that makes use either of violence or artifice to terrify or seduce the sincere and humble, and unsuspicious believer in Christ from his faith and obedience to his divine Master, the severest woes, and the heaviest punishments are here denounced.

This text of Scripture therefore I would most earnestly recommend to the serious consideration of those who either are or have been guilty of this most dangerous crime; and I would also no less earnestly caution all those who have not yet been guilty of it, to avoid, with the utmost care, every degree of it, and every approach to it. It is a crime often touched upon in Holy Writ, but less noticed, or at least less enlarged upon by divines and moralists than perhaps any other sin of the same magnitude. For this reason I shall enter more fully into the consideration of it than has hitherto, I believe, been usually done, and shall advert briefly to the several modes of making our brother to offend, that is, to renounce his faith in Christ, which are most common and most successful;

4

successful; and these are persecution, sophistry, ridicule, immoral examples, and immoral publications.

With respect to the first of these, persecution; it was, during the first ages of the Gospel, and for many years after the Reformation, the great rock of offence, the chief instrument made use of (and a dreadful one it was) to deter men from embracing the faith of Christ, or to compel them to renounce it. But since that time we have heard little of its terrors, till they were some years ago revived, to a certain degree, in a neighbouring nation, where the various cruelties inflicted on their clergy are too well known, and cannot surely be ascribed altogether and exclusively to political causes.

In our own country, it must be acknowledged, we cannot justly be charged with this species of guilt. Intolerance and persecution are certainly not in the number of our national sins. But in the next mode of making our brother to offend, that is, by grave argument and reason, by

open

open and systematic attacks on the truth and divine authority of the Christian revelation, in this we have, I fear, a large load of responsibility upon our heads.

It has even been affirmed by some, that we are entitled to the distinction of having led the way to this kind of impiety and profaneness. We have this honour given to us (for an honour they esteem it) by foreign writers, and what is worst of all, we are applauded for it by such men as D'Alembert and Voltaire.

To be stigmatized with their praise, and for such a reason, is a disgrace indeed; and it would be a still greater, if we could not justly disclaim, and throw back from ourselves the humiliating and ignominious applause which they would inflict upon us. But this, I apprehend, we may effectually do. There appears to me sufficient ground for asserting, that the earliest infidels of modern times were to be found, not in this island, but on the Continent. If we may credit the account given of Peter Aretin (who lived and wrote

in the fourteenth century) by Moreri, and particularly the epitaph upon him, which he recites, there is reason to believe that he was an infidel of the worst species; and Viret, a divine of great eminence among the first reformers, who wrote about the year 1563, speaks of a number of persons, both in France and Italy, who had assumed the name of Deists, and seem to have formed themselves into a sect. But it was not till the beginning of the following century, that any men of that description, or any publications hostile to Revelation, appeared in this kingdom, From that time indeed down to the present, there has been a regular succession of anti-christian writers of various descriptions and various talents, whose uniform object has been to subvert the foundations of revealed religion, and to make their countrymen offend, and renounce their faith. The last of these was a man, who from the lowest origin, raised himself to some distinction in the political and literary world, by his bold and impious

libels against government, against religion, and the holy Scriptures themselves. In these writings were concentrated all the malignity, all the shrewdness, all the sophistry of his numerous predecessors; and from their brevity, their plainness, their familiarity, their vulgar ribaldry, their bold assertions, and artful misrepresentations, they were better calculated to impose on the ignorant and uninformed, and more dangerous to the principles of the great mass of mankind, than any publications that this country ever before produced. And certain it is, that having been distributed with infinite industry through every district of the kingdom, they did for a time diffuse their poison far and wide, and made a strong and fatal impression on the multitude. But, thanks be to God! they at length providentially met with talents infinitely superior to those of their illiterate author, which, with the blessing of Heaven upon them, gave a sudden and effectual check to the progress of this mischief, and afforded a

striking