cient patrons. The knowledge which this author poffeffes of the frame and conduct of the human mind, must have led him to observe, that such attacks do their execution without enquiry. Who can refute a fneer? Who can compute the number, much less, one by one, scrutinize the justice, of those disparaging infinuations, which crowd the pages of this elaborate hiftory? What reader suspends his curiofity, or calls off his attention from the principal narrative, to examine references, to search into the foundation, or to weigh the reason, propriety, and force of every transient farcafm, and fly allufion, by which the Christian testimony is depreciated and traduced; and by which, nevertheless, he may find his persuasion afterwards unsettled and perplexed? But the enemies of Christianity have pursued her with poisoned arrows. Obfcenity itself is made the vehicle of infidelity. The awful doctrines, if we be not permitted to call them the facred truths, of our religion, together with all the adjuncts and appendages of its worship and external profeffion, have been fometimes impudently profaned by an unnatural conjunction with impure and lafcivious images. The fondness for ridicule is almoft univerfal; and ridicule to many minds is never fo irresistible, as when when feasoned with obscenity, and employed upon religion. But in proportion as these noxious principles take hold of the imagination, they infatuate the judgment; for trains of ludicrous and unchafte affociations adhering to every fentiment and mention of religion, render the mind indifpofed to receive either conviction from its evidence, or impreffions from its authority. And this effect being exerted upon the fenfitive part of our frame, is altogether independent of argument, proof, or reafon; is as formidable to a true religion as to a falfe one; to a well-grounded faith, as to a chimerical mythology, or fabulous tradition. Neither, let it be observed, is the crime or danger lefs, because impure ideas are exhibited under a veil, in covert and chastized language. Seriousness is not constraint of thought; nor levity, freedom. Every mind which wishes the advancement of truth and knowledge, in the most important of all human researches, muft abhor this licentioufnefs, as violating no less the laws of reasoning, than the rights of decency. There is but one defcription of men, to whose principles it ought to be tolerable; I mean that clafs of reafoners who can fee little in Chriftianity, even fuppofing it to be true. To fuch ad 66 versaries we address this reflection-Had Jefus Chrift delivered no other declaration than the following: "The hour is coming, in the which “all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, "and fhall come forth; they that have done ' good, unto the refurrection of life, and they "that have done evil, unto the refurrection "of damnation;" he had pronounced a meffage of ineftimable importance, and well worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which his miffion was introduced, and attefted-a meffage, in which the wifeft of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and reft to their enquiries. It is idle to fay, that a future ftate had been difcovered already-It had been discovered, as the Copernican system was-it was one guess among many. He alone discovers, who proves; and no man can prove this point, but the teacher who teftifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God. MORAL MORAL PHILOSOPHY. воок VI. ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE. CHAP. I. OF THE ORIGIN OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. G COVERNMENT, at firft, was either patriarchal or military: that of a parent over his family, or of a commander over his fellow warriors. I. Paternal authority, and the order of domeftic life, fupplied the foundation of civil government. Did mankind fpring out of the earth |