But when the excesses of '93 and '94--and all the revolutionary excesses put together are but a drop compared with the oceans of bloodshed with which Catholicism and absolutism have made history crimson--when the crimes and confusion of the end of the century are traced by historians to the materialism and atheism of the Encyclopaedia, we can only say that such an account is a misrepresentation.

The materialism and atheism are not there.

The religious attack was prompted and guided by the same social feeling that inspired the economic articles.

The priest was the enemy of society, the patron of indolence, the hater of knowledge, the mutineer against the civil laws, the unprofitable devourer of the national substance, the persecutor.

Sacerdotalism is the object of the encyclopaedic attack.