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redemption of mankind, which were only to be accomplished in the plenitude of time, were revealed by God in the terrestrial paradise, when he made that merciful promise to our first parents, with which he tempered the rigor of his justice.

The world has in vain rejected these laws. In seeking by their negation to throw off this yoke, they have only succeeded in making its weight more heavy, because a departure from these laws always produces catastrophes, which are more or less terrible in proportion to the extent of these negations; this law of proportion between error and the calamities caused by it being one of the constitutive laws of order.

God has permitted to human opinion a free and wide range; he has placed a vast empire under the control and unrestricted will of man, to whom he has given dominion over the sea and land, and the power to rebel against his Creator; to revolt against heaven; to form treaties and covenants with infernal spirits; to deafen the world with the din of battle; to excite discord and contention in societies, and terrify them by the fearful shock of revolutions; to close the understanding to the light of truth, and to accept error and delight in its obscurity; to establish empires and overthrow them; to erect and destroy republics; to grow alike weary of republics, empires, and monarchies; to abandon what was eagerly sought for, and return again to what has been forsaken; to affirm everything, even to the absurd; to deny everything, even to absolute proof; to say there is no God, and, I am God; to declare an independence of all authority, and to adore the star that shines upon us, the tyrant who oppresses us, the reptile that crawls along the ground, the tempest that fills the air with its