But perhaps there may be some reflection insinuated against the maintainers of Christianity, as they are paid for doing it. The fact is true, and it is an honour to them, that they are paid by the public. It is an argument that what they teach is conformable, in the main, to the general sentiments of the wisest and best men amongst us, is the sense of the legislature, and voice of the whole nation; not private persuasions: a circumstance, as I conceive, very much in their favour, and, other things supposed equal, a presumption that truth is with them, rather than the contrary. Besides such public allotments are so many testimonies given to the dignity and usefulness of their ministry, like as in other useful and honourable employments, civil and military. And what can be the reason that Deism, which has subsisted now for 2000 years, or more, (reckoning from the days of Epicurus,) should never yet meet with any kingdom or state, among Pagans, Jews, Mahometans, or Christians, that should judge it a thing proper to be supported at the public charge, or worth the rewarding? I forbear to say more. Let those gentlemen then go and tell it abroad, as much or as often as they please, that the ministers of Christ are paid for defending Christianity, or hired to do it, (for so they love to express it ;) it is all very well, so long as the labourers are worthy of their hire". And when those other gentlemen shall please to produce any thing as useful to society as Christianity is, and as beneficial to mankind, here and hereafter, then may they also reasonably hope for the like honour of being paid by the public for it. It is neither mean nor blameworthy in the general, to take rewards for good services; but it is always a fault to serve as volunteers in bad ones. Those that defend Christianity do the thing that is right, (whatever their motives be;) while those that either corrupt it, mutilate it, or discard it, do wrong, which makes a sensible difference. As to motives, here or there, the favourable presumption will always lie on the side of the religious, that their motives are not merely secular, because they believe in a judgment to come, which their accusers despise. Christians may act purely upon secular motives, but infidels of course will therefore let them not reproach us on this head. may be practicable to turn the current of public repute, or however to bear up against it, for a time. These things considered, I do not think it so hard to account for some men's zeal in spreading Atheism or Deism, as for their being Atheists or Deists. a Christianity as Old as the Creation, p. 165, 233, 234, 305. r Luke x. 7. I have but one thing further to add upon the subject of priestcraft, namely, that after all the clamours which have been raised about it in this Protestants kingdom, I cannot yet perceive any great danger there is of it; except it be from that very quarter from whence all the clamour comes. Indeed if Deism should once spread among the laity, it may in time insinuate itself further; and then probably priestcraft may be the consequence for the most noted masters of that craft (such for instance as Pope Leo the Tenth) have been shrewdly suspected to have been Deists or Infidels in masquerade, by some loose sayings which they dropped. The sons of Eli before mentioned, as infamous for priestcraft, "were sons of Belial; they knew not "the Lord :" they were practical infidels, if not more. Wherever there is most infidelity, there in all likelihood will be the most craft and guile of every kind. Men that seriously fear God and reverence sacred Writ, will of course abhor both priestcraft and anti-priestcraft: but infidels, in a sacerdotal capacity, or out of it, may be prepared for any cunning craftiness whatever. Therefore, I say, the introducing and propagating of infidelity is the likeliest means to bring in priestcraft. The same thing is further evident in another view: indifference to all religions saps the principles of the Reformation, and tends to prepare men equally, either for no religion, or for any corrupt religion that may offer. Besides, all confusion and distraction in religion amongst us weakens the Protestant interest; and whatever that loses, another interest gains. So that infidelity in this light can serve only to pave the way for the return of antiquated superstitions, and to bring priestcraft in again at a back door. Con s The words of a learned Protestant abroad may here be properly inserted. An est religio reformata politiæ in totum adaptata? An in verbi divini præconum emolumentum concinnata, quorum stipendia plerisque in locis ad assem usque definita sunt? An est horum pietas ars et purus putus quæstus? An vendunt sacra? An falsis miraculis et fabulis anilibus vulgus imperitum decipiunt, nisi pias conciones de Deo et Christo, de nostri Salvatoris ejusque Apostolorum miraculis, de pœnis et præmiis post mortem, commenta esse velit Adeisidæmon, qui, nisi me fallit mens, id non diffitebitur? An fraudes et men dacia aucupantur ii qui populo nudam veritatem ex sacris literis exponunt?