[252] Cont. Soc., IV. viii. 197-201.
[253] This is not unlike what Tocqueville says somewhere, that Christianity bids you render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, but seems to discourage any inquiry whether Cæsar is an usurper or a lawful ruler.
[254] Cont. Soc., IV. viii. 203. As we have already seen, he had entreated Voltaire, of all men in the world, to draw up a civil profession of faith. See [vol. i. 318].
In the New Heloïsa (V. v. 117, n.) Rousseau expresses his opinion that "no true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate, and if the law pronounced the penalty of death against atheists, I would begin by burning as such whoever should come to inform against another."
[255] Plato's Laws, Bk. x. 909, etc.
[256] Areopagitica, p. 417. (Edit. 1867.)
[257] See a speech of his, which is Rousseau's "civil faith" done into rhetoric, given in M. Louis Blanc's Hist. de la Rév. Française, Bk. x. c. xiv.
[258] Considérations sur le gouvernement ancien et présent de la France (1764). Quoted by Rousseau from a manuscript copy.
[259] Leviathan, ch. xliii. 601. Also ch. xlii.
[260] Cont. Soc., III. xi. Borrowed from Hobbes, who said, "Magnus ille Leviathan quæ civitas appellatur, opificium artis est."