&c. &c.

THERE was a pamphlet published in the year 1708, against abolishing Christianity in England. The title, it is true, was bold; but the author, though supposed to be a parson, was so modest as only to argue for the outward profession of that religion, without insisting on any thing farther as necessary to be retained, than mere nominal Christianity. His arguments seemed so reasonable, that they only abolished the thing itself, but still adhered to the name and profession, because both were incapable of giving any umbrage to the principles and manners of the times.

The author, like a true parson, that is never to be satisfied, encouraged by this unexpected success, had the assurance the very next year to print a Project for the Advancement of Religion and Reformation of Manners; in which, to the great offence and surprise of the public, the religion he proposed to advance, was the old stale affair of orthodox Christianity, as some affect to call it, together with the clog of the church, as hitherto received in these countries; and the manners he would reform us to, were those no less antiquated customs that had been all lately exploded under the unfashionable name of virtue. The nation may see by this example, how apprehensive it ought to be of the encroachments of the church, and how cautious of encouraging a set of men, whose designs are boundless, who are professed enemies to liberty, and who, if not opposed in time, will again reduce us to slavish mortifications, and superstitious prayers.

His project was knocked on the head by these three little defects in itself; first, the presumption and exorbitancy of the thing raised a general contempt and indignation in the breasts of all free Britons, whose liberties it proposed to abridge by a narrow way of thinking, and a certain stiffness and formality of living, which was directly opposite to the gay and easy manner they had just began to learn of the French. In the next place there was nobody so stupid but could perceive that it as designed to serve

a party. For as his project consisted chiefly in a proposal to the queen to promote none but men of virtuous, regular, and religious lives, to places of trust in either church or state; who sees not that the promoting and enriching himself and his set was at the bottom? This was too partial and narrow a scheme to take, because there would not have been men found to fill our vacant employments, and though there had, yet almost the whole bulk of the nation must have been excluded; so that it would have been a more flagrant grievance, and a greater abridgment of the civil rights of the subject, than even the Test Act itself. In the last place, the project in itself, was, and is, and ever will be, impracticable. I defy any queen or king either to distinguish the virtuous from the vicious, or the deserving from such as are otherwise. No man shews himself to his sovereign; and I may venture to say that there is not a king in Europe who ever saw one of his own subjects yet. But supposing a prince could distinguish between man and man, would it be consistent with any one refinement in modern politics to heap his favours on a few, and pass by so great a majority of his loyal subjects, for no other reason truly, but because they do not go to church, nor say their prayers, nor worship a God? If he can make it their interest to serve him, what need he care how far they gratify their inclination in the choice of their principles, and in their manner of living? Besides, if what I have often heard, from Machiavel and other great politicians, is true, your honest and religious fools are the most unfit creatures in the world to serve about a court. The narrowness of their principles, and the sickly delicacy of their consciences so hamper both their heads and hands, that they are altogether unqualified for business. A prince who has a genius equal to his high station, with such a set of precise formalists to execute his designs either among his subjects, or with his neighbouring princes, must make much the same figure that a man of mettle and spirit does, whose hands and feet are cramped and contracted by a severe fit of the gout. When he would make a stride he stumbles at a straw. When he would make his subjects tremble and his neighbours quake with the vigorous shake of his sceptre, he can scarcely wield a pin.

We may observe upon the whole, that his scheme, if it

could have had any effect at all, it must have been only to make virtue and religion mercenary, by annexing places of profit to the practice of them. If the state should once set itself to encourage virtue and discourage vice, it might come at last to destroy all virtue, because the appropriating temporal power and wealth to certain modes of living must be a heavy bias on the liberty we ought to enjoy of living and acting as we please. Now there being no virtue without liberty, whatsoever tends to abridge our liberty tends likewise to the destruction of virtue. He that has not leave to be vicious is forced to be virtuous (pardon the contradiction), I mean, is forced to live as if he were virtuous, which is the same thing with hypocrisy. Had this project taken place, the devil might have complained of foul play, inasmuch as the whole weight of worldly interest would have been put into the scale against him, and a manifest partiality shewn to religion.

