inclination to favour superstition, or the belief of a God, and the
immortality of the soul; unless what he throws out sometimes to save
himself from danger, in his speeches to the Roman mob; whose religion
was, however, much more innocent and less absurd, than that of popery at
least: And I could say more--but you understand me.

Seneca was a great freethinker, and had a noble notion of the worship of
the gods, for which our priests would call any man an atheist: He laughs
at morning devotions, or worshipping upon Sabbath-days; he says God has
no need of ministers and servants, because he himself serves mankind.
This religious man, like his religious brethren the Stoics, denies the
immortality of the soul, and says, all that is feigned to be so terrible
in hell, is but a fable: Death puts an end to all our misery, &c. Yet
the priests were anciently so fond of Seneca, that they forged a
correspondence of letters between him and St. Paul.

Solomon himself, whose writings are called "the word of God," was such a
freethinker, that if he were now alive, nothing but his building of
churches could have kept our priests from calling him an atheist. He
affirms the eternity of the world almost in the same manner with
Manilius,[28] the heathen philosophical poet, (which opinion entirely
overthrows the history of the creation by Moses, and all the New
Testament): He denies the immortality of the soul, assures us that men
die like beasts, and that both go to one place.

[Footnote 28: Marcus Manilius, who probably flourished under Theodosius
the Great, was a Latin poet, who wrote a poem entitled "Astronomica."
[T.S.] ]

The prophets of the Old Testament were generally freethinkers: you must
understand, that their way of learning to prophesy was by music and
drinking.[29] These prophets writ against the established religion of
the Jews, (which those people looked upon as the institution of God
himself,) as if they believed it was all a cheat: that is to say, with
as great liberty against the priests and prophets of Israel, as Dr.
Tindal did lately against the priests and prophets of our Israel, who
has clearly shewn them and their religion to be cheats. To prove this,
you may read several passages in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Jeremiah, &c.,
wherein you will find such instances of freethinking, that, if any
Englishman had talked so in our days, their opinions would have been
registered in Dr. Sacheverell's trial, and in the representa