light and ignorant pretenders to infidelity who have only adopted from others certain licentious maxims which they have not been able to connect with their principles or their confequences; or, whofe powers reach no farther than to indulge a perpetual vein of rude wit, and indecent pleafantry on the fubject of religion. În a difcourfe of this nature, adapted to general inftruction, perfons of this character will perhaps merit our principal attention-becaufe fober and rational infidels are rarely to be met with, while impudent and ignorant men are every where to be found.

In treating of the principles of infidelity, and expofing their criminality and folly, I have avoided entering into any confideration of the excellence of the gofpel, or of the evidence on which it refts. I have confined my attention to unfold thofe guilty and difgraceful caufes that ufually combine their influence to render men enemies to religion. These I have endeavoured to comprehend under the heads of vice, of ignorance, and of vanity-Vice that creates in the heart an inveterate enmity to the law of God, and puts an unjuft bias on the mind

in judging of divine truth-Ignorance that has never seriously and impartially examined the fubject--And Vanity that affumes a falfe and frivolous honor to itfelf for thinking differently from the bulk of mankind.

The first of these causes I have already illuftrated. I proceed to obferve, that

II. Ignorance is a frequent fource of those irreligious principles, and discourses that every where produce fo much evil in fociety. An ignorance as criminal, as it is dif graceful-that fprings as much from the corruption of the heart which is unwilling to fee the truth, as from the defect of the understanding which has never fincerely examined it.

I have not in view at prefent a few philofophic infidels whofe memory the annals of literature have preferved, and who, by wisdom, knew not God-who have left the fame of their genius, with their pernicious writings to infect pofterity-but, who have left alfo their errors, and contradictions to be added to the innumerable proofs which

every age has furnished of the weakness and uncertainty of human reason on all subjects of divine and moral science, when not illuminated by the spirit of God. These ingenious enemies of the gospel, however, have been men of wit rather than of profound talents. Their prejudices have led them to examine the queftion of its truth on one fide only. They have been willing to fee nothing but prefumptions against religion. Diftinguifhed more by the powers of the imagination than by thofe of the understanding, you find them, where they ought to be molt ferious and grave, indulging a perpetual vein of ridicule and wit. The moft philofophic of modern infidels has confeffed that his metaphifical fubtleties are not calculated to produce a clear and fettled conviction of their truth in the mind.* The inaccuracy of Voltaire in hiftory and antiquities, fo neceffary to juft ex

Mr. Hume, after endeavouring, with great ingenuity, to annihilate both the material and the fpiritual world, as they are ufually understood, and to eftablish the principle that nothing exists in the univerfe but various and fucceffive trains of ideas, acknowledges that, although he could find no reafons fufficiently folid to overthrow what he had advanced, yet, he could not act upon his own conclufions, nor, at all times, yield them a clear and unwavering affent.

amination of the authenticity of religion, is almost proverbial. Thefe fubjects he confidered as hardly worthy the attention of an author whofe fame depended folely on his wit.t-But, feparated from his faults, what is he, or the molt famous patrons of an infidel philofophy, compared with the Newtons, the Boyles, the Clarkes, the Warburtons, the Lockes, the Fenelons, the Rollins, the Pascals, and all that endless list of great names, distinguished equally for genius and for piety, who have appeared as the friends of religion, and have brought the most profound and illuftrious talents as a voluntary offering to the foot of the cross.

But these discourses have chiefly in view a class of men very different from the fpe

+ Thomas Paine, in that book of his entitled The Age of Reafen, infinitely exceeds Mr. Voltaire in hiftorical and critical inaccuracy. He has a certain fprightlinefs of manner and boldness of affertion which diftinguifh him; but so totally defective is he in point of erudition, that in no other country but this, where there is much fuperficial reading, but little folid and extenfive learning, could his work have obtained any currency. Thofe of it which have any apparts pearance of reafoning he has borrowed almoft wholly from Mr. Boulanger. For the reft, it is made up of the half-remembered ideas of his childhood, of indigefted criticifms picked up in a loofe reading, and of the moft palpable violations of historical truth.

culative and ingenious unbelivers who have just been named-a clafs to be met with in moft fashionable circles, and, every where, among the fmatterers in knowledge, who are merely the apes of the former. I mean those men of pleasure, who are enemies to religion, because religion is an enemy to their vices-who never have examined the luminous and refpectable evidence on which the gofpel refts-who speak with confidence of what they do not know, and blafpheme what they do not understand -the delight of the frivolous and vain, the oracles of the ignorant-who retail among their companions objections against religion with which they have been furnished by a loofe and defultory reading, or which have passed from mouth to mouth among the libertine and profligate till they have become vulgar and ftale. A great preacher* has happily called them the echoes of infidelity, who juft repeat the blafphemics which they have heard from others--The mere organs of impiety who ferve to convey its traditions from one race to another.