Liberty Of Thinking, And Of Expressing Our

The Great Subverter Of Pyrrhonism Or The Excessive Principles Of Scepticism Is Action, And Employment, And The Occupations Of Common Life.

Liberty Of Thinking, And Of Expressing Our Thoughts, Is Always Fatal To Priestly Power, And To Those Pious Frauds On Which It Is Commonly Founded.

We Find In The Course Of Nature That Though The Effects Be Many, The Principles From Which They Arise Are Commonly Few And Simple, And That It Is The Sign Of An Unskilled Naturalist To Have Recourse To A Different Quality In Order To Explain Every Different Operation.

Were A Stranger To Drop On A Sudden Into This World, I Would Show Him, As A Specimen Of Its Ills, A Hospital Full Of Diseases, A Prison Crowded With Malefactors And Debtors, A Field Of Battle Strewed With Carcasses, A Fleet Foundering In The Ocean, A Nation Languishing Under Tyranny, Famine, Or Pestilence. To Turn The Gay Side Of Life To Him, And Give Him A Notion Of Its Pleasures; Whither Should I Conduct Him? To A Ball, To An Opera, To Court? He Might Justly Think, That I Was Only Showing Him A Diversity Of Distress And Sorrow.

The Heroes In Paganism Correspond Exactly To The Saints In Popery, And Holy Dervises In Mahometanism. The Place Of, Hercules, Theseus, Hector, Romulus, Is Now Supplied By Dominic, Francis, Anthony, And Benedict. Instead Of The Destruction Of Monsters, The Subduing Of Tyrants, The Defence Of Our Native Country; Whippings And Fastings, Cowardice And Humility, Abject Submission And Slavish Obedience, Are Become The Means Of Obtaining Celestial Honours Among Mankind.