It is this rage for making proselytes, this intensely mad desire which men feel to bring others over to partake of their own peculiar cup or communion, that induced the Jesuit Châtel and the Jesuit Routh to rush with eagerness to the deathbed of the celebrated Montesquieu. These two devoted zealots desired nothing better than to be able to boast that they had persuaded him of the merits of contrition and of sufficing grace. We wrought his conversion, they said. He was, in the main, a worthy soul: he was much attached to the society of Jesus. We had some little difficulty in inducing him to admit certain fundamental truths; but as in these circumstances, in the crisis of life and death, the mind is always most clear and acute, we soon convinced him.
This fanatical eagerness for converting men is so ardent, that the most debauched monk in his convent would even quit his mistress, and walk to the very extremity of the city, for the sake of making a single convert.
We have all seen Father Poisson, a Cordelier of Paris, who impoverished his convent to pay his mistresses, and who was imprisoned in consequence of the depravity of his manners. He was one of the most popular preachers at Paris, and one of the most determined and zealous of converters.
Such also was the celebrated preacher Fantin, at Versailles. The list might be easily enlarged; but it is unnecessary, if not also dangerous, to expose the freaks and freedoms of constituted authorities. You know what happened to Ham for having revealed his father's shame. He became as black as a coal.
Let us merely pray to God, whether rising or lying down, that he would deliver us from fanatics, as the pilgrims of Mecca pray that they may meet with no sour faces on the road.
SECTION IV.
Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in religion—that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the royal army in the beginning of the civil war; just as the regiment of porters (portes-cochères) were unable to stand the shock of conflict, in the time of the Fronde against the great Condé. Cromwell said to General Fairfax: "How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful phantom—fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.
"Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers, whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!"
He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet himself was never better served by soldiers.
But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and supported by the spirit of the times. A French parliament at the present day would attempt in vain to raise a regiment of such porters as we have mentioned; it could, with all its efforts, merely rouse into frenzy a few women of the fish-market.