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reason, he has a right to claim from society protection from those injuries he is liable to, and which, in his single capacity, he is not qualified to guard against; and likewise to claim that assistance from society which his particular necessities call for, and which society is capable of, and, in reason, ought to afford him.

WILLIAM PITT

ON SUPERSTITION.

Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is this. to visit the Fatherless and Widows in their afflictions, and to keep one's self unspotted from the World.

Whoever takes a view of the world will find, that what the greatest part of mankind have agreed to call religion, has been only some outward exercise esteemed sufficient to work a reconciliation with God. It has moved them to build temples, slay victims, offer up sacrifices, to fast and feast, to petition and thank, to laugh and cry, to sing and sigh by turns: but it has not yet generally been found sufficient to induce them to break off an amour, to make restitution of ill-gotten wealth, or to bring the passions and appetites to a reasonable subjection. Differ as much as they may in opinion, concerning what they ought to believe, or after what manner they are to serve God, as they call it, yet they all agree in gratifying their appetites. The same passion reigns eternally in all countries and in all ages, Jew and Mahometan, the Christian and the Pagan, the Tartar and the Indian, all kinds of men who differ in almost every thing else, universally agree with regard to their passions; if there be any difference among them it is this, that the more superstitious they are, always the more vicious; and the more they believe, the less they practice. This is a melancholy consideration to a good mind; it is a truth, and certainly above all things, worth our while to inquire into. We will therefore probe the wounds, and search to the bottom; we will lay the axe to the root of the tree, and show you the true reason why men go on in sinning and repenting, and sinning again through the whole course of their lives: and the reason is, because they have been taught, most

wickedly taught, that religion and virtue are two things absolutely distinct; that the deficiency of the one might be supplied by the sufficiency of the other; and that what you want in virtue you must make up in religion, But this religion, so dishonorable to God, and so pernicious to men, is worse than Atheism, for Atheism, though it takes away one great motive to support virtue in distress, yet it furnishes no man with arguments to be vicious; but superstition, or what the world means by religion, is the greatest possible encouragement to vice, by setting up something as religion, which shall atone and commute for the want of virtue. This is establishing iniquity by a law, the highest law; by authority, the highest authority; that of God himself. We complain of the vices of the world, and of the wickedness of men, without searching into the true cause. It is not because they are wicked by Nature, for that is both false and impious; but because, to serve the purposes of their pretended soul-savers, they have been carefully taught that they are wicked by Nature, and cannot help continuing so. It would have been impossible for men to have been both religious and vicious, had religion been made to consist wherein alone it does consist; and had they been always taught that true religion is the practice of virtue in obedience to the will of God, who provides over all things, and will finally make every man happy who does his duty.

This single opinion in religion, that all things are so well made by the Deity, that virtue is its own reward, and that happiness will ever arise from acting according to the reason of things, or that God, ever wise and good, will provide some extraordinary happiness for those who suffer for virtue's sake, is enough to support a man under all difficulties, to keep him steady to his duty, and to enable him to stand as firm as a rock, amidst all the charms of applause, profit, and honor. But this religion of reason, which all men are capable of, has been neglected and condemned, and another set up, the natural consequences of which have puzzled men's understandings, and debauched their mo rals, more than all the lewd poets and atheistical philosophers that ever infested the world; for instead of being taught that religion consists in action, or obedience to the

eternal moral law of God, we have been most gravely and venerably told, that it consists in the belief of certain opinions, which we could form no idea of, or which were contrary to the clear perceptions of our minds, or which had no tendency to make us either wiser or better, or which is much worse, had a manifest tendency to make us wicked and immoral. And this belief, this impious belief, arising from imposition on one side, and from want of examination on the other; has been called by the sacred name of religion, whereas real and genuine religion consists in knowledge and obedience. We know there is a God, and we know his will, which is, that we should do all the good we can; and we are assured from his perfections, that we shall find our own good in so doing.

And what would we have more? are we, after such an inquiry, and in an age full of liberty, children still? and cannot we be quiet unless we have holy romances, sacred fables, and traditionary tales, to amuse us in an idle hour, and to give rest to our souls, when our follies and vices will not suffer us to rest?

