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ters, whose 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 fcene of eloquence, diverfified with the fire of Demofthenes and the majesty of Tully, and wrefted their thunderbolts from those orators, in order to affert what they deemed the rights of mankind, to crufh the falfe divinities that should attempt to erect their altars on their ruins.

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DEFENCE

OF THE

DIVINITY OF CHRIST,

AND THE

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL,

IN A SERIES OF LETTERS,

To THE AUTHOR OF A WORK

ENTITLED

Thoughts on Nature and Religion.

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

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DEFENCE,

&c.

LETTER I

TO THE AUTHOR.*

SIR,

YOUR long-expected performance has at laft made its appearance. If the work tended to promote the happiness of society,-to animate our hopes,-to fubdue our paffions,-to inftruct man in the happy fcience 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 inspire him with fentiments averse 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 perfuafion from yours, would be the first

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A Scotch phyfician, who ftyles himself Michael Servetus.

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 first, 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 perifhable 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 fupports them under their diftreffes 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 confcience, which, can never be the refult of a handful of organized matter, this interior monitor which makes us blufh, 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 refulting from the principles laid down. in your writings.

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