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night with his company, by fleeping with her in his temple, laughed heartily in feeing the young gentleman who bribed him to the cheat, and the more fo, as on the day following the lady gave the public to understand, that however great Apollo might have been, in his quality of God, honoured with altars and temples, he had nothing extraordinary in his quality of companion. Cato's priests then might have laughed in feeing one another; the mysteries and rites of their Gods, as debauched and corrupt as themselves, afforded scenes of impure mirth and the Chriftian clergy are obliged to the Doctor for putting them and the three brothers, the Father, Son and Holy Ghoft, whom they worship, on a level with the heathen priests and their Jupiter, who ravished Ganymedes, Neptune and his fea nymphs, and Pluto, who carried off Proferpina.

In spite of the preference, given by the doctor to Cato and Socrates, over the Chriftian clergy, and the fufficiency of the law of nature to regulate the conduct of man, we can affure him, that under the direction of a Chriftian mother who never ftudied philofophy, a child imbibes fublimer notions of the Divinity, and purer ideas of virtue than Plato ever taught in the academy, or Ariftotle in the Lyceum. What were thofe boafted fages whom our modern Free-thinkers

Free-thinkers fo often introduce on the ftage, as paragons of wisdom, in order to play the dazzling glass in the eyes of the unwary, by making reason their only oracle, and painting religion as priest-craft? Some doubted of their own existence, and confequently of the exiftence of a God. Some figured to themselves an indolent God, who never concerned himself in the affairs of mortals, equally indifferent about vice or virtue; who, to use the words of Lucretius," ne'er fmiles at good, ne'er frowns 61 at wicked deeds." Some confidered the Supreme Being as the flave of deftiny. Others as incorporate with the universe, and a part of a world which is the work of his hand.

What extravagant notions concerning the nature of the foul! In one fchool it was an affemblage of atoms; in another it was fubtile air; in a third school it was a fomething which after its feparation from one body entered into another; roaming from heaven to earth and from earth to heaven, without any permanent abode; alternately fwaying the fceptre of authority in the hands of the monarch, and animating the body of a beaft of burden. Their great reme dy against the terrors of death, confifted in a falfe but flattering way of reafoning. "Either the "foul dies with the body, or furvives it. If it "dies with the body it cannot fuffer. If it fur "vives

C

"vives it, it will be happy." Not reflecting that the horrors of fin, and infinite juftice, may appoint an intermediate ftate, wherein man is eternally miferable. Hence all the reins were flackened, and the most abominable crimes honoured with priests, altars and temples. Public worship became a public proftitution. Inceft, impurity, drunkenness, hatred, pride, were deified under the fictitious names of Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Mars, &c. and criminal Gods were worshipped with crimes.

It was not the mountain inhabited by the rude and uncivilized, which alone was polluted with the fmoak of profane incense the nations most renowned for learning and refinement,Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians,-in the midst. of their cities, faw fumptuous edifices confecrated to the paffions which the gospel condemns. By their mistakes and errors, it is eafy to perceive the weakness of reason, and the neceffity of revealed religion.

Your Philofophers whom our Modern Freethinkers are ever extolling, with a view to degrade the Chriftian religion and its minifters, never escaped the general contagion. Your Cato, befides fuicide, was guilty of levities of a fofter nature than the fteel with which he killed himself. Your Socrates, whom you would fain obtrude on the ignorant, as a martyr to

truth

truth and the original religion of nature, acknowledges in his defence, that he worshipped the Gods of his city, and was feen on public feftivals facrificing at their altars. His wrestling naked with his pupil, Alcibiades, was an attitude illfuited to the character of a man, entitled to a place in the calendar of faints. What shall I fay of the Cynics, who laid afide all the natural reftraints of fhame and modefty? Of Chryfippus, the advocate of inter-marriages between fathers and daughters? Of the Perfian Magi, who married their mothers? Of Seneca, playing the moralift in public, debauching his fovereign's wife in private, and preferring his pretended wife man to God himself? What fhall I fay of the divine Plato, who annihilates the inftitution of connubial ties? Who by introducing a community of women, and refufing the husband any exclufive property in the marriage bed, would fain introduce a horrid confufion amongst men; confound all paternal rights, which nature itself respected, and people his republic with inhabitants, uncertain of their origin; without tenderness, affection, or humanity. Whereas in fuch a state it would have been impoffible for the fon to know his father.

Such is the boafted reafon you take for your guide, and lo, the great luminaries it has proC 2 duced!

duced! A fet of proud men, bewildered in labyrinth of the moft monftrous errors. If our modern philofophers are more refined than those antient savages, it is to the Christian religion, which they would fain overthrow, to the writings of its doctors, whom they deride, and to the first principles of a Chriftian education, which they cannot entirely forget, that they are indebted for their fuperiority.

Before revealed religion difpelled the mift, reafon was overspread with error, in the breasts of the greatest men. It is no more than a bare capacity to be inftructed; an engine veering at every breath; equally difpofed to minifter to vice as well as to virtue, according to the variety and customs of different climates. It did not hinder the Egyptian from worshipping leeks and onions, nor the Athenian, Socrates, from offering a cock to Efculapius.

But is man to be debarred the use of his reafon, or has he any thing to dread for not believing myfteries he cannot comprehend? Make full ufe of your reason, not with a design to fall into fcepticism, but with a fincere defire to come at the knowledge of the truth. Reafon is never better employed than in difcovering the will of its author: and when once we difcover that it is his will we fhould believe, reafon itself suggests that it is our duty to fubmit; otherwise