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motion? What power impelled the planets to move, since motion is not a property of the matter of which they are composed? If we contemplate the immense velocity of this motion, our wonder becomes increased, and our adoration enlarges itself in the same proportion. To instance. only one of the planets, that of the earth we inhabit, its distance from the sun, the centre of the orbits of all the planets, is, according to observations of the transit of the planet Venus, about one huudred million miles; consequently, the diameter of the orbit or circle in which the earth moves round the sun, is double that distance: and the measure of the circumference of the orbit, taken as three times its diameter, is six hundred million miles. The earth performs this voyage in 365 days and some hours, and consequently, moves at the rate of more than one million six hundred thousand miles every twenty-four hours.

Where will infidelity, where will Atheism find cause for this astonishing velocity of motion, never ceasing, never varying, and which is the preservation of the earth in its orbit? It is not by reasoning from an acorn to an oak, or from any change in the state of matter on the surface of the earth, that this can be accounted for. Its cause is not to be found in matter, nor in any thing we call nature. The Atheist who effects to reason, and the fanatic who rejects reason, plunge themselves alike into inex tricable difficulties. The one perverts the sublime and enlightening study of natural philosophy into a deformity of absurdities by not reasoning to the end. The other loses himself in the obscurity of metaphysical theories, and dishonours the Creator, by treating the study of his works with contempt. The one is a half-rational of whom there is some hope, the other a visionary to whom we must be charitable.

When, at first thought, we think of a Creator, our ideas appear to us undefined and coufused; but if we reason philosophically, those ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. It is a being whose power is equal to his will. Observe the nature of the will of man. It is of an infinite quality. We cannot conceive the possibility of limits to the will. Observe, on the other hand, how exceedingly limited is his power of acting compared with the nature of his will. Suppose the power equal to the will, and man would be a God. He would will himself eternal, and be so. He could will a creation and could make it. In this progressive reasoning, we see, in the nature of the will of man, half of that which we conceive in thinking of God; add the other half, and we have the whole idea of a being who could make the universe, and sustain it by perpetual motion; because he could create that motion.

We know nothing of the capacity of the will of animals

but we know a great deal of the difference of their powers. For example, how numerous are the degrees, and how immense is the difference of power, from a mite to a man. Since then every thing we see below us shews a progres. sion of power, where is the difficulty in supposing that there is, at the summit of all things, a Being in whom an infinity of power unites with the infinity of the will. When this simple idea presents itself to our mind, we have the idea of a perfect being that man calls God.

It is comfortable to live under the belief of the existence of an infinitely protecting power; and it is an addition to that comfort to know, that such a belief is not a inere conceit of the imagination, as many of the theories that are called religious are; nor a belief founded only on tradition or received opinion, but is a belief deducible by the action of reason upon the things that compose the sys tem of the universe; à belief arising out of visible facts: and so demonstrable is the truth of this belief, that if no such belief had existed, the persons who now controvert it, would have been the persons who would have produced and propagated it, because, by beginning to reason they would have been led on to reason progressively to the end, and thereby have discovered that matter and all the properties it has, will not account for the system of the universe, and that there must necessarily be a superior

cause.

It was the excess to which imaginary systems of religion. had been carried, and the intolerance, persecutions, burnings, snd massacres, they occasioned, that first induced certain persons to propagate infidelity; thinking that upon the whole it was better not to believe at all, than to believe a multitude of things and complicated creeds, that occasioned so much mischief in the world. But those days are past; persecution has ceased, and the antidote then. set up against it has no longer even the shadow of apo logy. We profess and we proclaim in peace the pure, unmixed, comfortable, and rational belief of a God, as manifested to us in the universe. We do this without any apprehension of that belief being made a cause of persecution as other beliefs have been, or of suffering persecution ourselves. To God and not to man, are all men to account for their belief.

It has been well observed at the first institution of this society, that the dogmas it professes to believe, are from the commencemeet of the world; that they are not novelties, but are confessedly the basis of all systems of religion, however numerous aad contradictory they may be. All men in the outset of the religion they profess are Theophi lanthropists. It is impossible to form any system of religion without building upon those principles, and therefore

they are not sectarian principles, unless we suppose a sect composed of all the world.

I have said in the course of this discourse, that the study of natural philosophy is a divine study, because it is the study of the works of God in the creation. If we consi der theology upon this ground, what an extensive field of improvement in things both divine and human opens itself before us. All the principles of science are of divine origin. It was not man that invented the principles of which astronomy, and every branch of mathematics are founded and studied. It was not man that gave properties to the circle and the triangle. Those principles are eternal and immutable. We see in them the unchangeable nature of the divinity. We see in them immortality," an immortality existing after the material figures that / express those properties are dissolved in dust.

The society is at present in its infancy, and its means are small; but I wish to hold in view the subject I allude to, and instead of teaching the philosophical branches of learning as ornamental accomplishments only, as they have hitherto been taught, to teach them in a manner that shall combine theological knowledge with scientific instruction; to do this to the best advantage, some instruments will be necessary for the purpose of explanation, of which the society is not yet possessed. But as the views of the society extend to public good, as well to that of the individual, and as its principles can have no enemies, means may be devised to procure thein.

If we unite to the present instruction, a series of lectures on the ground I have mentioned, we shall, in the first place, render theology the most delightful and entertain. ing of all studies. In the next place, we shall give scientific instruction to those who could not otherwise obtain it. The mechanic of every profession will there be taught the mathematical principles necessary to render him a proficient in his art. The cultivator will there see developed the principles of vegetation; while at the same time they will be led to see the hand of God in all these things.

4

A

LETTER

ΤΟ

CAMILLE JORDAN.

OF THE

Council of Five Hundred

OCCASIONED BY

HIS REPORT

ON

The Priests, the Worship, and the Bells,

EY

THOMAS PAINE.

LONDON:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE,

55, FLEET STREET.

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