At That Time The Archiepiscopal

Since The Primitive Times, The Wealth Of The Popes Was Exposed To Envy, Their Powers To Opposition, And Their Persons To Violence.

Whenever The Spirit Of Fanaticism, At Once So Credulous And So Crafty, Has Insinuated Itself Into A Noble Mind, It Insensibly Corrodes The Vital Principles Of Virtue And Veracity.

The Gauls Were Endowed With All The Advantages Of Art And Nature; But As They Wanted Courage To Defend Them, They Were Justly Condemned To Obey, And Even To Flatter, The Victorious Barbarians, By Whose Clemency They Held Their Precarious Fortunes And Their Lives.

The Subject, However Various And Important, Has Already Been So Frequently, So Ably, And So Successfully Discussed, That It Is Now Grown Familiar To The Reader, And Difficult To The Writer.

History, In Fact, Is No More Than A List Of The Crimes Of Humanity, Human Follies And Accidents