my brethren, find me, if you can, men wise, temperate, pure, regular, and lovers of truth, who believe not a God, who look forward to no future state, who look upon adulteries, abominations, and incests, as the inclinations and innocent pastimes of nature. If the world has seen impious characters, who bore the semblance of wisdom and temperance, it was either that they better concealed their irregularities, in order to give more credit to their impiety, or the satiety of pleasures which had brought them to that feigned temperance, debauchery had been the original source of their irreligion; their hearts were corrupted before their faith was wrecked; they had an interest to believe that all dies with the body, before they succeeded in persuading themselves of it; and a long indulgence of luxury had fully disgusted them with guilt, but had not rendered virtue more amiable to them.
What consolation for us who believe, that we must first renounce probity, modesty, manners, and all the feelings of humanity, before we can renounce faith; and, to be no longer Christian, must first cease to be man!
Behold, then, the uncertainty of the impious, already suspicious in its principle; but, secondly, it is foolish in the proofs on which it depends.
For, surely, very decisive and convincing proofs must be required to make us espouse the cause of unbelief, and to render us tranquil on what we are told of an eternal state to come. It is not natural that man would hazard an interest so serious as that of eternity on light and frivolous proofs; still less so, that he would thereon abandon the general opinion, the belief of his fathers, the religion of all ages, the agreement of all nations, and the prejudices of his education, had he not, as it were, been forced to it by the evidence of the truth. Unless absolutely convinced that all dies with the body, nothing can bear a comparison with the madness and folly of the unbeliever. Now is he completely convinced? What are the grand reasons which have determined him to adopt this vile cause? We know not, says he, what happens in that other world of which you tell us: the good die equally as the . wicked: man as the beast; and no one returns to say which was in the error. Press him a little farther, and you will be shocked to see the weakness of unbelief: vague discourses, hackneyed suspicions, everlasting uncertainties, and chimerical suppositions, on which nobody in their senses would wish to risk the happiness or disquiet of a single day, and upon which he, however, hazards an eternity.
Behold the insurmountable proofs which the freethinker opposes to the belief of the universe; behold that evidence, which, in his mind, prevails over all that is most clear and most established on the earth. We know nothing of what passes in that other world of which you tell us. O man! open here thine eyes. A single doubt is sufficient to render thee impious, and all the proofs of religion are too weak to make thee a believer. Thy mind hesitates to believe in a future state, and, in the mean time, thou livest as though there were none. The only foundation thou hast for thine
