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" Royal Religion . " Slit , July 6 , 1814 . In the " 2 nd volume of the writings of the author oi the True-Born Englishman , " published in » - l
1705 , is a short piece , entitledI *' Royal Religion : being some Enquiry after the Piety of Princes , " State-Religion , as the author found it , more than a century ago , is thus described :
" Princes perform the duties of Religion as a matter of State , and common Court-ceremony appoints the Chaplains in Ordinary to at . tend at their season ; the hours of
prayer are regulated as the hours of play , and the Clerk of the Closet has his work also ; these are handsome general ways of treating God
Almighty civilly , and the Prince vouchsafes to be present , as often as he pleases ; and we are very willing to cry up the devotion and piety of those who do so- " P . 462 .
A celebrated Frenchman , nearly a contemporary of De Foe , found a Prince to cry up on a very different account than the pretence of devotion and piety . I refer to Monsieur Colbert , minister of Louis XlVth . That able
statesman composed in his retirement hh Political Last Testament f of which the English translation now before me was published in 1695 . To this Testafoeiit , Colbert prefixed an Epistle to the King . Amidst some courtly strains is the follow , ing rather extraordinary passage :
" The fear of God , which you have always had before your eyes , ia the reason also that you chose , during a certain time , rather to let things be believed , which one did
not know of but by suspicion , than to take away the thoughts of them by frequenting the Sacraments You forbore thote ^ so 1 ong as ' you
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did not judge yourself to be worthy of them ; or that you Aid believe that your infirmity was too great for you to perform any thing to God of what you should promise to him . This is a mark of the
niceness of your conscience ; and that you are far different in this from those princes who affect exterior mortifications while they plunge themselves in secret in all sorts of pleasures . *
The conjugal infidelity of Louis XIVth the infirmity to which Colbert must refer , forms an undisputed part of that Monarch's history * It does not however appear that he encouraged any of his courtiers to traduce the
character of his consort , or that himself inflicted upon her any personal insults . She probably enjoyed all the happiness she had a right to expect from a royal marriage formed on reasons of st&te-piblifcy and hot of personal preference , an unnatural condition of domestic
life to which , all governments but the democratic are unavoidably exposed . I h&ve been led into thes 6 subjects from having witnessed id * day a long and splendid display of Royal Religion or the Piety of Princes . In this display I remarked
a profusion of drawn sviords and musquetry , and even some piecei of artillery , as if our royal Christians received in a Strictly literal sense th « & declaration thfct the king dom of heaven stiffereth violence * and the violent take it by force * GOGMAGO& JUNIOR .
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On Public Spirit . ( From the Champion ( Newspaper ) Julj 31 , 1814 ) . " It is a faW " ' * & £ ' c # wa * dty plea , " that ; because * iiain $ itiss « $ s& n # d&ce 6 ff ilitidHly ^ r tftimtxiWiA-
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470 u Royal KeUgibfiS ' — On PnhUc Spirit .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1814, page 470, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2443/page/22/
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