Chrift. Frequently, the best refutation of infidelity is to expose it to itself, and to lay open its real principles and motives. This I purpose to do in the following difcourses:

In the introduction, permit me to observe that this fubject, never unimportant, is, at the prefent period particularly interesting, and worthy your moft fericus attention. Europe is deluged with a flood of impiety. The corruption of her manners is daily increafing the extent of the evil. Her philofophers and wits, her orators and poets, are continually opening wider its fluices, and adding to it that force and extenfion which genius alone can give to the principles of vice. Our own country, although as yet but in the infancy of its exiflence, is rapidly imitating the degeneracy of her manners, and, confequently, the licence of her principles. You fee the profeffed difciples of an impious philofophy filling many of the most respectable ftations in fociety-You frequently fee, in the upper claffes of fortune, an open and undisguised neglect, and even contempt of the inflitutions of pietyYou fee a profligate generation rifing up, who affect to fport with every moral tie,

and to treat with levity the most facred doctrines of religion, and that great depository of truth, the holy fcriptures. Let us examine the principles upon which they act : to develope them will be to demonftrate their folly. They may be comprifed under the heads of Vice, of Ignorance, and, of Vanity.*

I. Infidelity, in the first place, is commonly founded in vice. Rare is it, indeed, that men commence their courfe of impiety by rational and ferious doubts concerning the authenticity of the facred fcripturesthat, actuated by an honeft love of truth, they have profoundly and impartially examined the evidence on which they reft-and when, on good grounds, they have been convinced that there exifted no divine law to controul their conduct, and no fupreme judge to whom they were amenable, have then only indulged in greater licence of On the other hand, do we not almost always fee them begin by relaxation of morals; and, after their taftes and habits have been vitiated, then, and only then,

manners.

* Maffillon Doutes fur la Religion.

think of questioning truths that controul their propensities, or condemn their pleafures. As long as they preferved their original fimplicity of manners, they received with refpest, the religion of their fathers, and entertained, without fufpicion, the facred principles inflilled into them in their education, and fo ftrongly recommended by the voice of uncorrupted reafon. When their manners began to change, they found new questions continually rifing in their minds, concerning doctrines which hitherto had appeared so respectable and holy.— Their doubts kept pace with their vices. As fucceffive indulgence threw down the fences of virtue to a greater extent, they found themselves tempted, by degrees, to bring in queftion, every law of religion that opposed their inclinations, and at length, by one bold and decisive effort, to reject the whole.

every

This is not an unfounded representation, refting merely on a pious prejudice. It is a matter of experience-and for the truth

* From this remark, may be excepted a few, who seem to be governed from the beginning of life, by a peculiar perverlity of natural temper.

of it, I confidently appeal to the experience of those who affect to difbelieve the gospel, and to treat it with an unholy levity, if their infidelity did not commence in a pursuit of pleasure, too free to be reconciled to its pure, humble, and felf-denied fpirit. At firft, confcience, not yet perverted by false principles, nor rendered callous by the habit of finning, would remonstrate against their criminal purfuits. These remonftrances would be accompanied with refolutions of amendment; but, finding every resolution overcome as foon as the temptation was renewed, defpairing, at length, of their own fortitude to conquer, they ftudied only to justify their inclinations.

A man has powerful reasons for endeavouring to reconcile his opinions with his conduct-if his practice is not fupported by principle, it lays the foundation of a painful and diftreffing conflict in the mind-he is miferable who, always a flave to his paffions, is, at the fame time, always overwhelmed by his own felf-reproaches—when his paffions are too ftrong for his fentiments and purposes of duty; when he finds it difficult to change his habits, and is unwilling

to renounce his pleasures, he foon endeavours to modify his principles according to them. And, unhappily, when a man ftudies to deceive himself, it is always in his own power--it is his heart, not his underftanding-his wifhes, not his reason, that then decide upon truth.

Another proof that irreligious principles are the fruits of vicious and loose living, is the spirit of the objections, that are usually made against religion.

Are they not pointed against those doctrines, chiefly that are most directly oppofed to the criminal inclinations and pursuits of men? The continence and purity required by the gospel, first awaken the enmity of the libertine and profligate, and raise in them a wish to find it falfe. Its fobriety and temperance displease the diffolute: its meekness, forbearance and humility, offend the proud and refentful. The fpirit of retreat, of devotion, and heavenly mindedness which it enjoins revolts thofe whofe hopes and enjoyments centre only in this world. In a word, the predominant and characteristic vice of each finner firft impels him to