human
wrought in Protestant countries at the Reformation, and do not compare with the acts charged on Cromwell's troopers. The policy of inviting priests and bishops to abdicate their functions was strictly political; and the Archbishop Gobel did not abjure Catholicism, but only surrendered his office. That a number of priests did gratuitously abjure their religion is only a proof of what was well known--that a good many priests were simple deists. We have seen how many abbés fought in the freethought ranks, or near them. Diderot in a letter of 1769 tells of a day which he and a friend had passed with two monks who were atheists.
gpt
One of them read the first draft of a very fresh and very vigorous treatise on atheism, full of new and bold ideas; I learned with edification that this doctrine was the current doctrine of their cloisters. For the rest, these two monks were the 'big bonnets' of their monastery; they had intellect, gaiety, good feeling, knowledge. [1152] And a priest of the cathedral of Auxerre, whose recollections went back to the revolutionary period, has confessed that at that time
human
opinions prevailed in most of the monasteries. His words even imply that in his opinion the unbelieving monks were the majority. [1153] In the provinces, where the movement went on with various degrees of activity, it had the same general character.
gpt
Reason itself was often identified with deity, or declared to be an emanation thereof. Hébert, commonly described as an atheist for his share in the movement, expressly denied the charge, and claimed to have exhorted the people to read the gospels and obey Christ. [1154] Danton, though at his death he disavowed belief in immortality, had declared in the Convention in 1793 that