ty is full as divine as his.

[Footnote 7: The Sweet-Singers were a fanatical sect of wailers, founded
in Scotland, but which had no long life. [T.S.]] Christ himself commands
us to be freethinkers; for he bids us search the scriptures, and take
heed what and whom we hear; by which he plainly warns us, not to believe
our bishops and clergy; for Jesus Christ, when he considered that all
the Jewish and heathen priests, whose religion he came to abolish, were
his enemies, rightly concluded that those appointed by him to preach his
own gospel, would probably be so too; and could not be secure, that any
set of priests, of the faith he delivered, would ever be otherwise;
therefore it is fully demonstrated that the clergy of the Church of
England are mortal enemies to Christ, and ought not to be believed.

[Footnote 8: Yet Whiston, who receives this side-cut, was himself an
anxious combatant of Collins, in his "Reflections on an Anonymous
Pamphlet, entitled, 'A Defence of Freethinking.'" 1713. [S.]]

But, without the privilege of freethinking, how is it possible to know
which is the right Scripture? Here are perhaps twenty sorts of
Scriptures in the several parts of the world, and every set of priests
contend that their Scripture is the true one. The Indian Brahmins have a
book of scripture called the Shaster; the Persees their Zundivastaw;[9]
the Bonzes in China have theirs, written by the disciples of Fo-he, whom
they call _God and Saviour of the world, who was born to teach the way
of salvation, and to give satisfaction for all men's sins_: which, you
see, is directly the same with what our priests pretend of Christ. And
must we not think freely, to find out which are in the right, whether
the Bishops or the Bonzes? But the Talapoins, or heathen clergy of Siam,
approach yet nearer to the system of our priests; they have a Book of
Scripture written by Sommonocodam, who, the Siamese say, was "born of a
virgin," and was "the God expected by the Universe;" just as our priests
tell us, that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, and was the
Messiah so long expected. The Turkish priests, or dervises, have their
Scripture which they call the Alcoran. The Jews have the Old Testament
for their Scripture, and the Christians have both the Old and the New.
Now among all these Scriptures, there cannot above one be right; and how
is it possible to know which is that, without reading them all, and then
thinking freely, every one of us