All the arts and sciences ought to be employed in one confederacy against the prevailing torrent of vice and impiety; and it will be no small step in the progrefs of religion, if it is as evident as it ought to be, that he wants the best taste and best sense a man can have, who is cold to the beauty of holiness.

As for my part, when I have happened to attend the corps of a friend to his interment, and have feen a graceful man at the entrance of a church-yard, who became the dignity of his function, and affumed an authority which is natural to truth, pronounce I am the refurrection and the life, he that believeth in me, though be were dead yet fhall be live; and whofoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die: I fay, upon fuch an occafion, the retrospect upon past actions, between the deceased whom I followed and myself, together with the many little circumftances that ftrike upon the foul, and alternately give grief and confolation, have vanished like a dream; and I have been relieved as by a voice from heaven, when the folemnity has proceeded, and after a long pause I have heard the fervant of God utter, I know that my Redeemer

L4.

deemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though worms destroy bis body, yet in my flesh fhall 1 fee God; whom I fhall fee for myself, and my eyes fhall behold, and not another. How have I been raised above this world and all its regards, and how well prepared to receive the next fentence which the holy man has spoken, We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord!

There are I know men of heavy temper without genius, who can read these expreffions of Scripture with as much indifference as they do the rest of these loofe papers: However I will not despair but to bring men of wit into a love and admiration of Sacred Writings; and, as old as I am, I promise myself to see the day when it shall be as much the fashion amongst men of politeness to admire a rapture of St. Paul, as any fine expreffion in Virgil or Horace; and to fee a welldreffed young man produce an Evangelift out of his pocket, and be no more out of countenance than if it were a Claffic printed by Elzever.

It is a gratitude that ought to be paid to Providence by men of diftinguished faculties, to praise and adore the Author of their Being with a spirit fuitable to those faculties, and roufe flower men by their words, actions, and writings, to a participation of their transports and thanksgivings.

SECT. VIIL

Against ATHEISM and INFIDELITY.

A

FTER having treated of falfe Zealots in Religion, I cannot forbear mentioning a monftrous fpecies of men, who one would not think had any existence in nature, were they not to be met with in ordinary converfation, I mean the Zealots in Atheism. One would fancy that these men, tho' they fall fhort, in every other refpect, of those who make a profeffion of religion, would at least out-fhine them in this particular, and be exempt from that fingle fault which feems to grow out of the imprudent fervours of religion: But fo it is, that Infidelity is propagated with as much fiercenefs. and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of man

There is fomeperverfe in this

kind depended upon it. thing fo ridiculous and kind of Zealots, that one does not know how to fet them out in their proper colours. They are a fort of gamefters who are eternally upon the fret, tho' they play for nothing. They are perpetually teizing their friends to come over to them, though at the fame time they allow that neither of them fhall get any thing by the bargain. In fhort, the zeal of fpreading Atheism is, if poffible, more abfurd than Atheism itself.

Since I have mentioned this unaccountable Zeal which appears in Atheists, and Infidels, I muft further observe that they are likewife in a moft particularmanner poffeffed with the fpirit of bigotry. They are wedded to opinions full of contradiction and impoffibility, and at the fame time look upon the smallest difficulty in an article of faith as a fufficient reason for rejecting it. Notions that fall in with the common reafon of mankind, that are conformable to the fenfe of all ages and all nations, not to mention their tendency for promoting the happiness of focieties or of particular perfons, are exploded as errors and prejudices; and

fchemes