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like clouds, darkening this or that principle of Christianity, till they are puffed away by some new wind of doctrine. Shameful cause! that stands in so much need of craft to support it, and, not daring to shew its face, is forced not only to wear a mask, but to change it almost every day, lest it should be known for the same detestable fiend, already detected as the author of infinite mischief. To feed their disciples with a sufficient change of new varieties, they sometimes invent new religions, which serve almost as well to hurt the true one, as turning the coat of Deism. About twenty years ago, Mr. Puppy, who is a most sufficient gentleman, and an Atheist, was greatly admired, at least by himself, for a new kind of pick-tooth of his own invention, which he wittily called his chaplain, because it took his meat from between his teeth; this extraordinary success having discovered to him the force of his own genius, he afterward invented a new religion, which had somewhat in it extremely parallel to his pick-tooth; for it was wholly calculated to remove the remaining scruples of such as have not yet arrived at perfect Atheism. This he preached up with a bottle in his hand, and got six disciples. Puppy's turn of mind in this invention, is so common, that it enters into all the modernised books wrote on religious subjects, which the authors, not knowing how otherwise to render curious, fashionable, and vendible, stuff with new-invented anodynes, that never fail to be swallowed with a most ridiculous greediness. Such, sir, are the teachers of libertinism, and such their arts, by which, as if truth and falsehood, good and evil, had changed their clothes, the dispute about religion is turned into a mere masquerade of opinions.

Temp. It was not, indeed, by such teachers, nor after such a manner, that Christianity was introduced into the world. To a sensible and ingenuous mind the different methods of recommending and propagating the true religion on the one side, and of insinuating infidelity on the other, are alone sufficient to determine its choice in favour of the former.

Shep. Nothing can be more true, as will appear upon a short comparison. The unaffected simplicity and purity of the gospel style, the calmness and force with which the most

sublime and surprising precepts, the most important and alarming events, the strongest reasonings, and the most beautiful allusions, are delivered in the writings of the New Testament, shew plainly, that it was dictated by him who can thunder through a serene sky, and not by man, who, as the excellent Mr. West observes, could not, on subjects so apt to engage the heart, and fire the imagination, have abstained, if left to himself, from ecstasies and transports, nor from the highest decorations a rhetorical or poetical invention could have suggested. God manifested in the flesh, laid in a manger, educated by illiterate parents, and yet uttering such things as never man spoke; instructing men in more than human wisdom, and to more than human goodness; revealing the most stupendous mysteries; commanding the winds and storms, conquering diseases, death, devils; yet submitting to all sorts of indignities with patience; doing good, and receiving evil without the usual discomposure of an injured person in the one, or the least air of a benefactor in the other; spit upon, buffeted, ridiculed, with the silence and resignation of a lamb; sweating blood, agonizing in perfect health, replying to bitter taunts with tender and compassionate prayers, and at last, although the King of kings, and Lord of lords, dying the death of a slave! What mere human historian could preserve a temper in writing of such things? And yet they are delivered without the least transport or embellishment; as if he who wrote them had been used to see or do the like; and indeed he was; for it was God. Yet calm, cool, and sedate, as the style of the New Testament is, it abounds with such instances of the true sublime, as are sufficient to render perfectly despicable, on a comparison, the most exalted flights of Homer, Virgil, and Milton; on a comparison, give me leave to say, between those flights in their original dress, the most advantageous that human genius could give them, and the scriptural passages in a literal and bald translation. The Scriptures, intended for translation into all languages, place all their grandeur, force, and pathos, wholly in the sentiment, and borrow nothing from the diction but simple expression. With what raptures would a judicious critic be transported, should he see, in a heathen poet, such strokes of the calm and concise sublime, as these! He rebuked the winds and

the sea, and there was a great calm: I will, be thou healed; and he became whole: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do: Out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword; his countenance was as the sun shining in his strength, and his voice as the sound of many waters: I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them.' What is the silent sublime of Ajax and Dido, if compared to that of our blessed Saviour, when, on the crowing of the cock, he turned and looked at Peter? So much for the style of the gospel. As for the behaviour of those who preached it, nothing could discover an equal degree of truth and dignity. It was, like their style, great in the midst of simplicity, majestic in the midst of modesty and submission. The light that shone both from their words and actions, was as the sun in his strength, illustrious, uniform, and reviving. On the other hand, the apostles of libertinism are full of noise and sputter; and their style pompous on groveling subjects, and low on the sublime; ridiculous on serious, disingenuous on religious, and obscure on familiar topics, with a world of conceit and affectation. As to their conduct in propagating infidelity, it is made up of lies, chicane, and hypocrisy, employed in tutoring their readers to dishonesty, lewdness, and pollutions more than brutal, in the midst of shameless professions of sincerity and piety. Their performances play, at first, like a lambent flame about the heart, which they soon kindle into a volcano, wherein every combustible passion is set on fire, and every virtue consumed. Christianity, sir, owes its propagation to miracles; infidelity, to a love of vice: Christianity was preached to the world in simplicity; infidelity, in false eloquence and buffoonery: Christianity was vouched for by the martyrdom of its preachers; infidelity, by the gross chicane and dissimulation of its authors: Christianity came from God, who sent it into the world through the very best of men; infidelity came from the devil, who propagates it among unhappy mortals, predisposed to wickedness, by instruments exactly resembling himself.

