please of their belief in one God, but if they do him no actual homage, if they have no stated seasons and places of devotion, they are in a far worse condition than were those benighted Athenians, whom Paul beheld prostrate at an altar dedicated to "the unknown God." It is the temper, the disposition of infidelity, no less than its preposterous creed, which distances it from the spirit of true worship. Devotion cannot grow in a soil on which the inexpressible levity of scepticism has cast its withering blight. Religious awe cannot be felt in a mind that has no sensible hold of God's moral perfections. Love to God, drawing the soul forth in repeated and habitual acts of grateful adoration, cannot dwell in a heart where worldly lusts and enmity against the moral government of the Most High are struggling for the mastery. The very same thing which led men of old to forsake the worship of the only living and true God, and to betake themselves to the abominations of idolatry, is that which banishes *Acts xvii. 23. from every circle of infidels everything like the semblance of religious homage to the Deity. Is it demanded what this said thing is? I reply, in the language of the Apostle, "they did not like to retain God in their knowledge."* They lost all delight in his holy character, and hence they sought relief for their guilty feelings in the exercises of a religion which corresponded with the dictates of their own impure hearts. Deists are placed somewhat peculiarly. As they are found only where Revelation has either completely banished the grossness of idolatry, or where, at least, it has shed its benignant rays, they cannot for shame revel in the impurities of heathenism; but as they take no delight whatever in the character of that one God whom they profess to adore, they live in the habitual and avowed neglect of his worship. The ancestors of paganism forsook his worship, "because they did not like to retain him in their thoughts;" and for the same reason precisely infidelity has no temple, no altar, no sacrifice, no avowed, * Rom. i. 28. habitual, and well-defined worship to that glorious Being, from the near contemplation of whose character it shrinks with instinctive dislike and dread. 'Could we see infidelity cultivating the spirit of prayer, laying aside its extreme and disgusting levity, and evincing an anxiety to arrive at the true knowledge of God, we should begin to hope on behalf of its unhappy victims; but reckless as its advocates are of all devotion, and leaning as they do to their own understanding, and evincing an utter contempt for every thing sacred, we are compelled to look on them as in a condition peculiarly hopeless, and must say respecting them "There is no fear of God before their eyes." CHAPTER III. A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE CHARACTER OF THAT MORALITY WHICH INFIDELITY INCULCATES AND DISPLAYS. ALL who read the Bible attentively, whatever they may think of its divine origin, must be struck with the perfection of its moral precepts, and especially with the sublime and cogent reasons which it assigns for the performance of every duty which we owe both to God and man.* of That monster of wickedness, Thomas Paine, whom no man that ever knew could trust, has said respecting the Bible-"I feel for the honour my Creator in having such a book called after his name." He must surely have meant, that he felt for himself, when he discovered in the Bible, if he ever read it, such an array of holy and benevolent precepts upon which it had been his * See the second part of this Treatise, chap. i. sect. 3. habitual practice, during a long life, to trample with proud disdain! The morality of the Bible is not the morality of mere decorum, the garnishing of the outward man, the “making clean the outside of the cup and platter;" it is the morality of principle,—it is the morality of right dispositions,—it is the morality of love to God and love to man. Infidelity says, "there is no merit or crime in intention;" but Christianity says, that hatred is murder,* that secret lust is adultery,t and that we must "love the Lord our God with all our heart, and strength, and mind, and our neighbour as ourselves."+ It prohibits the resentment of injuries, and urges the forgiveness of enemies.§ It tells us, "to weep with them that weep, and rejoice with them that rejoice."|| forces every relative duty by an appeal to motives equally tender and sublime, ¶ and it demands a personal sanctity of manners, which admits of no reserve, and leaves room for the * 1 John, iii. 14, 15. It en + Matt. xxvii. 28. Eph. v. 25. vi. 1, 5—9. |