to this priest? Would it not be that which taught only the adoration of one God, justice, forbearance and humanity ?

SIXTH QUESTION.

The religion of the Gentiles is said to be absurd in several points, contradictory, and pernicious. But have not its evils and follies been greatly exaggerated? Jupiter's carrying on his amours in the shapes of a swan and a bull, with other such doings of the Pagan deities, is certainly the height of ridicule ; but let any one, throughout all antiquity, show me a temple dedicated to Leda, lying with a swan or a bull. Did Athens or Rome ever hear a sermon to encourage girls to copulate with the swans in their court-yards? Did the collection of fables, so beautifully embellished by Ovid, constitute their religion? Are they not like our Golden Legend, or Flower of the Saints? Should some Bramin or dervise object to the story of St. Mary the Egyptian, who, not having wherewith to pay the sailors, who had brought her into Egypt, voluntarily granted to each of them, in lieu of money, what is called favours; we should immediately say to the Bramin, You are mistaken, father; the Golden Legend is not our religion.

We taunt the ancients with their prodigies and oracles; but could they return on earth, and were the miracles of our lady of Loretto, and those of our lady of Ephesus, to be numbered, in whose favour would the balance of the account be?

Human sacrifices have been introduced almost among all nations, but very rarely were they practised. Jephthah's daughter and king Agag are the only two we meet with among the Jews, for Isaac and Jonathan were not sacrificed. The Grecian story of Iphigenia is not thoroughly verified: human sacrifices are very rarely heard of among the ancient Romans; in a word, very little blood has the Pagan religion shed, and ours has made the earth an aceldama. Ours, to be sure, is the only good, the only true religion; but, by our abuse of it, we have done so much mischief, that, when we speak of other religions, it should be with temper and modesty.

SEVENTH QUESTION.

If a man would recommend his religion to strangers, or his countrymen, should he not go about it with the most winning composure, the most insinuating mildness? If he

sets out with saying, that what he declares is demonstrably true, he will meet with strong opposition; and, if he takes upon him to tell them that they reject his doctrine, only because it condemns their passions; that their hearts have corrupted their minds; that they have only a false and presumptuous reason; he excites their contempt and resentment, and overthrows what he intended to build up.

If the religion which he preaches be true, will passion and insolence add to its truth? Do you storm and rage, when you say that men should be mild, patient, benevolent, just, exact in the discharge of all the duties of society? No; here every body is of your mind; why, then, such virulent language to your brother, when you are preaching to him metaphysical mysteries? It is because his good sense irritates your selflove. You proudly require that your brother should submit his understanding to yours; and pride, disappointed, blazes into rage; from hence, and hence only, arises your passion. A man who receives ever so many musket-shots in a battle, is never seen to express any anger; but a doctor, at the denial of assent, kindles into implacable fury.

RESURRECTION.

THE Egyptians are said to have built their superb pyramids only for tombs, where their bodies, being embalmed outwardly and inwardly, lay till, at the expiration of a thousand years, their souls returned into them. But, if their bodies were to come to life again, as it was their first operation, why did the embalmers pierce the skull with a hook, and draw out the brain? To think of a man's coming to life again without brains, inclines one to apprehend that the Egyptians had little or none when living; but it must be considered, that most of the ancients believed the soul to reside in the breast. And why in the breast sooner than any other part? because it is well known, that under all our sensations, if any thing violent, we feel a dilatation or contraction about the region of the heart; and this produced the opinion, that there was the soul's residence. This soul was something ærial, a light figure roving about where it could, till it had joined its body again.

The belief of the resurrection is much more ancient than the historical times. Athaladas, Mercury's son, could die and come to life again at pleasure; Esculapius restored Hippolitus to life; Hercules conferred the like kindness on Al

cestes; and Pelops, who had been cut into pieces by his father, the gods made whole again. Plato relates that Heres returned to life only for a fortnight.

It was not till a very long time after Plato, that the Pharisees among the Jews, adopted the tenet of the resurrection.

The Acts of the Apostles mention a very singular transaction, and well worthy of notice. St. James, and several of his companions advised St. Paul, though so thorough a Christian, to go into the temple of Jerusalem, and observe all the ceremonies of the ancient law, to the end all may know, say they, that every thing which is said of you is false, and that you still continue to observe Moses's law.

St. Paul accordingly went into the temple for seven days; but being known on the seventh, he was accused of having brought strangers into it, with a view of profaning it.

Now-Paul, perceiving that some of the crowd were Sadducees and others Pharisees, cried out in the council, "Brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; it is for the hope of another life, and the resurrection of the dead, that I am in danger of being condemned." Acts, xxiii. 6. In all this affair, not a word had been said about the resurrection of the dead; but Paul's drift, in mentioning it, was to create a quarrel between the Pharisees and Sadducees.

