into any sin; but, he who can coolly, and of steady design, and with no unusual impulse, utter falsehood, and vent hypocrisy, is not far from finished depravity.1

1 "

And is the respect paid by infidels to the rights of property, superior to their regard to the claims of truth? Is it under the wing of scepticism that law and equity are fostered? Does it stretch forth its hand to aid the oppressed, and to repress fraud and injustice? It would be irrational to expect it. Hypocrisy and honesty do not walk hand in hand. Hence the doctrine of Mr. Hobbes is, that every man has a right to all things, and may lawfully get them if he can.2 Lord Bolingbroke resolves all morality into self-love. Rousseau, according to his own confessions, was as arrant a knave as any whose memoirs grace the pages of the Newgate calendar. One of the idolaters of Voltaire states, that while on a visit to him, her letters were regularly intercepted and broken open by him, and the woman with whom he lived in adultery; and relates a scene which took place, in consequence of their misconception of a phrase in a letter addressed to her, which for its forgetfulness of all the decencies of society, might rival the most furious abuse of Billingsgate.3

1. DWIGHT.

A French infidel, author of a

2. "Hobbes's politics are fitted only to promote tyranny, and his ethics to encourage licentiousness." HUME. Et tu Brute! 3. Vie privée de Voltaire et de Madame du Châtelet, pendant un sejour de six mois à Cirey. Paris, 1820.

catechism for the human race, affirms that property in land and property in women,-that is marriage, are the two greatest violations of natural liberty, and the bane of human happiness; 1 -a sentiment, I believe, not uncommon among the monstrous rout of libertine theories, engendered by the French revolution.

One of the highest outrages which can be committed against individual peace, or against the social compact, is adultery. Infidelity, both in its published opinions and its notorious practice, is the patron and encourager of this crime. Bolingbroke and Hume, to say nothing of Voltaire, Helvetius, and Rousseau, are its avowed advocates. "Adultery must be practised, if men would obtain all the advantages of life," is the doctrine of David Hume.2 How miserably sordid and brutal must have been the mind which could proclaim so abominable a sentiment! The advantages of life! And in this tone of most heartless flippancy, can infidelity sacrifice domestic peace and conjugal love; snap asunder the most solemn bonds of society, and advocate a treachery too foul and atrocious, to have been contemplated by the basest nations, except with the most determined resentment. Nor is this, it should be remembered, the dogma of a filthy crew of French debauchees, nor of the grossly obscene school of Thomas Paine, but of a sober, decent, and com

1. Quarterly Review, No. LVI. Art. xii. 2. Essays. Vol. ii. p. 409. Edit. 1767.

paratively moral sceptic. Would the reader learn how low infidelity is capable of debasing man? one fact will suffice to shew him. A writer in the Encyclopédie Methodique, says of the abomination of Sodom, that the Greeks were “ni moins estimés ni moins estimables,”—neither less esteemed nor less worthy of esteem for practising it; and the conduct of that unnatural wretch the king of Prussia, proves that this is not a mere theory.

I will not pursue this subject farther: it is too revolting to human nature. Even the Roman satyrist makes chastity a virtue of the golden age:"Credo pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam

66

In terris visam :"-1

And in a degenerate age, there were, he says, multa pudicitiæ veteris vestigia,”—many relics of ancient chastity: but the golden age of infidelity would be, when modesty,-which Lord Bolingbroke makes the offspring of vanity alone, -should be banished from the earth; when all the tender charities of husband and wife, father and child, should be unknown; and when fierce and bestial lust should spread its corrupting influence over every region and every heart.

Is the infidel a happy man? Let him deal faithfully with himself, and we do not require

1. JUVENAL, Sat. vi.

"In Saturn's reign at nature's early birth,
There was a thing called chastity on earth.

DRYDEN.

him to tell us the result of his investigation. If deism can make him happy, why this perpetual restlessness? why this constant longing for variety? why these outbreakings of discontent and peevishness? why this anxious inquiry of each of the objects which are supposed in any mea sure capable of affording satisfaction?

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"

Gay the infidel may be, and thoughtless, and
frivolous: he may succeed in stupifying his con-
science, and hardening his heart; but while he
is under the dominion of unrestricted passion,-
and this infidelity does its utmost to promote,
he cannot be at repose. There are, alas, on every
hand, but too many shocking illustrations of the
misery of infidels. Not to refer to any others,
let him who wishes to pursue the subject, which
is far too ample for these pages, contemplate
the last hours of Voltaire, D'Alembert, and

1. The authoress of "La Vie privée de Voltaire et de Mde. du Châtelet," after having, in the previous part of her work, described the splendour in which they lived, remarks, "Ah my friend, there is no happiness on earth, and we are for ever deceived by appearances. We believed them to be the happiest couple in the world, when we saw them seldom and at a distance, but when one has come close to them, we find, alas, that hell is every where." p. 100. True; "there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked!"

Paine, 1-men who lived just long enough to shew the world the value of the principles which they advocated. How poor and contemptible is that religion,-if religion it may be called,-which cannot make men contented in health and prosperity, and which, when they most need consolation,-in sorrow and death,-cannot even lull the anguish of remorse, much less supply the slightest hope of happiness in a future world! Who would seek or esteem impotence and uncertainty, or horror and despair?

The tendency of infidelity on a grand scale, has been tried once, and once only, in the history of the world. Never but in France, was exhibited the spectacle of a national denunciation, not only of Christianity, but of all religion. Individual atheists there had been before,-men who were dull, and unimaginative, and desperate enough to resolve all order and beauty in the natural world, into casualty, and all love, hope, poetry, reason, and virtue into what, in a few years, will be rottenness and dust, but never before did a senate convene to decree and announce, that man has no God, no soul, no immortality. The most fastidious of sceptics will admit, that no experiment could commence under more favourable

1. Barruel's Memoirs of Jacobinism, Vol. i. c. 17. pp. 377— 382. Cheetham's Life of Paine, pp. 153-160. The former of these works will afford the reader much interesting information respecting the French revolution. He may also refer to Gifford's Residence in France during the years 1792-1795, för further statements on this latter subject.