Temp. Were there not men who are already fools by mere defect of understanding, and want to be villains on principle, the teachers of libertinism could never make a sin

gle disciple: no kind of author can insult his readers so grossly as he who treats them like fools and blockheads. All cunning writers do this; but, having, for the most part, silly people to deal with, there is no offence taken: and others, who have more sense, shut their eyes and swallow, because the potion is luscious. Had they not a most vehement thirst for it, the shocking conduct of those who administer it could not fail to prove it poison: for what else can come from such infamous dissemblers? The very men who, in their writings, affect such an air of piety, fill their conversation with blasphemy: they talk sometimes in a high strain about virtue, yet stick at no kind nor degree of wickedness, no enormity. In order to qualify for a place under the crown, they will receive the sacrament between two horrible debauches, in which more sorts of crimes than one are committed; although, by conforming to that holy ordinance, they declare, as strongly as actions can do, that they worship Christ as their God and Saviour, whom all the world knows, they believe to have been a mere impostor. This, however, gives no disgust nor alarm to their disciples, who, of all men, are the most stupidly, and the most slavishly blinded, by a high opinion of their leaders. People of little understanding are extremely apt to hold, in a strange degree of admiration, the capacities and persons of men, who are much above them in knowledge; and this, as I have found by myself, is the source of infinite mischief. I knew the writers, on both sides of the controversy about Christianity, were greatly superior to me in understanding; and as I had, therefore, no rule to measure altitudes, in my opinion, so much transcending my own, I imagined the libertine apostles overtopped the Christian, for no other reason, perhaps, but because their style is more pompous, their matter more uncommon and surprising, and because they always assert with confidence, and censure with contempt. Like precipices, that shew all their elevation at once, they seemed more lofty than they really were; while the Christian writers, either rising more gradually, or being set at a greater distance, lost, in my estimation, one half of their height. I was guided by Gibson and Conybeare to the top of a mountain, without perceiving myself considerably raised above the plain; Shaftsbury and Tindal transported me suddenly,

and, as it were, by magic art, to the brow of a precipice, which, although not higher than an ordinary hill, turned my head, and made it giddy. The conceit of younger libertines is, I assure you, far from preventing in them a most slavish admiration of those who lead the way to infidelity; nor can all their airy notions of thinking freely, and for themselves, arm them against swallowing by the lump, with a most implicit resignation, such doctrines of their libertine teachers, as ten thousand miracles could not reconcile them to, did those doctrines make a part of revelation.

Shep. THERE are few men, who have leisure, inclination, and capacity, to make a competent search into the abstruse controversies about the nature of man, upon which others, equally difficult, about morality and religion, have been founded. In these no safe determination can be expected, without such intense thinking, and such a stock of learning, as fall to the lot of only one among a thousand yet the rest, who have narrow talents, and little knowledge, must have their opinions about these matters, and must set up for as high assurance in those opinions, as the few, to whom nature and education have been kinder.

Temp. If it requires so great a degree of capacity and learning, to determine the controversy about Christianity, either that controversy may be decided by something else than reason and study, or the ignorant part of mankind cannot be Christians on a rational footing: from whence it will follow, that it must be every whit as hard to reason one's self into Christianity, as out of it.

Shep. This, indeed, would follow, if there were no other way of satisfying our reason about the merits of this dispute, but by a learned disquisition. This is not really the case; for there is a short method, by which the illiterate may be safely determined whether the Christian religion ought to be adhered to, or not; and a longer for the learned. As to the first, the ignorant can easily proceed thus with himself: Can I be happy in myself, or do my duty to the community, without living an innocent and virtuous life? Will my natural ignorance and corruption suffer me to lead such a life, without the instructions and sanctions of revealed religion? Of all the religions in the world, that pre

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