Our Freethinkers will teach us larger notions, and more comprehensive principles than these; they will shew us that people ought not to be deprived of their civil privileges on account of irreligion or immorality, since they are still useful members of the society, since they serve the public to their own private detriment, and since they generously throw away their fortunes, ruin their healths, and damn their souls, purely for the public weal.

By this the reader may perceive the weakness and partiality of this projector; so I shall take my leave of him and his schemes, and try if I can present the public with others of a more free and generous tendency, founded on a more extended way of thinking, and, considering the times, more likely a great deal to succeed.

I will not arrogate to myself the glory of these proposals I am about to represent to my readers: they lie scattered up and down among the writings of our best English authors, and the world is only beholden to me for fetching them into a narrower compass, by a faithful abridgment of the sum and substance of each, so that the uses and excellencies of them all may be more clearly conceived, and more fairly compared. I shall speak out their sense too perhaps in plainer terms than their authors, who writing against the slavery and prejudice of the times, were obliged for the

most part to insinuate their sentiments in an artful and doubtful manner. If the reader should find any considerable inconsistency in the schemes one with another, he is not to be startled at it, because they are drawn from the works of various authors, and the public may approve and the legislature embrace any one, without being tied down in the least to the rest; however, though there may be particular differences, there will be a general likeness observable among them all, which they derive from the opposition of each to the one set of prejudices that have been established among us.

The many projects that have been proposed or set afoot for the advancement or revival of Christianity, have owed their miscarriage to the folly and avarice of the projectors, who always took care to make establishment and tithes, and church endowments a part of their schemes. This is the cause that the utmost attempts of the clergy could scarce ever procure more to be retained than mere nominal Christianity. If they had proposed such methods as should have been neither expensive nor burdensome to the laity, perhaps before this there might have been a very considerable number of real Christians among us. The projectors I draw from were aware of this, and have avoided it.

The first thing necessary to be done is to demolish the present established church to the very foundation. I believe it may be safely taken for a maxim, that the Christian church has been the destruction of the Christian religion: it follows therefore, that Christianity can never raise its head till the very rubbish of this proud pile be entirely removed from off it. The Test Act, with all the other laws relative to church affairs, ought to be repealed. It is impossible to establish one religion or modification of religion, without persecuting all others: for what does establishment consist in, but the restraining the rites of all the citizens to the professors of one religion? And what is this but partiality and persecution. Now if this be done in favour of the true religion, it is the most likely thing in the world to destroy it, because it must give it the appearance of a state trick and a party spirit; it must make it seem tyrannical, selfish, and worldly; and as it decks it in pomp and riches, must render it the object of envy and the prey of its ene

mies. If we would have religion go safe, we must not leave any thing about her that is worth taking away, because such things are never taken away without violence and abuse. If we would have a church that should last for ever, let us erect it of pure spiritual materials, without any rotten mixture from this world, that must at last bring it to the ground; without enclosing it in the mud walls of worldly interest, that can neither be handsome nor lasting in a church, and without putting one stone or beam in it, that may entice church-robbers to convey them to their own houses. As the clergy have been the chief enemies to Christianity, the next thing that is to be done is to extirpate them root and branch. The present set ought to be either banished, or hanged to a man; because there is no hope of ever reducing them to a proper poverty of spirit, though we bring them ever so low in purse. Two admirable effects towards the revival of Christianity will proceed from hence. First, the people being left without teachers, may have leave to teach themselves, and instead of the learned and fanciful interpretations which the clergy have taught them to put upon the Scriptures, they may understand them in the plain and natural sense. Every man may be free to think for himself, and regulate religion according to his own way of thinking. For the same reason parents, who commonly set up for a kind of priest in their own families, and sometimes pretend to preach to their children and servants, ought to be hindered, by capital punishments, from instructing either in the principles of Christian religion, because they will infallibly teach them to think that Christianity which they themselves take to be so, and by that means educate them in such prejudices as cannot but be attended with wrong interpretations of Scripture when they grow up. Besides, when they come to years of discretion, Christianity may begin to appear stale and old-fashioned to them, having been so long trifled with during childhood, or perhaps a cheat, having been imposed on them before they could judge of its merits. All methods ought to be prohibited in advancing the true religion, that can possibly be so applied as to serve a false one. The other excellent effect that will proceed from the extirpation of the clergy is, that all those who have been turned away from Christianity