- -Ubinam igitur sunt tot et tantæ fraudes et nundinationes omnium religionum sacerdotum, et eorum qui sacris præsunt, et unquam aut usquam præfuerunt, ne quidem exceptis Judæis, Christianis, et Reformatis (qui redivivi sunt Christiani) ab Adeisidæmone tam confidenter decantatæ, et tam audacter exprobratæ ? Nullibi, ut puto, extant, nisi in deliris Atheorum cerebellis, et in religionis hostium scommatibus et convitiis. Fayi Defens. Relig. cont. Toland. p. 60, 61. t 1 Sam. ii. 12. sistent men these all the while! to be perpetually declaiming against priesteraft, and at the same time labouring to the utmost (knowingly or ignorantly) to introduce it. To be short, the only sure way to keep out priestcraft is to exclude infidelity; to reverence the Bible; to support a Protestant government and a Protestant Clergy; to esteem those of the Clergy that honour God, and deserve well of their function; and when any of them misbehave, either to cover their faults, or to prosecute them in legal form, that so all scandals may be put away from us. 7. The seventh and last article of impeachment against the Christian religion is that of imposture: an odious charge, a compendious calumny, all reproaches in one. I need not be long in answering it, having in a great measure anticipated myself already under the former heads. That there is an imposture somewhere is very certain: and the only question is, who are the impostors? Reckon up the marks and characters of an imposture" apply them, first, to Christ and his doctrine and followers, and see whether they will fit; and next apply them to Hobbes, Spinoza, &c. and their doctrines and followers, and see whether they will not fit. What can we think of men who set themselves up, in the name of God, uncalled, and as rival teachers to Moses and the Prophets, to Christ and his Apostles: who recommend their own loose systems in the room of God's word, and substitute their reveries in the place of the Bible: whose religion is nobody knows what, because it is to be what every man shall carve out for himself by his own internal light; and likely to be as various as men's capacities, tempers, circumstances, or faces: whose morality, short and superficial at the best, is further defective as wanting a proper authority to support it, and sanctions to bind it, and so is next to no morality; fraud. 6. That when intrusted with many conspirators, it can never be long concealed. 7. That it can never be established, unless backed with force and violence. Prideaux, Letter to Deists, p. 7. x It is doubtful whether those gentlemen, many of them, admit any future state at all. To say nothing of Acosta, or other single writers that absolutely rejected it, the Pantheists (who are thought to make the most considerable body) plainly discard it, if we may judge from their own sys F and whose virtue is little more than an idea, or a dead and empty namey. Whose God is either universal nature, (no God at all, in any proper sense,) or else a kind of Epicurean Deity, tied up from interposing at all by miracles, and from issuing out any positive laws, and from making any rule or order in things indifferent here, and from doing exemplary justice upon sinners hereafter: for such his vindictive justice is profanely miscalled or misconstrued spite, wrath, malice, revenge, tyrannya, and the like. As Epicurus's principal aim, after courteously acknowledging a Deity, was to divest him of his rule and governance, and to disarm him of his terrors; so modern Deism evidently centres in the same design, and differs only in a few slight circumstances, as to the manner of pursuing it. Now what is all this wild doctrine, this compound of profaneness and absurdities, (so solemnly delivered out in the face of the world,) but a fraud and imposition upon the public, a cheat upon the populace, a formal imposture? And if I be not very much mistaken, it is an imposture of a more pernicious nature, and of a more fatal