who is not a God of consolation; a present help in trouble; making even the iniquity of man praise him, and "all things work together for good to them that love him: " a God, in short, who forsakes his creatures, and does not "humble himself to behold those things that are on the earth," is, as far as we are concerned, no God at all: he is not worthy of our esteem: he cannot be the object of love: and as to his power, he is distinguished no otherwise from the active principle of the Pantheist or Atheist than by his intelligence: for his agency is equally limited to physical operations. I had rather believe in an occult self-moving property of life and motion in matter, than in an intellectual designing cause, to whom I can have no mental access: in whom I can place no trust: from whom I can derive no providential guidance amidst the turns of human events, and the trials and temptations of life: who, from the indifference with which he abandons his rational creation, generally and individually, and from the inequalities of evil, calamity, and occasional disorder which he suffers to prevail in the physical and moral world, may, for ought I know, be a mischievous and malignant being: and who, if he do exist, has no right to call me to account for disbelieving his existence; since, if he be so far above me as to neglect me, I may plead that I am too far below him to perceive him.

As the Deist cannot know that he shall live again after he is dead, or that his faculty of thought will continue in activity, when the organs, through which he received his im

pressions or ideas, are deprived of their vital function, it seems a matter of indifference whether the cause of the different phenomena of the universe be an unintelligent selfmoving principle or a designing mind. It may form a question for amusing speculation, but has nothing to influence the heart and affections: and in fact we see this in what the Deist calls his religion. Religion, according to Paine, is science. A man may be a hard-hearted creditor, a bad son, a cruel father, or a monster of sensuality, but if he be only an adept in mathematics, he has reached the utmost perfection of humanity. It is singular that Newton, who saw nearly as far into the laws of nature as Paine, and that Locke who had almost as deep an insight into the laws of mind, were both defenders and illustrators of revelation and scripture. But by this notable display of what his religion is, the Deist at once vails his pretensions to the Atheist; who considers morals as the cement of society; and virtue and benevolence as productive of the highest pleasure. With regard to a future state of retribution, the belief of this may sit as loosely on the Deist as his morality: for as it is all hypothesis, he may choose to fancy that God does not punish sin at all; or that he has done no sin which God would punish; or that "the sin which most easily besets him" is justified by the motive or by the end; or that it is no sin at all; or that his scientific attainments, his genius, or his ability in affairs will absolve him from the consequences of his private vices, or of the injuries which he has inflicted on others. It is unfair to argue

from individual abuse against any system or body but as this is constantly done by the Deists in reference to religion and its professors, the argument may justly be retorted on themselves. There does not seem any more reason for the supercilious air of self-complacent superiority, which they are accustomed to assume, in the particular of personal character, than in any other. The Deist Rousseau was a vain, selfish, and heartless profligate: The Atheist D'Alembert a modest, disinterested, kind, and moral man. Of those living it would be invidious to specify persons. Some advocate the later

epicurism: "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die : others discard common honesty, as an absurd principle, that should bend to interest or convenience: and a third set have discovered something manly in revenge, (which the wiser heathens denounced as a weakness,) and something virtuous in murder, provided it is sanctified by the cause: a doctrine which should seem to be imported from those casuists in the Jesuit colleges, who contrived at once the term and the notion of " philosophical sin." We shall be referred, in answer, to Christian hypocrites, Christian fanatics, Christian persecutors, and Christian assassins: and this argument, grounded on a contradiction in terms, will be thought conclusive against Christian morality. We shall be answered with vulgar and uncandid railing against that exemplary people, the Methodists: and shall be told of dying conversions by grace. This is a hazardous doctrine, indeed, and may have an ill effect on the lives of ignorant men: but it pro

ceeds on the supposition that such a change of mind is wrought in a criminal, by repentance towards God and faith in Christ, as, if life were spared him, would shew itself in a complete reformation of character: and after all, the question is, whether they advise the "continuing in sin that grace may abound?" This persuasion, however, of the probability of an efficacious death-hour repentance, which arises from a compassion to the unhappy sufferer, and an exalted sense of the merciful character of God, as manifested in Christ, is better then the cold inexorable inhumanity of the Deist: who is accustomed to sneer at contrition, and who, with no very clear notions of duty and self-government, presumes to carve and stint the mercies of God, of which none stand more in need than himself. If their knowledge of the subject extend so far, we shall also be told of the notional faith of Sandeman and his followers, and the completeness in Christ of the Antinomians of the South: but they who thus confound the abolition of legal or ceremonial, with that of moral works, and rely the most on the sufficiency of Christ's righteousness, have provided a way of escape from the consequences of their own theory if they will not admit of moral works as duties or conditions, they admit of them and expect them as gifts of love, and the effects of the faith that saves them.*

* See a tract entitled "God in Christ: " which, with some textual misconceptions and some hypothetical refinements, contains much that is sound in faith and logical in reasoning: and at least displays a noble and fearless instance of investigation of the original scriptures, in preference to a prostration of the understanding to the

Thus they reach the same point, though by a different route. So strongly is Christianity guarded by moral sanctions, that they, who apparently wander the most widely from them, return to them by indirect and circuitous approaches, and practically adhere to their spirit.

On the score of charity to the opinions of other men, the Deist is "weighed in the balance and found wanting." The Atheist is seldom intolerant: he pursues his argument with the cool and even temper of a mathematician, and is usually civil towards what he deems the prejudices of others. But of all bigotry that of the Deists is the most embittered. Towards an established religion, indeed, they show an affected courtesy: because it is thought that, under the cloak of fashion and political conformity, any belief or no belief may shelter within its walls; but their malignity is deadly and unsparing against separatists, who appear to puzzle them by being earnest in believing something. When the Deists approach the citadel of the constitution, let those who dwell in the tabernacles of dissent "flee to the mountains."

With respect to future immortality, the greater part of mankind are left precisely on the same footing according to the Deist's scheme, as according to that of the Atheist: for

dicta of human authority. When the excellent author of "Moral Sketches "remarked "that there is nothing new to be learnt in religion," she forgot that the time was foretold when men should "turn away their ears from the truth and should be turned to fables." 2 Tim. iv. 4. The assertion at once lays the spirit of Protestantism bound and naked at the feet of immutable Rome.