"has unsettled the faith of thousands." Now, that you cannot stifle reason, you pretend to liberality of sentiment.

The natural historian, or the astronomer, fears not the publication of opinions contrary to his own, except from a scholastic habit, learned in the clerical seminaries, which still disgrace almost every country. The chemist eagerly peruses all theories; the divine alone refuses to argue with his opponents, and trembles at the very name of reason. I differ in my philosophical opinions from Mr. Paine; my principles extend so much farther than his, that I suspect I come under the class which you are pleased to call madmen, and every clergyman would affect to despise, but dare not argue with, before an unprejudiced tribunal. These, Sir, are the effects of superstition, and the cunning policy of the Church. The Bible is hardly suffered to be read in Catholic countries. The English reformers could not go so far; their revolution sprung from a dawn of philosophy. The English clergy, however, would confine us to the reading of that unintelligible farrago, and the still more insufferable commentaries upon it. So did the scholastics with Aristotle; their bigotted partiality to this author was nearly of the same force with the priestly attachment to the Bible. They retarded science; but the motives of the clergy are stronger. By the Bible they live; and it is not uncommon to hear the parson deride in private what he preaches from the pulpit.

But to your first letter.

After the pious wish for Thomas Paine's death, you proceed to state how miserable the adoption of his doctrines would render the "unhappy virtuous." Fear not such a dire event: the pious are few in number, and of those, few have the courage to open a book controverting their opinions, and which, they are taught to believe, contains nothing but blasphemies But, should chance lead them to a detection of their errors, they would only become less devout, and more useful citizens. Freed from the prospect of hell and heaven, they will have leisure to think of this world, in which they live somewhat like hermits, loving only their priests, and ready to sacrifice victims to credulity.

You say, that guillotine massacres were not the effect of the Popish religion, but of the disbelief of this system. This deserves some consideration. It is not true, that the majority of the people of Paris were unbelievers. No, Sir, they swore to the miracles of Abbe Paris, and were as ready to give testimony to the wonderful cures and prodigies operated by his intercession, as the Jews or Christians have been to vouch for theirs. The fact is this: the lively disposition of the French, the unintelligibility of their religion, and the shameful conduct of the priests, turned their attention to the more serious object of politics; but this event could not immediately change the nature of the murderers of the Protestants on St. Bartholomew's day. Does your Lordship imagine, that the peasants of La Vendee are models of morality? If you think so, I must undeceive you. Nothing but ignorance prevails in that district; like the ancient crusaders, they are led solely by their priests, who, by means of certain words which early habits and superstition have made their followers respect, and, together with want of communication with the rest of France, have inflamed them, and driven them to slaughter: even miracles have not been wanting in that part of the country; but in this, as in many other instances, they have disappeared, on the arrival of incredulous troops, whose hearts are perhaps hardened by God, like the Egyptians of old. Since God diminishes men's faith in proportion as he gives them human wisdom, let us not endeavour to controvert this heavenly will, by endeavouring to make the enlightened people of the eighteenth century so credulous as in the former days of ignorance. The Bishop allows, that the higher classes of every country all lean towards infidelity; they are more guided by reason, and reason is the avowed enemy of faith, it being the criterion of faith, that it contains natural impossibilities. It is unfortunate that so many sects pretend to faith, and differ so much among themselves; and that to explain their faiths, they use the weapons of reason against one another. This of itself proves, that faith is but a cant word, since the faithful argue about what comes not under human knowledge. Thus all religious sectaries, whether Christians, Jews, Mahometans, Boodzoists, or Bramins, as staunchly believe contradictory doctrines, while, in the inquiries that depend on their reason, we find that, wherever men have long been civilized, they have, in astronomy, in physics, or ethics, come in general to the same conclusions. The language of the philosopher is understood in Pekin as well as in Rome; but the religious fanatics of every country differ in their opinions, and consider all but themselves as dreamers and impostors. The Bramin laughs at the story of Noah and the ark, the stopping of the sun, and the incarnation of God; while the Christian shows the same contempt for the incarnation of Vishnu, and other articles of the Braminical faith. The exercise of reason alone shows us the true limits of our intellectual faculties. Ignorance of this is the cause of all reveries in science, as in religion; it is only superstition that incites men to launch beyond their conceptions.

You accuse of infidelity all those who commit crimes against society. When we answer, that the Jewish and Christian religions have deluged the world with blood, you reply, that it is not as being Jews and Christians, but because they were wicked. At the same time, I hope you allow, that the Spartans, the Athenians, the Romans, the Chinese, did not commit half the atrocities which disgrace Jewish history, the aera of the crusades and the Christian persecutions, of the invasion of America, the massacres of heretics, &c. The candid observer must therefore conclude, that right and wrong is not confined to sects; that the Christian religion, whatever its precepts may be, has not been able to prevent crimes, while nations who knew not so much as the name of Moses or Christ, produced a Confucius, an Aristides, a Socrates, an Epaminondas, a Cincinnatus. Among these nations, who knew not the Lord Jehovah, we find Archimedes, Epicurus, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, while the chosen people of God, and their successors, the Christians, borrowed their language, the very names of their gods, and the little science they knew, from these despised infidels. It was not the oracle of Delphos, the augurs, or the sybils, that enlightened the Greeks and Romans. The rabble credited them, as the ignorant Jews and Christians did their prophets and apostles. In short, morals cannot be invented; there cannot be two systems of morality. The precepts must be directed to principles existing in the heart of man. Ignorance conceals from nations the rule of conduct, in the same manner that it prevents them from knowing geometry; the moment they study either, they are put in the road of truth. No wonder, then, that in the times of the greatest oppression, when frightened into certain doctrines by the stories of nurses and parents, many learned men should not have been able to conquer their first prejudices. You certainly know the time when astrology and the philosopher's stone were in fashion; the believers in these reveries were men of science. Van Helmont, Stahl, Boyle, and innumerable others were possessed of this madness. You can be no stranger to the numerous wretches that suffered for witchcraft and necromancy, and, upon the very brink of death, confessed they were guilty.

The next reflection the Doctor makes, is respecting gospel moderation, for which purpose he quotes, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth." Yet has this been done by all Christian rulers; and the clergy are at this moment, in express defiance of this maxim, about to send missionaries to disseminate principles that have ever produced internal dissensions, and without which