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fidered if not how many, at least who are the believers.

With respect to the minifters, or profeffed teachers of christianity, I am well aware, it will be faid, that, befides the prejudices of education in favour of their religion, in common with the bulk of the people, they are gainers by the fyftem, and therefore that they must be set aside as of no weight in the cafe. I am very ready to own that, in the fe circumftances, their mere profeffion of christianity has no weight, because it is confiftent with real infidelity; but allowing them to be men of sense, ftudy, and inquiry, and withal men of fair moral characters, their fincere belief, of christianity certainly has fome weight, especially in cafes in which the gains of the profeffion do not place them much above the common level of their fellow citizens.

Study and inquiry cannot but be allowed to be, in fome measure, a balance to the prejudices of education, befides that, in numberlefs cafes, this prejudice is much more than balanced by an oppofite one, which is peculiarly incident to ftudious and learned men, viz. the affectation of being thought wifer than our ancestors, and free from vulgar prejudices. As to the emoluments of the christian ministry, they are not so great as to be fufficient, in other cafes, to induce an equal number of men, in fimilar circumftances, to wish to ac

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quire them by the habitual and conftant profeffion of a falfhood.

Setting afide the great dignitaries in the church of Rome or of England, many clergymen, in the latter of these establishments efpecially, who have had no great preferment in the church, men of reading and understanding, have written very able defences of chriftianity.

If it be faid, that thefe men, though but poorly provided for at the time in which they wrote, might have confiderable expectations, and that feveral of them did, in fact, attain to great preferment in the church, in confequence of their defences of chriftianity, this cannot be faid of those diffenting minifters who have defended the fame caufe with equal zeal, and not lefs ability. What advantage did Fofter, Leland, or Lardner gain by the important fervices which they rendered the chriftian caufe? The two former, if I have been rightly informed, died poor, and the laft, befides almost the whole of a very long life, fpent a confiderable part of his own independent fortune in the publication of his works.

If the evidence of fuch men as these must be fet afide, nothing, surely, worth replying to, can be objected to the belief and defence of christianity by fuch men as Locke, Newton, or Hartley; all men of fober minds, in no other refpect the dupes of vulgar prejudice, leaft of all thofe of education; all

of

of them men of ftri&t virtue and integrity, all of them men of the first-rate abilities, the two latter of them efpecially, infinitely fuperior to any of the advocates for infidelity. Thefe men gave the clofeft attention to the fubject, and they were mafters of all the previous knowledge that is requifite to form a competent judgment in the cafe. They certainly could have no views of intereft in their profeffion or defences of chriftianity; and, as men of letters, would probably have gained, rather than have loft any thing, in point of general eftimation, by efpoufing the cause of infidelity. For it can hardly be denied, that the works of fuch men as Mr. Hume and Voltaire, have been much more read and admired in confequence of their being unbelievers, than they would otherwife have been.

It is not eafy, for want of a fufficient knowledge of antient and diftant countries, to compare the ftate of the belief of Judaism and of christianity with that of any fyftem of heathenifm or Mohammedanifm, which are deemed to be falfe both by believers and unbelievers of chriftianity; but as far as we are able to make this comparifon, all the conclufion that can be drawn from it is certainly in favour of the Jewish and chriftian religions. It will not be pretended that fo much as one philofopher, or man of letters, was a ferious believer of any pagan fyftem, notwithstanding their oppofition

to chriftianity at its firft promulgation. In Mohammedan countries there is at prefent very little reading or ftudy, and if we be not mifinformed by fome late travellers, thofe who are addicted to study, or who have any thing of a fpeculative turn, are generally fuppofed to be unbelievers. However, nothing written against their religion was ever read or heard of in any Mohammedan

country.

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Upon the whole, I think we may conclude, at leaft fairly prefume, that no imposture has ever flood fuch a teft as chriftianity has already ftood, without being exploded; and notwithstanding the fpread of infidelity at prefent, yet, confidering among whom it fpreads, and who they are that oppose the spread of it, it can hardly be doubted, by an indifferent fpectator, but that the belief of christianity, so far from being in any danger of becoming extinct, will maintain its ground, and continue to be the ferious belief of the virtuous, the fober-minded, and the learned of the present and future ages; and this will be an omen of its finally triumphing over all oppofition, and of the belief of its coming at length to be univerfal, and undifputed.

Sincere chriftians have no more reafon to be fhocked at the prevalence of infidelity in the prefent age, than at the prevalence of evils in general, or of vice in particular. There can be no doubt

but

but that evils of every kind answer the best of purposes in the fyftem of God's moral government, and that they are a very important part of that most admirable difcipline, by which mankind are training up to the knowledge of truth and the practice of virtue. Nor do I think that it requires any great depth of judgment, or knowledge of human nature, to perceive this.

Suppofing it to be the intention of any person to form a proper number of truly great, excellent, and generous minds, he must place them in a world not lefs abounding with calamity, and even with vice, than this. There could be no dependence either upon the genuineness, or the stability of that virtue which had not been formed, and exercifed, in fuch circumftances.

In like manner, the most rational and the most fteady believer in chriftianity, is the man who has heard and confidered all the ferious objections that unbelievers can make to it, and who has also been expofed to the ridicule with which it is treated by those who have the reputation of men of fenfe, and of being free from vulgar prejudices. The man who has paffed through this trial, whofe faith has not been fhaken, but has been more firmly establifhed by the reafonings of unbelievers; who has not been made afhamed of his profeffion by the ridicule and contempt to which it has expofed him, but who can be content to be ranked among the D 5

fools

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