You have been taught indeed, that right belief or orthodoxy, will, like charity, cover a multitude of sins; but be not deceived, belief of, or mere assent to the truth of propositions upon evidence is not a virtue, nor unbelief a vice faith is not a voluntary act, it does not depend upon the will: every man must believe or disbelieve, whether he will or not, according as evidence appears to him. If, therefore, men, however dignified or distinguished, command us to believe, they are guilty of the highest folly and absurdity, because it is out of our power, but if they command us to believe, and annex rewards to belief, and severe penalties to unbelief, then are they most wicked and immoral, because they annex rewards and punishments to what is involuntary, and therefore neither rewardable or punishable. It appears then very plainly unreasonable and unjust, to command us to believe any doctrine, good or bad, wise or unwise; but when men command us to believe opinions, which have not only no tendency to promote virtue, but which are allowed to commute or atone for the want of it, then are they arrived at he utmost pitch of impiety; then is their iniquity fulls

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then have they finished the misery, and completed the destruction of poor mortal man, by betraying the interest of virtue; they have undermined and sapped the foundation of all human happiness: and how treacherousy and dreadfully have they betrayed it! A gift, well applied, the chattering of some unintelligible sounds called creeds; an unfeigned assent and consent to whatever the church enjoins, religious worship and consecrated feasts; repenting on a death-bed; pardons rightly sued out; and absolution authoritatively given, have done more towards making and continuing men vicious than all the natural passions and infidelity put together, for infidelity can only take away the supernatural rewards of virtue; but these superstitious opinions and practices, have not only turned the scene, and made men lose sight of the natural rewards of it, but have induced them to think, that were there no hereafter, vice would be preferable to virtue, and that they increase in happiness as they increase in wickedness; and this they have been taught in several religious discourses and sermons, delivered by men whose authority was never doubted, particularly by a late Rev. prelate, I mean Bishop Atterbury, in his sermon on these words, "If in this life only be hope, then we are of all men most miserable," where vice and faith ride most lovingly and triumphantly together. But these doctrines of the natural excellency of vice, the efficacy of a right belief, the dignity of atonements and propitiations have, beside depriving us of the native beauty and charms of honesty, and thus cruelly stabbing virtue to the heart, raised and diffused among men a certain unnatural passion, which we shall call religious hatred; a hatred constant, deep-rooted, and immortal. All other passions rise and fall, die and revive again, but this of religious and pious hatred rises and grows every day stronger upon the mind as we grow more religious, because we hate for God's sake, and for the sake of those poor souls too, who have the misfortune not to believe as we do, and can we -in so good a cause hate too much? the more thoroughly we hate, the better we are; and the more mischief we do to the bodies and estates of those Infidels and Heretics, the more do we show our love to God. This is religious

zeal, and this has been called divinity, but remember the only true Divinity is Humanity.-[London Journal, 1733,

JOSEPH BUTLER'S

ANALOGY OF RELIGION AND NATURE.

We cannot argue from the reason of the thing, that death is the destruction of living agents, because we know not at all what death is in itself; but only some of its ef fects, such as the dissolution of flesh, skin, and bones: and these effects do in no wise appear to imply the destruction of a living agent. And, besides, as we are greatly in the dark upon what the exercise of our living powers depends, so we are wholly ignorant what the pow ers themselves depend upon; the powers themselves, as distinguished, not only from their actual exercise, but also from the present capacity of exercising them; and opposed to their destruction; for sleep, or however, a swoon, shows us, not only that these powers exist when they are not exercised, as the passive power of motion does in inanimate matter; but shows also that they exist when there is no present capacity of exercising them; or that the capacities of exercising them for the present, as well as the actual exercise of them, may be suspended, and yet the powers themselves remain undestroyed.

All presumption of death's being the destruction of living beings, must go upon supposition that they are compounded, and so discerptible. But, since consciousness is a single and individual power, it should seem that the subject in which it resides, must be so too. [Why not the same of gravity?]

The bodies of all animals are in a constant flux, from that never ceasing attrition which there is in every part of them. Now things of this kind unavoidably teach us to distinguish between these living agents, ourselves, and large quantities of matter, in which we are very nearly interested: since these may be alienated, and actually are in a daily course of succession, and changing their owners; whilst we are assured, that each living agent remains one and the same permanent being.

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