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the witnesses of thofe miracles continue still rebellious and incorrigible. Either Mofes and Aaron did not work the miracles, or the people did not murmur; they can not stand together, and if either be incorrect the book is falfe and deferves no credit. Mofes tells God that the people are about to stone him-What! stone a man to death who had wrought so many miracles in their prefence (chap. 17, v. 4) this account defeats itself and overturns completely the pretended divine origin of this book. Boulanger, in his excellent work entitled Christianity Unveiled, fays, "If the Jews demanded the death of Fesus his miracles are at once annihilated in the mind of every reasonable man." The fame objection in spirit and prin ciple will apply in the prefent cafe. If the chofen band, if the followers of Mofes were about to stone their leader to death, it proves indubitably that he had wrought no miracles in their prefence; for furely they would not lay violent hands upon a man who had heaven and earth at his command, and who could bend as he pleased the laws of nature to the purposes of the people's falvation of destruction. If they did not threaten to stone him to death, the book which fays they did tells a lie, and of courfe de ferves no credit. In either of thefe cafes the advocates of revelation are placed in a dilemma from which there appears no pofsible efcape. They must either give up their miracles, or they must give up the veracity of the book; either would be equally fatal to them and com pleatly destroy the divinity of the fcheme. We will thank the reverend clergy of the Christian churth, when they have leifure, to folve this difficulty.

Truth rests upon its own intrinsic merit; absurd systems of religion must be guaranteed by civil and ecclesiastical laws.

All the errors of antiquity have concentrated around themselves a phyfical force, and it is from this quarter

they have received protection, and not from that moral evidence which is the only fure and folid fupport to any truths whatever. It is strange that the nature of the hu man understanding, the character of moral feience, and the connection fubfisting between the two, have not taught the human race leffons more favourable to the augmentation of happiness, and better calculated to destroy thofe deep rooted prejudices and destructive errors by which the world has been held in bondage for ages past. It is the height of ignorance or impudence to prefume that the mind can be forced to receive as true, opinions not fupported by a fufficient weight of evidence to produce a folid and fatisfactory conviction; yet historic facts stare us full in the face upon this fubject, and we are destined to pass retrofpectively over the ages of our ances. tors, recognizing at every step the fatal departures from: all the moral rules by which the mind of man fhould be influenced in his refearches after truth. The laws of nature poffefs an unchangeable character, the mind bears a certain and constant relation to thefe laws, and these two confiderations united give to the nature of moral truth thofe fettled qualities which annihilate the neceffity of employing the phyfical force for the purpose of protection. Truth will protect itself, if civil and ecclefiastical defpotifin would leave it to its own native operations, and give to it a fair opportunity, of difplaying the inherent and effential excellence of its own nature. Civil andecclefiastical defpots, however, the priviledged junto of impostors, the pests and vipers of focial life, the mere blood fuckers of the moral world, who prey upon the very vitals of fociety-this phalanx, fo hostile to all the great concerns of man, have thought it for their interest to mif. lead the understanding, and pervert the moral propenfities of the human heart. Instead of augmenting the activity of mind, they have constantly thrown over it a gloom, and infufed into it ideas of a notorious kind, fubverfive of all strong attachment to the caufe of truth, and calculated to annihi. late the most exalted happinefs of which man is fufcepti ble. In no cafe.whatever has the inveterate malignity of

