reconciled to it by ever fo little practice, is agreeable: all fuperftition is for ever odious and burdenfome.

Perhaps the following account may be received as a true folution of the difficulty. The duties which a man performs as a friend or parent, feem merely owing to his benefactor or children; nor can he be wanting to thefe duties without breaking through all the ties of nature and morality. A ftrong inclination may prompt him to the performance: a fentiment of order and moral obligation joins its force to thefe natural ties: and the whole man, if truly virtuous, is drawn to his duty, without any effort or endeavour. Even with regard to the virtues which are more auftere, and more founded on reflection, fuch as public fpirit, filial duty, temperance, or integrity; the moral obligation, in our apprehenfion, removes all pretenfion to religious merit; and the virtuous conduct is deemed no more than what we owe to fociety and to ourselves. In all this, a fuperftitious man finds nothing which he has properly performed for the fake of this deity, or which can peculiarly recommend him to the divine favour and protection. He confiders not, that the moft genuine method of ferving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures. He ftill looks out for fome more immediate service of the Supreme Being, in order to allay thofe terrors with which he is haunted. And any practice recommended to him, which either ferves to no purpose in life, or offers the strongest violence to his natural inclinations; that practice he will the more readily embrace, on account of thofe very circumftances which fhould make him abfolutely reject it. It seems the more purely religious, because it proceeds from no mixture of any other motive or confideration. And if, for its fake, he facrifices much of his ease and quiet, his claim of merit appears ftill to rife upon him in proportion to the zeal and devotion which

he

he difcovers. In reftoring a loan, or paying a debt, his divinity is nowife beholden to him; because these: acts of justice are what he was bound to perform, and what many would have performed, were there. no God in the universe. But if he fast a day, or give himself a found whipping, this has a direct reference, in his opinion, to the fervice of God. No oother motive could engage him to fuch aufterities. By these diftinguifhed marks of devotion, he has now acquired the divine favour; and may expect, in recompence, protection and fafety in this world, and eternal happiness in the next.

Hence the greatest crimes have been found, in many inftances, compatible with a fuperftitious piety and devotion: Hence it is juftly regarded as unsafe to draw any certain inference in favour of a man's morals, from the fervour or ftritnefs of his religious exercifes, even though he himself believe them fin-: cere. Nay, it has been obferved, that enormities of the blackest dye have been rather apt to produce fuperftitious terrors, and encrease the religious paffion." BOMILCAR, having formed a confpiracy for aflaffinating at once the whole fenate of CARTHAGE, and invading the liberties of his country, loft the opportunity, from a continual regard to omens and prophecies. Those who undertake the most criminal and mofł dangerous enterprizes, are commonly the most fuperftitious; as an ancient hiftorian * remarks on this occafion. Their devotion and spiritual 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 after the commiflion of crimes, there arife remorfes and fecret horrors,

* DIOD. SIC. lib. xv.

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CIC. CATIL. i. SALLUST. de bello CATIL.

which

which give no reft to the mind, but make it have recourfe to religious rites and ceremonies, as expiations of its offences. Whatever weakens or diforders. the internal frame promotes the interefts of fuperftition: And nothing is more deftructive to them than. a manly, fteady virtue, which either preferves us from difaftrous, melancholy 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 Supreme 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 univerfally obferve, from the ruling character of the deity in popular religions. Even priests, inftead of correcting thefe 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 measures of acceptance required by him, the more neceffary does it become to abandon our natural reason, and yield to their ghoftly guidance and direction. 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.

THOUGH the ftupidity of men, barbarous and uninftructed, be fo great, that they may not fee a fovereign

vereign author in the more obvious works of nature, to which they are fo much familiarized; yet it fcarcely seems poffible, that any one of good underftanding fhould reject that idea, when once it is fuggefted to him. A purpofe, an intention, a design is evident in every thing; and when our comprehenfion is fo far enlarged as to contemplate the firft rise of this vifible fyftem, we must adopt, with the strongest conviction, the idea of fome intelligent caufe or author. The uniform maxims too, which prevail throughout the whole frame of the univerfe, natur rally, if not neceffarily, lead us to conceive this intelligence as fingle and undivided, where the prejudices of education oppofe not fo reasonable a theory, Even the contrarieties of nature, by difcovering themfelves every where, become proofs of fome confiftent plan, and establish one fingle purpose or intention, however inexplicable and incomprehenfible. !

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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 difadvantages. An univerfal compenfation prevails in all conditions of being and existence. And it is not poffible for us, by our moft chimerical wishes, to form the idea of a ftation 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 prefented altogether pure, it is drawn only, as the fame póct tells us, from the left-handed veffel.

The more exquifite any good is, of which a fmall fpecimen is afforded us, the fharper 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 deepeft melancholy; the most ravishing pleafures are attended with the moft cruel laffitude and disguft; the most flattering hopes make way for the feverett Dd4

difap

disappointments. And, in general, no courfe of life has fuch fafety (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 fublime, 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 equally discovered in religious fictions and chimeras.

The univerfal propenfity to believe in invifible, intelligent power, if not an original inftinct, 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 felected from all other parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impreffion of the univerfal Creator. But confult this image as it appears in the popular religions of the world. How is the deity disfigured in our reprefentations of him! What caprice, abfurdity, 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 fense and virtue !

What a noble privilege is it of human reafon to attain the knowledge of the fupreme Being; and, from the visible works of nature, be enabled to infer fo 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 scarcely be perfuaded, that they are any thing but fick mens dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as the playfome whimfies of monkies in human fhape, than the ferious, pofitive, dogmatical affeverations of a being, who dignifies himfelf with the name of rational..

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