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but not the difpofitions of the people, are the only fources of our misfortunes.

Whatever tends to promote the public good, is a tribute due from an adopted brother, to great and illuftrious characters, whofe refined feelings can only be equalled by the culture of their minds: Who have transplanted to the Irish nurfery the flowers of Rome and Athens: Who in their writings and fpeeches, have difplayed to Europe the scene of eloquence, diverfified with the fire of Demofthenes and the majefty of Tully, and wrefted their thunderbolts from those orators, in order to affert what they deemed the rights of mankind, and to crush the falfe divinities that should attempt to erect their altars, on their ruins.

I have the honour to be,

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A

DEFENCE

OF THE

DIVINITY OF CHRIST, ETC.

O R

REMARKS

ON A WORK, ENTITLED

Thoughts on Nature and Religion.

Publifhed at Cork, in the Year, M.DCC.LXXVI.

In a Series of Letters to the Author.

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YOUR long-expected performance has at laft made its appearance. If the work tended to promote the happiness of fociety,-to animate our hopes,-to fubdue our paffionis,--to instruct man in the happy science of purifying the polluted receffes of a vitiated heart,-to confirm him in his exalted notion of the dignity of his nature, and thereby to infpire him with fentiments averfe to whatever may debase the excellence of his origin,-the public would be indebted to you; your name would be recorded amongst the affertors of morality and religion; and I myself, though bred up in a different persuasion from yours, would be the first

A Scotch physician, who styles himself Michael Servetus.

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to offer my incenfe at the fhrine of merit. But the tendency of your performance is to deny the Divinity of Chrift, and the immortality of the foul. In denying the firft, you fap the foundations of religion; you cut off, at one blow, the merit of our faith, the comfort of our hope, and the motives of our charity. In denying the immortality of the foul, you degrade human nature, and confound man with the vile and perishable infect. In denying both, you overturn the whole fyftem of religion, whether natural or revealed. And in denying religion, you deprive the poor of the only comfort which supports them under their distresses and afflictions; you wreft from the hands of the powerful and rich, the only bridle to their injuftices and paffions; and pluck from the hearts of the guilty, the greatest check to their crimes, -I mean, this remorfe of conscience, which can never be the refult of a handful of organized matter, this interior monitor which makes us blush, in the morning, at the diforders of the foregoing night !—which erects in the breaft of the tyrant, a tribunal fuperior to his power, and whofe importunate voice upbraids a Cain, in the wilderness, with the murder of his brother, and a Nero, in his palace, with that of his mother. Such the confequences naturally resulting from the principles laid down in your writings.

It

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