civil and ecclefiastical tyrants, fhewn itfelf more strikingly, than in the establishment of corrupt institutions, and afterwards protecting thofe institutions by the phyfical powers of individuals and of nations. Cold steel is with them the only argument in this world, and a hell of fire and brimstone, in the next. All the theological systems of antiquity have come down to our times guarded by confiderations of this kind, and the advocates of this fpecies of infult have the impudence to make an open decla. ration that they only are the friends of truth and religion. The history of this country, and of the civilized parts of Europe, fhews what ideas the strong adherents to Christianity have entertained relative to the nature of religious truth and the means of its propagation through the world. The state and the church entered into combination, either legally or virtually, and the object of this combination was to force upon the great mals of fociety the doctrines and opinions which they had denominated divine. Thefe doctrines were often mysterious, and generally partook of a marvalous character; they were generally abfurd, and fuch as reafon held in abhorrence. In proportion, however, as they appeared to be inconsistent and abfurd, their pious friends exhibited one extraordinary anxiety relative to their belief and propagation. An examination of the laws of England will demon. strate the truth of this pofition. The acts of legiflative bodies in this country, particularly in the earlier period of its fettlement, and during the greater part of the time anterior to the revolution, will furnish tef timonies of a fimilar nature. Thefe two countries, ge nerally confidered, the most free and the most enlightened upon the earth, have difgraced the annals of the legiflative history, by the enaction of laws relative to religion, which ought to be defined public acts of perfecution against reafon. The doctrine of the trinity, is, perhaps, of all other doctrines, the most mysterious, and the most unreasonable. It was on this account that it was felected. as a fpecial object of legiflative protection: the friends of revelation knew that it could not stand by its own inter

nal merits and confistency; they therefore encircled it with an arm of torce. and gave to it that fplendid protec tion which refults from a union of church and state. The church thundered forth its anathemas against the infidel wretch who dared to affirm that three were more than one, and that one was not equal to three-against the plain affertions of common feufe, that the whole is greater than a part, and that a part is not equal to the whole. In feveral instances penal statutes of a fevere character have been enacted against the blafphemers who. fhould dare to call in question this high, this holy and facred mystery. Fine, imprisonment, whipping, excommu» nication from the church, boring a hole through the tougue with a red hot iron, and many other cruel pu nishments, have been declared to be the portion of him whole temerity induced the rejection of a doctrine fo facred, so fublime and and fo celestial. The internal excellence and credit of the bible itfelf have been fo far. fulpected that it has been frequently thought advifeable to place it under the protection of civil law, This is a great burlefque upon the power and benevolence of Jehovah, for furely if he had taken fo much pains to reveal himself to man, he would afterwards condefcend to preferve and perpetuate the wonderful revelation which he had made. If the doctrines contained in the Old and New Testament were confistent with reafon and the character of God, they would be effentially immortal; and all the laws of all the legislative bodies in the world, could never give to them a greater durability, or a more exalt ed character. When the Gofpel damns a human being for unbelief, it destroys in one fingle fentence all its pretended divinity-it overturns the general order which God has establifhed in the moral world-it forfeits all claim to confidence, and finks almost beneath the com tempt of a philofophic mind. Euclid, and Newton, have not inferted in their books, or fcientific productions, any damning claufes whatever; they stand in no need of legiflative interference; they require not the protection of phyfical force; they folicit no foreign aid, to give currency .

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and perpetuity to their principles; and the reafon is that the principles fpeak for themselves, and the human mind. must univerfally bow before the omnipotence of truth.

To the Editor of the British Press

SIR-I have the honour to inform you, by a letter I received this morning from a correfpondent in Germany, that Dr. Olbers has difcovered a Planet, which, from its immenfe fize, he has called Hercules. It is three times the fize of Jupiter, and goes round the fun in the space of 21 years, because it is fuppofed to be 3.047,000,000 of miles from the fun; it looks to the naked eye like a star of the fixth magnitude, and is now in the fign Gemini. Dr. Olbers, obferved on the 8th December last, that it moved, and, on the 6th of Febru ary, that it was a planet attended by 7 fatellites, one of which is twice the fize of the earth. It is inclined to the plane of the ecliptic, in an angle of 30 degrees. It is in 13 degrees North amplitude; its eccentricity is 1100, and the fun to an inhabitant of the earth placed in it, with our powers of vifion, would appear no larger than the fmallest of the fixed stars.

G. BURITON.

Profession of Faith from Rousseau, continued.

Now it is from this moral fyftem, formed by its du plicate relation to himself and his fellow-creatures, that the impulfe of confcience arifes. To know what is vir tuous, is not to love virtue. Man has no innate knowledge of virtue; but no fooner it is made known to him by reafon, than confcience induces him to love and admire it: this is the innate fentiment I mean.

I cannot think it impoffible, therefore, to explain, from

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