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Untitled Article
every kind , came daily to ask instruction , which his extreme kindness never refused : he enjoyed above all to encourage at their debut in politics or literature , young men whom his goodness attached to him as sons . The principal labour of his later days was the revising and printing his ' * History of Religious Sects , " of which the last volume , nearly finished , will be published , according to the intentions of the author , by his friend the Abbe BaradeVe . The illness which has just carried off M . Gregoire has been to his inveterate enemies a new occasion for scandal , for himself a new triumph of resignation and firmness . As soon as his disease had assumed a serious character , resolved to accomplish punctually all the duties of the religion it * which he had lived , he sent to request the rector of his parish to administer the Sacrament to him . The Archbishop of Paris caused it to be announced
to him , that spiritual help would be refused if he did not consent to retract the civic oath given to the Constituent Assembly . M . Greejoire , as might be
expected , would not subscribe to this condition ; a correspondence ensued between him and the Archbishop , a correspondence published by M . Baradere , * and in which dignity and evangelical gentleness are not found on the side of the ecclesiastical hierarchy . This correspondence terminated by a formal refusal of the rights of sepulture . It was expected : the civil authority then possessed itself of the church of 1 ' Abbaye-au-Bois , where the service was solemnly performed by four priests , whom excommunication will infallibly reach . " ) -
Never was ceremony more affecting , said M . Baradere , in speaking of the administration of the Sacrament to the virtuous Bishop : the pious address of the Abbe Guillon , and the spontaneous responses of the dying , cannot be represented : all was admirable in this scene of devoted ness , of last unction , and of resignation . Another scene in the illness of Gregoire has afforded the highest interest . General La Fayette came to pass some moments near the death-bed of him who for fifty years had run , like La Fayette himself , a glorious and difficult course , in which they have both remained pure and grand . These two patriarchs of the French Revolution took a last and touching fareweW .
Such is the life of Gregoire : we ought to recall the principal events of it before we pass our judgment on this celebrated man ; and this judgment we shall not delay to express and to explain . At present let us confine ourselves to one reflection . At first sight , it appears that a great contradiction crosses the whole career of M . Gregoire : on one side we have his devotion to revolutionary principles : on the other , his confirmed attachment to the Catholic faith . In our eyes , the first is a proof of the progress that now reigns in all strong and generous minds : the second is a proof of the necessity for order which appears under a thousand retrograding forms , and cannot be otherwise expressed in the absence of foresight on our parts into the future condition of mankind . This heterogeneous alliance would be then for us the sign of a more complete development in the bosom in which it was produced .
* Derniers Moments dc M . Gregoire , ancien Ev £ que de Blois , etc . ; par 1 'Abbe " Barad&re . Chez Delauiiay , Libraire , au Palais-Royal . t" There has been no delay in it . Interdicts have been issued against the four priests . Among them is an old man of 75 .
Untitled Article
476 Memoir of Bishop Gr&goire .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1831, page 476, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2599/page/44/
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