"And Paul having said, there arose a dissention between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the multitude was divided," ver. 7.

"For the Sadducees say, there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both," &c. ver. 8.

It has been affirmed, that Job, who doubtless is of great antiquity, was acquainted with the doctrine of the resurrection; and, in proof of it, the following words are quoted: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that one day his redemption will rise on me, or that I shall rise again from the dust; that my skin will return; and that I shall again see God in my flesh."

But several commentators understand no more by these words, than that Job hopes he shall soon get over his distemper, and shall not always be lying in the ground, as he then was. The sequel sufficiently proves the truth of this explanation; for the moment he cries out to his false and harsh friends, "Why then, say you, Let us persecute him; or because you shall say, Because we have persecuted him." Does not this evidently mean, you will repent of having insulted me, when

you shall see me again in my former state of health and opulence? A sick person says, I shall recover; not, I shall rise from the dead. To give forced meanings to clear passages, is the sure way not to understand one another.

According to St. Jerome, the sect of the Pharisees began but a very little time before Jesus Christ. Rabbi Hillel is accounted its founder, and he was contemporary with Gamaliel, St. Paul's master.

Many of these Pharisees believed, that it was only the Jews who were to rise again; and that, as to the rest of mankind, they were not worth while. Others affirmed that the resurrection would be only in Palestine, and that bodies buried in other parts, would be secretly conveyed to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, there to be united to their souls. St. Paul tells the inhabitants of Thessalonica, "That the second coming of Jesus Christ is for them and for him, and that they shall be witnesses of it."

"For, on the signal being given by the archangel and the trumpet of God, the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, and they who shall have died in Jesus Christ shall rise first :" verse 16. "Then we who are alive, and who shall have remained till then, shall be caught up with them into the clouds, to go and meet the Lord in the air; and thus we shall live for ever with the Lord :" verse 17, 1 Thessalonians, chap. iv.

Does not this important passage evidently prove, that the first Christians made themselves sure that they should see the end of the world? and St. Luke actually foretells it, as what should happen in his life-time.

St. Austin thinks that children, and even still-born infants, shall rise at the age of maturity. Origen, Jerome, Athanasius, and Basil, did not believe that women were to rise again with the distinctions of sex. In a word, there have ever been disputes about what we were, what we are, and what we shall be.

SENSATION.

OYSTERS, we are told, have two senses, moles four, and other animals, like men, have five. Some are for admitting a sixth; but it is evident that the voluptuous sensation, which is what they mean, comes within the touch; and that five senses make up our whole portion. We cannot conceive or desire any thing beyond.

The inhabitants of other globes may have senses which we know nothing of: the number of the senses may gradually increase from globe to globe; and the being endued with innumerable senses, and all perfect, may be the apex or period of all beings.

Though possessing our five organs, what power have we over them? It is always involuntarily that we feel, and never from our own inclination; in the presence of the object, it is impossible not to have the sensation appointed by our nature. The sensation, though in us, does not at all depend on us; we receive it, and in what manner? Is there any affinity between the vibrations of the air, the words of a song, and the impression which these words make on my brain?

Thought seems to us somewhat strange; but sensation is no less wonderful: a divine power equally shows itself in the sensation of the meanest insect, as in a Newton's brain. Yet at seeing thousands of little animals destroyed, you are not in the least concerned what becomes of their sensitive faculty, though this faculty be the work of the Being of beings. You look on them as machines in nature, born to perish and make room for others.

Wherefore, and how, should their sensations subsist, when they no longer exist? What need is there for the author of every thing that has being, to preserve properties of which the subject is extinct? It may as well be said, that the power of the sensitive plant to draw in its leaves towards its twigs, subsists when the plant is withered. Here, undoubtedly, it will be asked how it is, that the sensation of animals perishing with them, man's faculty survives him? That is a question beyond the verge of my knowledge; all I can say to it is, the eternal Author, both of sensation and thought, alone knows how he imparts it, and how he preserves it.

After

It was the current opinion of all antiquity, that nothing is in our understanding which was not before in our senses. Descartes, in his Philosophical Romances, advanced, that we had metaphysical ideas before we so much as knew our nurse's breasts. A college of divines condemned this dogma, not because it was error, but a novelty: afterwards it adopted this very error, because it had been overthrown by Locke. such shifts of opinion, it has again proscribed that ancient truth, that the senses are the inlets to the understanding. It seems to have acted like governments loaded with debts, sometimes giving a currency to certain notes, and afterwards suppressing them. But the notes of this college have, for some time, quite lost their credit.