Alexandria Advertiser And Commercial Intelligencer

Extract from a translation of an Oration delivered at the funeral obsequies of the late Pope Pius VI. by the Archbishop of Nisibis.

Speaking of the commencement of the French Revolution, the Orator in these animated and correct terms, describes the enemies of Divine Revelation--

"This was a period, at which men of every class, wholly profligate and abandoned in their principles and practice, wantonly assumed the once honored name of philosophers, a name, which they now prostitute to the most criminal and execrable of all purposes; they laboured to delude the uninformed multitude by the vilest arts, and to mislead mankind from the road of virtue and duty. No means were left unattempted to eradicate from the minds of the faithful, the love of the Catholic religion, and their zealous attachment to its worship; nothing remained untried, to asperse the clerical character, and to raise against the priest a load of envy, all the arts of persuasion were employed, to inculcate a belief that God never had an existence; that whatever had been said concerning the Deity and Religion, consisted of absurd and womanish tales, which a philosopher would be ashamed to admit: that the only hopes of safety, the only means of happiness depended on a conviction, that men were born with equal rights, and that no one, whether God or man was entitled to govern them; that this was the natural liberty of mankind, and that it was to be claimed and vindicated with the utmost energy. This was the purpose of those clandestine assemblies, formed by shameless and abandoned men, at stated times, and in stated places; this was the tendency, the object of innumerable productions, which issued from the lurking holes of impiety, to poison the minds of men, and which, to promote this nefarious plan, were recommended by all the blandishments of novelty, and all the seductive arts of eloquence; this was the real design, the manifest view of this new Philosophy, which has diffused its phrenzy over all Europe."