This was the secret of the calamity which had overtaken the
church. Wolves, he would say--yes, wolves, grievous wolves--had
entered in, not sparing the flock. Let them consider what an Infidel
was! It meant a man who denied his Maker, Revelation, a life beyond
the grave, and who made awful jests upon the Holy Scriptures! He had
evidence that in this miserable household there was a portrait of
that dreadful blasphemer Voltaire, who on his deathbed cried out in
vain for that salvation which he had so impiously refused, and amidst
shrieks of--despair, which chilled with terror those who stood by
him, was carried off by the Enemy of Souls to the lake that burneth
with brimstone, where their worm dieth not and the fire is not
quenched.--(Sensation.) (This was a famous paragraph in one of Mr.
Broad's sermons preached on great occasions, and particularly when he
supplied a metropolitan pulpit. The story had been contradicted
twice in the county paper by a Frenchman, a retired teacher of his
native language, who had somehow heard of the insult offered to his
great countryman, and a copy of the contradiction had been sent to
Mr. Broad. He was content with observing that its author was a
Frenchman, and therefore probably an atheist, "with no consciousness
of moral obligation.
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