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night with his company, by fleeping with her in his temple, laughed heartily in seeing 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 priefts 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 Ghost, whom they worship, on a level with the heathen priests and their Jupiter, who ravifhed Ganymedes, Neptune and his fea nymphs, and Pluto, who carried off Proferpina.

In fpite 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 assure him, that under the direction of a Christian mother who never ftudied philosophy, 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 those boafted fages whom our modern

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Free-thinkers fo often introduce on the stage, as paragons of wisdom, in order to play the dazzling glass in the eyes of the unwary, by making reafon their only oracle, and painting religion as priest-craft? Some doubted of their own existence, and confequently of the existence 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 smiles at good, ne'er frowns at wicked deeds." Some confidered the Supreme Being as the flave of destiny. 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 something 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 remedy against the terrors of death, confifted in a falfe but flattering way of reasoning. "Either the foul dies with the body, or furvives "it. If it dies with the body it cannot fuffer. If

"it furvives 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 próftitution. Inceft, impurity, drunkennefs, hatred, pride, were deified under the fictitious names of Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Mars, &c, and criminal Gods were worfhipped with crimes.

It was not the mountain inhabited by the rude and uncivilized, which alone was polluted with the fmoak of profane incenfe: 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 easy to perceive the weakness of reafon, and the neceflity 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 Jofter nature than the fteel with which he killed himself. Your Socrates, whom you would

fain obtrude on the ignorant, as a martyr to truth and the original religion of nature, acknowledges in his defence, that he worshipped the Gods of his city, and was seen on public festivals 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 restraints of shame and modefty? Of Chryfippus, the advocate of inter-marriages between fathers and daughters? Of the Persian Magi, who married their mothers? Of Seneca, playing the moralift in public, debauching his fove-. reign's wife in private, and preferring his pretended wife man to God himself? What shall 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 refpected, 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 pro

duced!

duced! A fet of proud men, bewildered in a labyrinth of the most monftrous errors. If our modern philofophers are more refined than those antient fages, it is to the Chriftian 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 mist, reafon was overspread with error, in the breafts of the greatest men. It is no more than a bare capacity to be inftructed; an engine veering at every breath; equally difpofed to minister 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 ufe of his reafon? or has he any thing to dread for not believ¬ ing myfteries he cannot comprehend? Make full use of your reason, not with a defign to fall into scepticism, but with a fincere desire to come at the knowledge of the truth. Reafon is never better employed than in discovering the will of its author: and when once we difcover that it is his will we should believe, reafon itself fuggefts

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