I shall certainly choose my entertainment of a less perplexing and abstruse
nature. A comedy, a novel, or at most a history, seems a more natural
recreation than such metaphysical subtleties and abstractions.

In vain would the sceptic make a distinction between science and common
life, or between one science and another. The arguments employed in all,
if just, are of a similar nature, and contain the same force and
evidence. Or if there be any difference among them, the advantage lies
entirely on the side of theology and natural religion. Many principles of
mechanics are founded on very abstruse reasoning; yet no man who has any
pretensions to science, even no speculative sceptic, pretends to
entertain the least doubt with regard to them. The COPERNICAN system
contains the most surprising paradox, and the most contrary to our
natural conceptions, to appearances, and to our very senses: yet even
monks and inquisitors are now constrained to withdraw their opposition to
it. And shall PHILO, a man of so liberal a genius and extensive
knowledge, entertain any general undistinguished scruples with regard to
the religious hypothesis, which is founded on the simplest and most
obvious arguments, and, unless it meets with artificial obstacles, has
such easy access and admission into the mind of man?

And here we may observe, continued he, turning himself towards DEMEA, a
pretty curious circumstance in the history of the sciences. After the
union of philosophy with the popular religion, upon the first
establishment of Christianity, nothing was more usual, among all
religious teachers, than declamations against reason, against the senses,
against every principle derived merely from human research and inquiry.
All the topics of the ancient academics were adopted by the fathers; and
thence propagated for several ages in every school and pulpit throughout
Christendom. The Reformers embraced the same principles of reasoning, or