affront her religion, and debauch her people, are but despicable quacks,
by fraud or ignorance increasing the disorders they pretend to remedy."

Of religion he has said nothing but what he has learned, or might have
learned, from the divines; that it is not universal, because it must be
received upon conviction, and successively received by those whom
conviction reached; that its evidences and sanctions are not
irresistible, because it was intended to induce, not to compel; and that
it is obscure, because we want faculties to comprehend it. What he means
by his assertion, that it wants policy, I do not well understand; he
does not mean to deny, that a good christian will be a good governour,
or a good subject; and he has before justly observed, that the good man
only is a patriot.

Religion has been, he says, corrupted by the wickedness of those to whom
it was communicated, and has lost part of its efficacy, by its connexion
with temporal interest and human passion.

He justly observes, that from all this no conclusion can be drawn
against the divine original of christianity, since the objections arise
not from the nature of the revelation, but of him to whom it is
communicated.

All this is known, and all this is true; but why, we have not yet
discovered. Our author, if I understand him right, pursues the argument
thus: the religion of man produces evils, because the morality of man is
imperfect; his morality is imperfect, that he may be justly a subject of
punishment; he is made subject to punishment, because the pain of part
is necessary to the happiness of the whole; pain is necessary to
happiness, no mortal can tell why, or how.