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LETTER II.

SIR,

To our modern philofophers, who set up the

proud idols of their own fancies in oppofition to the oracles of the Divinity,-and, endeavouring to discover abfurdities in the Chriftian religion, fall into greater, we can, without disclaiming our title to good manners, apply what St. Paul applied to the philofophers of his time: "They "became vain in their imaginations: profef

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fing themfelves to be wife, they became "fools." In order to fap the foundations of revealed religion, and to make man the sport of chance, who neither loft any privilege by Adam's fall, nor gained any thing by Chrift's redemption, they endeavour to obtrude Mofes on the public as an allegorical writer. Examine his character, and acknowledge their folly.

Besides his divine miffion, in what hiftorian does truth fhine more confpicuous? He relates his perfonal defects, as well as the extraordinary powers with which the Lord invefted him; deduces a long chain of patriarchs from the first man down to his days; traces a genealogy, in

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which every chief is diftinguished by his peculiar character. In quitting Egypt, the nursery of fiction, did it comport with the dignity of the legiflator and commander of a chofen people, to write romances? In the space of five hundred years, from Noah's death to Mofes time, could the fall of man and his expulfion. from Paradise be forgotten? And, as he had enemies, would not they have charged him with imposture? Or was he the only perfon amongst the Jews, who was inftructed by his father? In a word, it was out of his power to deceive the Jews; much lefs was it his inclination or intereft. All, then, is coherent in Moses; and to his genuine narrative we are indebted for the knowledge of ourselves: for, without the aid of revelation, man would ever be an inexplicable mystery.

In believing my defcent from a father created in a state of perfection, from whence he fell, -a father on whofe obedience or difobedience my happiness or mifery depended,—I can account for the corruption of my nature, and all the train of evils which have defcended to Adam's children. Without this clew to direct I must be for ever entangled in a labyrinth of perplexities. Let philofophy glory in levelling man with the brute, and say that there was never any difference in his ftate; that he

me,

was

was always the fame, destined to gratify his appetites, and to die;-I am really perfuaded that I must renounce common sense, if I believe that man is now the fame that he was in coming from his Maker's hands. The oppofition between our paffions and reafon is too palpable, to believe that we were created in fuch an excess of contradictions. Reafon dictates to be temperate, juft, and equitable; to deal with others as I would fain be dealt by; not to infringe the order of fociety; to pity and relieve the afflicted: my paffions, those tyrants fo cruel, prompt me to raise myself on the ruin of others; to tread in the flowery paths of criminal pleasures; and to facrifice my enemy to my resentment. If God, then, be the author of reafon,and that it is granted to man to regulate and curb his inclinations,mifery and corruption were not our primitive ftate.

Philofophers, in a ftrain of irony, may deride our Bible and catechifm, and laugh at our folly for believing that an apple could entail fuch miferies on mortals: but let them seriously confider the multitude and greatnefs of the evils that opprefs us; and how full of vanity, of illufions, of fufferings, are the first years of our lives; when we are grown up, how we are feduced by error, weakened by pain, inflamed

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by luft, caft down by forrow, elated with pride-and ask themselves whether the cause of those dreadful evils be the injuftice of God for the original fin of man.

The evidence of thofe miferies forced the pagan philofophers to fay, that we were born only to suffer the punishment we had deserved for crimes committed in a life before this. They, doubtlefs, were deceived as to the origin and cause of our miferies: but ftill fome glimmering of reafon did not permit them to confider thofe calamities as the natural state of man. But religion reforms the error, and points out, that this heavy yoke, which the fons of Adam were forced to bear, from the time that their bodies are taken from their mother's womb, to the day that they are to return to the womb of their common mother, the Earth, would not have been laid upon them, if they had not deserved it, by the guilt they contract from their origin.

But religion, as far as it includes myfteries, you think yourself at liberty to difcard: becaufe, you "cannot conceive how God could "require of man, a belief of any thing which "he has not endowed him with powers to "conceive."* Hence you reject the mystery

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Thoughts on Nature and Religion, page 127.

of

of the Trinity, as an invention of the clergy, borrowed from the poetical fable of the three brothers, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto; the Divinity of Chrift, as an impofition of the Church; and the immortality of the foul, as the fruit of fcholaftic.subtlety.

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You think the religion of nature a fufficient guide, and prefer Socrates and Cato to the clergy of the Chriftian religion. The great Cato, whom you applaud for his bon mot when he faid, that he was furprized how two priests could meet without bursting out into a fit of laughter. Do not confide too much, my dear Sir, in reafon and this boafted law of nature, which formed an Ariftides, a Socrates, a Cato whom you applaud for laughing at priests. Whatever tricks or juggles might have been played in the receffes of the Capitol, where the Sibylline oracles were deposited, to answer the purposes of ftate,to animate the people to war, from an expectation of fuccefs, under the protection of Jupiter or Apollo, and to fupport the pride and policy of Roman grandeur; the priests of the Chriftian religion do not conceal their belief. Cato might laugh in feeing his colleague, for reafons best known to themselves: and doubtless, the priest, who came to the Roman lady with a meffage, from Apollo, informing her that the God intended to honour her that

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night

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