friends or disguised enemies to the Christian Religion, who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason. Our moft holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason; and 'tis a fure method of expofing it to put it to fuch a trial as it is, by no means, fitted to endure. To make this more evident, let us examine those miracles, related in scripture; and not to lose ourselves in too wide a field, let us confine ourselves to fuch as we find in the Pentateuch, which we fhall examine, according to the principles of these pretended Chriftians, not as the word or teftimony of God himself, but as the production of a mere human writer and historian. Here then we are first to confider a book, prefented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, wrote in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates; corroborated by no concurring teftimony, and refembling thofe fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin. Upon reading this book, we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives an account of a state of the world and of human nature intirely different from the prefent: Of our fall from that ftate: Of the age of man, extended to near a thousand years: Of the deftruction of the world by a deluge: Of the arbitrary choice of one people, as the favourites of heaven; and that people, the countrymen of the author: Of their deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most astonishing imaginable: I defire any one to lay his hand upon his heart, and after ferious confideration declare, whether he thinks that the falfhood of fuch a book, fupported by fuch a teftimony,

¶ severissimo delectu, ut conftet fides. Maxime autem habenda funt pro sus“pectis quæ pendent quomodocunque ex religione, ut prodigia LIVII: Neç "minus quæ inveniuntur in fcriptoribus magia naturalis, aut etiam alchy“ miæ, & hujufmodi hominibus; qui tanquam proci funt & amatores fabularum."

Nov. Organ. Lib. 2. Aph. 29. would

would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all the miracles it relates; which is, however, necessary to make it be received, according to the measures of probability above established,

و

51 What we have faid of miracles may be applied, without any variation, to prophecies; and indeed, all prophecies are realt miracles, and as fuch only, can be admitted as proofs of any revelation. If it did not exceed the capacity of human nature to foretel future events, it would be abfurd to employ any prophecy as an argument for abdivine miffion or authority from heaven. So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Chriftian -Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, ybut even at this day cannot be believed by any reafongable person without one. Mere reafon is infufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to affent to it, is confcious of a continued miracle in his own perfon, which fubverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to be lieve what is moft contrary to custom and experience,

f

SECTION XI.

Of a PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE and of a FUTURE STATE.

I

WAS lately engaged in converfation with a friend. who loves fceptical paradoxes; where though he advanced many principles, of which I can by no means approve, yet as they feem to be curious, and to bear fome relation to the chain of reasoning carried on through this enquiry, I fhall here copy them from my memory as accurately as I can, in order to fubmit them to the judg ment of the reader.

Our converfation began with my admiring the fingular good fortune of philofophy, which as it requires intire liberty, above all other privileges, and flourishes chiefly from the free oppofition of fentiments and argumentation, received its first birth in an age and country of freedom and toleration, and was never cramped, even in its most. extravagant principles, by any creeds, confeffions, or pe nal ftatutes. For except the banishment of PROTAGO= RAS, and the death of SOCRATES, which last event proceeded partly from other motives, there are fcarce any inftances to be met with, in antient hiftory, of this bigotted jealoufy, with which the prefent age is fo much infefted. EPICURUS lived at ATHENS to an advanced age, in peace and tranquillity: EPICUREANS* were even * LUCIANI συμπ. *, λαπιθαι.

10

admitted to receive the facerdotal character, and to offi ciate at the altar, in the most facred rites of the established religion: And the public encouragement + of penfions sft and falaries was afforded equally by the wifeft of all the ROMAN emperors, to the profeffors of every fect of philofophy. How requifite fuch kind of treatment was to philofophy, in its first origin, will eafily be conceived, if we reflect, that even at prefent, when it may be supe pofed more hardy and robuft, it bears with much diff24 culty the inclemency of the feafons, and thofe harfhd winds of calumny and perfecution, which blow upon it.

&&

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You admire, fays my friend, as the fingular good fortune of philofophy, what feems to refult from the natu ral courfe of things, and to be unavoidable in every age and nation. This pertinacious bigotry, of which you complain, as fo fatal to philofophy, is really her off fpring, who, after allying with fuperftition, feparates himfelf intirely from the Intereft of his parent, and becomes her moft inveterate enemy and perfecutor. Speculative dogmas of religion, the present occafions of fuch furious difpute, could not poffibly be conceived or admitted in the early ages of the world; when mankind, being wholly illiterate, formed an idea of religion more fuitable to their weak apprehenfion, and composed their facred tenets chiefly of fuch tales as were the objects of traditional belief, more than of argument or difputation. After the firft alarm, therefore, was over, which arofe from the new paradoxes and principles of the philosophers; these teachers seem ever after, during the ages of antiquity, to have lived in great harmony with the established fuperftitions, and to have made a fair partition of mankind between them; the former claiming all the learned and the wife, and the latter poffeffing all the vulgar and illiterate.

It feems then, fays I, that you leave politics intirely out of the question, and never suppose, that a wife, magi