difficulty and almost impossibility
of deceiving the world in an affair of such consequence; the wisdom and
solid judgment of that renowned queen; with the little or no advantage
which she could reap from so poor an artifice. All this might astonish
me; but I would still reply that the knavery and folly of men are such
common phenomena that I should rather believe the most extraordinary
events to arise from their concurrence than admit of so signal a
violation of the laws of nature.

Our most holy religion is founded on _faith_, not on reason; and it is a
sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no
means fitted to endure. To make this more evident, let us examine those
miracles related in the Pentateuch, which we shall examine as the
production of a mere human writer and historian. Here, then, we are
first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant
people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in
all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by
no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts which
every nation gives of its origin.

Upon reading this book we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It
gives an account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely
different from the present; of our fall from that state; of the age of
man extended to near a thousand years; of the destruction of the world
by a deluge; of the arbitrary choice of one people as the favourites of
Heaven, and that people the countrymen of the author; of their
deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most astonishing imaginable. I
desire anyone to lay his hand upon his heart, and, after a serious
consideration, declare whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a
book, supported by such a testimony, would be more extraordinary and
miraculous than the miracles it relates, which is, however, necessary to
make it be received according to the measures of probability above
established.

_III.--Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State_

I was lately engaged in conversation with a friend who loves sceptical
paradoxes. To my expression of the opinion that a wise magistrate can
justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy such as those of
Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a
Providence and a future state, seem to loosen the ties of morality, he
replied as follows.

"If Epicurus had been accused be