and the memory of the affront that the Church had thus put upon so honoured a student helped to identify her cause no less with ignorance than with insolence and oppression. For all such insults, and for the long roll of her cruelties, the Church was soon to pay a tremendous penalty.