expect, in recompence, protection and fafety in this world, and eternal happiness in the next

*

Hence the greateft crimes have been found, in many inftances, compatible with a fuperftitious piety and devotion: Hence it is justly regarded as unfafe to draw any certain inference in favour of a man's morals from the fervour or ftri&tnefs of his religious exercifes, even tho he himself believe them fincere. Nay, it has been ob ferved, that enormities of the blackeft dye, have been rather apt to produce fuperftitious terrors, and encrease the religious paffion. BOMILCAR, having formed a confpiracy for affaffinating at once the whole fenate of CARTHAGE, and invading the liberties of his country, lost the opportunity, from a continual regard to omens and prophefics. Those who undertake the most criminal and most dangerous enterprizes are commonly the most fuperftitious; as an antient hiftorian* remarks on this occafion. Their devotion and fpiritual faith rife with their fears. CATILINE was not contented with the established deities, and received rites of the national religion: His anxious terrors made him feek new inventions of this kind +; which he never probably had dreamed of, had he remained a good citizen, and obedient to the laws of his country.

To which we' may add, that, even after the commiffion of crimes, there arife remorfes and fecret horrors, which give no reft to the mind, but make it have recourse to religious rites and ceremonies, as expiations of its offences. Whatever weakens or diforders the interhat frame promotes the interefts of fuperftition: And nothing is more deftructive to them than a manly, fteady virtue, which either preferves us from difaftrous, melan choly accidents, or teaches us to bear them. During

fuch calm funfhine of the mind, thefe fpectres of falfe divinity never make their appearance. On the other hand, while we abandon ourselves to the natural undifciplined fuggeftions of our timid and anxious hearts, every kind of barbarity is afcribed to the fupreme Being, from the terrors with which we are agitated; and every kind of caprice, from the methods which we embrace in order to appeafe him. Barbarity, caprice; thefe qualities, however nominally difguifed, we may universally obferve, form the ruling character of the deity in popular religions. Even priefts, inftead of correcting these depraved ideas of mankind, have often been found ready to fofter and encourage them. The more tremendous the divinity is reprefented, the more tame and fubmiffive do men become to his minifters: And the more unaccountable the meafures of acceptance required by him, the more neceffary does it become to abandon our natural reason, and yield to their ghoftly guidance and direction. And thus it may be allowed, that the artifices of men aggravate our natural infirmities and follies of this kind, but never originally beget them. Their root ftrikes deeper into the mind, and fprings from the effential and univerfal properties of human nature.

SECT. XV. General Corollary from the whole.

Though the ftupidity of men, barbarous and uninftructed, be fo great, that they may not fee a fovereign author in the more obvious works of nature, to which they are fo much familiarized; yet it fcarce feems poffible, that any one of good understanding should reject that idea, when once it is fuggefted to him. A purpose, an intention, a defign is evident in every thing; and when our comprehenfion is fo far enlarged as to contemplate the first rife of this vifible fyftem, we must

adopt,

adopt, with the strongest conviction, the idea of fome intelligent caufe or author. The uniform maxims too, which prevail through the whole frame of the universe, naturally, if not neceffarily, lead us to conceive this intelligence as fingle and undivided, where the prejudices of education oppose not fo reasonable a theory. Even the contrarieties of nature, by discovering themselves every where, become proofs of fome confiftent plan, and establish one fingle purpofe or intention, however inexplicable and incomprehenfible.

Good and ill are univerfally intermingled and confounded; happiness and mifery, wifdom and folly, virtue and vice. Nothing is pure and entirely of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages. An univerfal compenfation prevails in all conditions of being and exiftence. And it is fcarce poffible for us, by our most chimerical wishes, to form the idea of a station or fituation altogether defirable. The draughts of life, according to the poet's fiction, are always mixed from the veffels on each hand of JUPITER: Or if any cup be presented altogether pure, it is drawn only, as the fame poet tells us, from the left-handed veffel.

The more exquifite any good is, of which a small fpecimen is afforded us, the sharper is the evil, allied to it; and few exceptions are found to this uniform law of nature. The moft fprightly wit borders on madness; the highest effufions of joy produce the deepest melancholy; the most ravishing pleasures are attended with the most cruel laffitude and difguft; the moft flattering hopes. make way for the fevereft disappointments. And in general, no course of life has such safety (for happiness is not to be dreamed of) as the temperate and moderate, which maintains, as far as poffible, a mediocrity, and a kind of infenfibility, in every thing.

As the good, the great, the sublime, the ravishing are found eminently in the genuine principles of theism; it may be expected, from the analogy of nature, that the bafe, the abfurd, the mean, the terrifying will be difcovered equally in religious fictions and chimeras.

The univerfal propenfity to believe in invifible, intelligent power, if not an original inftinet, being at least a general attendant of human nature, may be confidered as a kind of mark or ftamp, which the divine workman has fet upon his work; and nothing furely can more dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all the other parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impreffion of the univerfal Creator. But confult this image, as it commonly appears in the popular religions of the world. How is the deity disfigured in our representations of him! What caprice, absurdity, and immorality are attributed to him! How much is he degraded even below the character which we should naturally, in common life, afcribe to a man of sense and virtue!

What a noble privilege is it of human reafon to attain the knowledge of the fupreme Being; and, from the vifible works of nature, be enabled to infer so fublime a principle as its fupreme Creator? But turn the reverse of the medal. Survey moft nations and moft ages. Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will fcarcely be perfuaded, that they are other than fick men's dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as the playfome whimfies of monkeys in human fhape, than the ferious, pofitive, dogmatical affeverations of a being, who dignifies himself with the name of rational.

Hear the verbal proteftations of all men: Nothing they are so certain of as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will fcarcely think that they repose the fmallest confidence in them.

The

The greatest and trueft zeal gives us no security against hypocrify: The most open impiety is attended with a fecret dread and compunction.

No theological absurdities so glaring as have not, fometimes, been embraced by men of the greatest and most cultivated understanding. No religious precepts fo rigorous as have not been adopted by the moft voluptuous and moft abandoned of men.

Ignorance is the mother of Devotion: A maxim that is proverbial, and confirmed by general experience. Look out for a people, entirely void of religion: If you find them at all, be affured, that they are but few degrees removed from brutes.

What fo pure as fome of the morals, included in fome theological fyftems? What fo corrupt as fome of the practices, to which these systems give rise ?

The comfortable views exhibited by the belief of futurity, are ravishing and delightful. But how quickly vanish, on the appearance of its terrors, which keep a more firm and durable poffeffion of the human mind?

The whole is a riddle, an ænigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, fufpence of judgment appear the only refult of our most accurate fcrutiny, concerning this fubject. But fuch is the frailty of human reason, and fuch the irrefiftible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarce be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and oppofing one fpecies of fuperftition to another, fet them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obfcure, regions of philofophy.