Keep in
your eye the opposite pretensions, 1. of those who say he was begotten
by God, born of a virgin, suspended, and reversed the laws of nature at
will, and ascended bodily into heaven: and, 2. of those who say he was
a man, of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind,
who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them,
and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according
to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by
whipping, and the second by exile or death _in furca_. See this law in
the Digest, Lib. 48, tit. 19, Sec. 28. 3. and Lipsius, Lib. 2. _De Cruce_,
cap. 2. These questions are examined in the books I have mentioned,
under the head of Religion, and several others. They will assist you in
your inquiries; but keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading
them all. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its
consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find
incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its
exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find
reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting
under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional
incitement: if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy
existence in that, increases the appetite to deserve it: if that Jesus
was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love.
In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides,
and neither believe nor reject any thing, because any other person, or
description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is
the only oracle given you by Heaven, and you are answerable not for the
rightness, but uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe, when
speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories
of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided
for us to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists.
Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the
others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and
not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost. There
are some, however, still extant, collected by Fabricius, which I will
endeavor to get and send you.

5. Travelling. This makes men wiser, but less happy. When men of sober
age travel, they gather k