ment upon you, if you prevent it not by a compliance with the gracious and equitable demands of the Gospel. It surely is a very astonishing consideration, that a being such as man, placed on a small globe of earth in a little corner of the universe, cut off from all communication with the other systems, which are dispersed through the immensity of space, imprisoned as it were, on the spot where he happens to be born, almost utterly ignorant of the variety of spiritual existences, and greatly circumscribed in his knowledge of material things by their remoteness, magnitude, or minuteness, a stranger to the nature of the very pebbles on which he treads, unacquainted, or but very obscurely informed by his natural faculties of his condition after death; it is wonderful that a being, such as this, should reluctantly receive, or fastidiously reject the instruction of the ETERNAL GOD! Or, if this be saying too much, that he should hastily, and negligently, and triumphantly conclude, that the SUPREME BEING never had condescended to instruct the race of man. It might properly have been expected, that a rational being, so circumstanced, would have sedulously inquired into a subject of such vast importance; that he would not have suffered himself to have been diverted from the investigation, by the pursuits of wealth, or honour, or any temporal concern; much less by notions taken up without attention, arguments admitted without examination, or prejudices imbibed in early youth from the profane ridicule, and impious jestings of sensual or immoral men*. + It is customary with you Gentlemen, who reject the Scriptures, to consider every believer of them as weak and credulous. I would recommend it to you, however, to suspend your censures, and to reconsider the matter before you form Bishop WATSON's Collection of Theological Tracts, vol. i. p. 9. preface, from whence this paragraph is taken, with some trifling alteration. + Let the most solid, rational, and inquisitive Deist, who is in pursuit of moral and religious truth, and wishes to have his mind satisfied in the great things which concern human happiness, have recourse to Dr. SAMUEL CLARKE'S Book on the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Religion; and then let him say, whether all who believe in the SAVIOUR of the world, are weak and credulous persons. Perhaps a piece of more rational and conclusive argumentation was never presented to the consideration of mankind. a final judgment. Do you seriously think, then, that a man, who believes in GoD, that he is the Creator and Governour of the world, and a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him :--that a man who embraces the Gospel as a dispensation of mercy, and conducts himself according to the letter and spirit of it, is a weak and despicable character? Can you, in the sober fear of God, esteem all the great men among Christians to have been unreasonable and deluded persons? and that THOMAS PAINE and yourselves are the only men upon earth, who have found out the true wisdom? Is it probable, that men of your description, who, in general, have never turned your thoughts seriously and conscientiously that way, and who are neither more moral, more sensible, more learned, more philosophical, nor more inquisitive than large numbers of Christians are found to be, should have made the wonderful discovery, that Religion is all a cheat, and the Bible a ridiculous tale, trumpt up by the Priests, to delude and amuse mankind, while many of our great philo sophical characters of all professions make it the study of their lives to comply with the former, and spend a consider, able proportion of their time in the investigation of the latter? And then, it is of no little importance to ask, Does your Unbelief make you more moral, pure, chaste, temperate, humble, modest, thankful, happy? Are You more amiable in your manners than we Christians usually are, better masters, servants, husbands, wives, children, friends, neighbours? Besides, MY COUNTRYMEN, (permit me to speak plainly), are not you the most ungrateful of all human Beings, in that you have derived the whole of your present peculiar light, information, or philosophy (call it which you will) from the writings of the Old and New Testaments, and then make use of that light, information, or philosophy, to discredit those Writings, and to make them ridiculous among mankind? If we want to know what pure nature can teach, we must divest ourselves of all our present ideas, collected from the writings of the Sacred Code, and learn our religion from the Pagan page alone. The most eminent of them, however, saw and lamented their want of what you now so fastidiously reject. "Pure PLATO! how had thy chaste spirit hail'd What hadst thou felt, to see the fair romance Of thy pure fancy more than realized! O sweet enthusiast! thou hadst bless'd a scheme Such plenitude of love, such boundless bliss, Should you not, as men of sense, review the history of the several ancient nations of the world, and compare their religion and morals with the religion and morals of your own country, where the Gospel has been preached for so many years? Common sense, and common equity seem to require this of you, before you commence apostates from that religion in which you have been educated. You will permit me here to call to your remembrance a few facts culled out of the history of mankind. Make what use of them you please. Only give them a patient consideration, and a fair comparison with the religion of JESUS, as exhibited in the New Testament, and then act as you judge meet. The Babylonians are said to have introduced the unnatural custom of human sacrifices. The Sepharvites, probably a branch of that people, burnt their children in fire to ADRAMMELECH and ANAMMELECH, the gods of Sepharvaim, 2 Kings xvii. 31. Among the Phenicians, a father did not scruple to immolate his only child: a husband to plunge his knife into a heart as dear to him as his own, to avert some public misfortune. PORPHYR. 