benefactors conjugal fidelity, and parental tenderness, were primary virtues, and the chief support of every commonwealth, they were unanimous. The curse denounced upon such as remove ancient landmarks, upon those who call good evil and evil good, put light for darkness and darkness for light, who employ their faculties to subvert the eternal distinctions of right and wrong, and thus to poison the streams of virtue at their source, falls with accumulated weight on the advocates of modern infidelity, and on them alone.

Permit me to close this discourse with a few serious reflections.-There is much, it must be confessed, in the apostacy of multitudes, and the rapid progress of infidelity, to awaken our fears for the virtue of the rising generation; but nothing to shake our faith; nothing which scripture itself does not give us room to expect. The features which compose the character of apostates, their profaneness, presumption, lewdness, impatience of subordination, restless appetite for change, vain pretensions to freedom and to emancipate the world, while themselves are the slaves of lust, the weapons with which they attack christianity, and the snares they spread for the unwary, are depicted in the clearest colours by the pencil of prophecy. Knowing this first (says Peter) that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts...2 Pet. iii. 3. In the same epistle he more fully describes the persons he

alludes to; as chiefly them which walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government; presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities; sporting themselves in their own deceivings, having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: for when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error; whilethey promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption....2 Pet. ii. Of the same characters Jude admonishes us to remember that they were foretold as mockers, who should be in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they (he adds) who separate themselves, (by apostacy) sensual not having the Spirit. Infidelity is an evil of short duration. It has (as a judicious writer observes) no individual subsistence given it in the system of prophecy. It is not a BEAST; but a mere putrid excrescence of the papal beast: an excrescence which, though it may diffuse death through every vein of the body on which it grew, yet shall die along with it."* Its enormities will hasten its overthrow. It is impossible that a system which, by villifying every virtue, and embracing the patronage of almost every vice and crime, wages war with all the order and civilization of the

* See an excellent work, lately published by the Rev. A. Fuller, entitled, "The Gospel its own Witness."

world; which, equal to the establishment of nothing, is armed only with the energies of destruction, can long retain an ascendency. It is in no shape formed for perpetuity. Sudden in its rise, and impetuous in its progress, it resembles a mountain-torrent, which is loud, filthy, and desolating; but, being fed by no perennial spring, is soon drained off, and disappears. By permitting to a certain extent the prevalence of infidelity, providence is preparing new triumphs for religion. In asserting its authority, the preachers of the gospel have hitherto found it necessary to weigh the prospects of immortality against the interests of time; to strip the world of its charms, to insist on the deceitfulness of pleasure, the unsatisfying nature of riches, the emptiness of grandeur, and the nothingness of a mere worldly life. Topics of this nature will always have their use; but it is not by such representations alone that the importance of religion is evinced. The prevalence of impiety has armed us with new weapons in its defence.

Religion being primarily intended to make men wise unto salvation, the support it ministers to social order, the stability in confers on government and laws, is a subordinate species of advantage which we should have continued to enjoy without reflecting on its cause, but for the developement of deistical principles, and the experiment which has been made of their effects in a neighbouring country. It

had been the constant boast of infidels, that their system, more liberal and generous than christianity, needed but to be tried to produce an immense accession to human happiness; and christian nations, careless and supine, retaining little of religion but the profession, and disgusted with its restraints, lent a favourable ear to these pretensions. God permitted the trial to be made. In one country, and that the centre of Christendom, revelation un derwent a total eclipse,* while atheism, perform. ing on a darkened theatre its strange and fearful tragedy, confounded the first elements of society, blended every age, rank and sect, in indiscriminate proscription and massacre, and convulsed all Eu. rope to its centre; that the imperishable memorial of these events might teach the last generations of mankind to consider religion as the pillar of society, the safeguard of nations, the parent of social order, which alone has power to curb the fury of the pas sions, and secure to every one his rights; to the laborious the reward of their industry, to the rich the enjoyment of their wealth, to nobles the preservation of their honours, and to princes the stability of their thrones.

* It is worthy of attention that Mercier, a warm advocate of the French revolution, and a professed deist, in his recent work, entitled "New Paris,” acknowledges and laments the extinction of religion in France. "We have, (says he) in proscribing superstition, destroyed all religious sentiment; but this is not the way to regenerate the world." See Appendix to the 30th vol. Monthly Review.

We might ask the patrons of infidelity what fury impels them to attempt the subversion of christianity? Is it that they have discovered a better system? To what virtues are their principles favourable? Or is there one which christians have not carried to a higher perfection than any of which their party can boast? Have they discovered a more excellent rule of life, or a better hope in death than that which the scriptures suggest? Above all, what are the pretentions on which they rest their claims to be the guides of mankind; or which emboldened them to expect we should trample on the experience of ages, and abandon a religion which has been attested by a train of miracles and prophecies, in which millions of our forefathers have found a refuge in every trouble, and consolation in the hour of death; a religion which has been adorned with the highest sanctity of character and splendour of talents, which enrols amongst its disciples the names of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, the glory of their species, and to which these illustrious men were proud to dedicate the last and best fruits of their immortal genius?

If the question at issue is to be decided by argument, nothing can be added to the triumph of christianity; if by an appeal to authority, what have our adversaries to oppose to these great names? Where are the infidels of such pure, uncontaminated morals, unshaken probity, and extended benevolence,