tendency, (were it possible it should ever prevail,) than any other noted imposture whatsoever, ancient or modern. Mahometism, Paganism, and paganized Christianity, amidst a great deal of rubbish, have yet retained the prime 66 66 tems. "Ut omnium rerum nobis " initium ortus attulit, sic adferet 66 mors exitum : ut horum nihil ad nos ante ortum pertinuit, sic nihil post mortem pertinebit." Pantheisticon, p. 71. Some that seem to admit a future state, yet plainly reject future penalties. See two Letters from a Deist to his Friend, p. 2, 17, 19. The author of Christianity as Old &c. declares against all future penalties, but such as shall be for the amendment of the party, (ch.iv.) which may amount to declaring against all, unless he admits a purgatory; which he has not yet mentioned. He declares also against punishment having any retrospect, because "what is "past cannot be helped," (Second Address, p. 7.) which, in effect, is declaring against all proper punishment for sins; and is exempting the obstinate and incorrigible, who most deserve punishment, from being punished at all. y See Scripture Vindicated, vol. iv. part 2. p. 286, &c. z See Wollaston's Religion of Nature delineated, p. 76. 42. a See Christianity as Old &c. p. 38, b Tu denique, Epicure, Deum inermem facis, omnia illi tela, omnem detraxisti potentiam; et ne cuiquam metuendus esset, projecisti illum extra motum. Hunc igitur inseptum ingenti quodam et inexplicabili muro, divisumque a contactu, et a conspectu mortalium, non habes quare verearis: nulla illi nec tribuendi, nec nocendi materia est. Seneca de Benef. lib. iv. cap. 19. p. 436. c Cæterum, ut olim obtrectatoribus ethnicis imposturas Christianismo objicientibus, reponebat Origenes (lib. vi. contr. Celsum) ipsos impostores esse omnium maximos; ad eundem modum et nos in novos illos philosophos [Hobbium, Spinosam, &c.] hanc facem retorquemus, fraudumque eos et imposturarum postulamus. Kortholt. de tribus Impostoribus magnis, p. 3, 4. fundamentals of virtue and godliness; viz. the belief of a God and a providence, the immortality of the soul, and a future judgment, together with eternal rewards and punishments: but infidelity, or modern Deism, (which is little else but revived Epicureism, Sadducism, and Zendichism,) is so exceeding loose upon the heads aforementioned, that one knows not what solid foundation it leaves, or whether any, for virtue and godliness to rest upon. In this view, therefore, it must appear the most pernicious imposture that the world has yet known. Then as to the method of promoting it, it is such as threatens the destruction of all sincerity and common probity. The strength of it lies wholly in falsification, stratagem, and wile. It cannot be pleaded for decently, without disowning it, verbally, at the same time, and without making it pass for the very reverse of what it really is. Never was there such an abuse of good words, or such a misapplication of bad ones, in any other cause, nor ever will be. Truth, reason, morality, virtue, natural religion, internal revelation, Christianity, are all of them made names or titles for libertinism and irreligion; while credulity, bigotry, &c. are made the names for true religion and godliness: which is miscalling evil good, and good evil, in a detestable manner, and to a degree beyond example. These things considered, I scruple not to repeat, that there never was a greater or a more unnatural imposture offered to the world, than what is seen in modern deism, or infidelity. : I do not hereby intend to deny all degrees in infidelity, or to condemn all equally the infidel schemes are various, and some worse than others. Pantheism, for instance, and Hobbism are scandalously bad, scarce differing from the broadest Atheism : and Fatalism, in effect, is but little better. There may be modester schemes than these. But yet take the best and most refined system of Deism, that either has been or can be invented, and what is it (in our present circumstances) but the folly of man, set up in opposition to the wisdom of Heaven? a confused medley of jarring sentiments, huddled up together blindly and presumptuously, without God and against God? I mean no reflection here upon natural religion; which (abstracted from revealed, after borrowing much from it) is an excellent thingd, d There are several good systems of natural religion, but three more particularly, drawn up by three able men, Cumberland, Wilkins, and Wollaston; who all took a rational and consistent way, and such as must in |