1. 2. In Carthage, the children of the nobility were sacrificed to SATURN. The calamities, which AGATHOCLES brought upon that city, were believed by the inhabitants to be a punishment for the substitution of ignoble blood; and, to appease the wrath of GoD, they immolated 200 children of noble blood in one sacrifice. PLUT. de Superstit.-DIOD. Sic. 1. 20. The ancient Germans also sacrificed human victims. Their priestesses opened the veins of the sufferers, and drew omens from the rapidity of the stream of blood. TACT. Germ. 9.-DIOD. SIC. 1. 5. 20. The ancient Britons likewise were equally cruel and superstitious. The sacrifice of strangers and prisoners of war seems to have been general, even among the ancient nations which were more civilized. ACHILLES, in HOMER, inmolates twelve Trojans to the manes of PATROCLUS. IL. 23. 175. And even in the 532d year of Rome, two Greeks and two Gauls were buried alive in a public place of the city, to satisfy the superstitious prejudices of the populace. 1. 22. c. 57. Liv. Though the Greeks do not appear to have offered human sacrifices, yet whole states were at times reduced to slavery, and their lands confiscated, and their prisoners of war massacred in cold blood. Conjugal infidelity among the Athenians was become so common in the time of PERICLES, that almost 5000 of their citizens were illegitimate. PLUT. in PERICL. If at any time a man became eminent among thein for virtue, he was generally sentenced to some kind of punishment, either to imprisonment, banishment, or death. Dark, however, as the picture of the Athenians is exhibited, it is sunshine when compared to that of the Lacedæmonians. See their history. By the laws of Sparta, a parent was permitted to destroy a weak or deformed child. The Romans, though great and successful, were equally far from being a virtuous nation. They were the murderers and plunderers of the world. We might instance their whole history; but it will suffice to have observed, that the celebrated JULIUS CESAR boasted he had taken 800 towns, vanquished 300 states, fought three millions of men, of whom one million had been either slaughtered or reduced to slavery. The number of men slain at different periods, even for their diversion and entertainment, was immense ! A creditor could, at the expiration of thirty days, seize an insolvent debtor, who could not find bail, and keep him sixty days in chains. During this time, he was allowed to expose him three market days to public sale, for the amount of his debt, and, at the expiration of a third, to put him to death. If there were many creditors, they were permitted to tear and divide his body among them. It was customary, however, to sell the debtor, and divide the money. A father had the right of life and death over his children, and, by the laws of Rome, was permitted to expose his child to perish. The husband was the only judge and arbiter of his wife's fate. If a wife was convicted of committing adultery, or of driuking wine, her husband had a right to put her to death without the formality of a public trial; while she was not permitted, on any provocation, to raise her finger against him*. To these several facts, add a careful perusal of the first chapter of St. PAUL'S Epistle to the Romans, and then you will have had a view of the religion and morals of the Heathen world before the advent of CHRIST. If there be a difference between us and them, it is what the Gospel has made. The Heathens, indeed, excelled greatly in the arts and sciences. Excellence of composition may be produced from their writings, in rich abundance: but we call upon you to shew us any thing fit to be compared with various of the compositions contained in the Bible. You have no History so ancient, so important, so instructive, so enter taining, so well writtent; no Poetry so sublime; no Elo * See a learned Sermon of Dr. VALPY, where these testimonies to the depraved state of the Heathen nations are detailed more at large. One of the finest and most important passages in all Heathen antiquity is that of PLATO, where he introduces SOCRATES speaking of some divine teacher of whom he was in expectation, and of the mist which is naturally upon the mind of man, which was to be removed by that teacher. "He is one," says SOCRATES, "who has now a concern for us."-" He is a person that has a wonderful readiness and willingness to take away the mist from the mind of man, and to enable us to distinguish rightly between good and evil." See his second ALCIBIADES. Bishop HALL says, "I durst appeal to the judgment of a carnal reader, (let him not be prejudiced) that there is no history so pleasant as the sacred; for should we even set aside the majesty of the Inditer, none can compare with it for magnificence, and the antiquity |