wn, whose learning, manners, temperance, probity, good-nature,
and politics, are all of a piece. Others of them in the country,
oppressing their tenants, tyrannizing over the neighbourhood, cheating
the vicar, talking nonsense, and getting drunk at the sessions. It is
from such seminaries as these, that the world is provided with the
several tribes and denominations of freethinkers, who, in my judgment,
are not to be reformed by arguments offered to prove the truth of the
Christian religion, because reasoning will never make a man correct an
ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired: for in the course of
things, men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers; but if
you would once convince the town or country profligate, by topics drawn
from the view of their own quiet, reputation, health, and advantage,
their infidelity would soon drop off: This I confess is no easy task,
because it is almost in a literal sense, to fight with beasts. Now, to
make it clear, that we are to look for no other original of this
infidelity, whereof divines so much complain, it is allowed on all
hands, that the people of England are more corrupt in their morals than
any other nation at this day under the sun: and this corruption is
manifestly owing to other causes, both, numerous and obvious, much more
than to the publication of irreligious books, which indeed are but the
consequence of the former. For all the writers against Christianity
since the Revolution have been of the lowest rank among men in regard to
literature, wit, and good sense, and upon that account wholly
unqualified to propagate heresies, unless among a people already
abandoned.

[Footnote 11: Scott and Hawkesworth print "above forty." [T. S.]]

In an age where everything disliked by those who think with the majority
is called disaffection, it may perhaps be ill interpreted, when I
venture to tell you that this universal depravation of manners is owing
to the perpetual bandying of factions among us for thirty years past;
when without weighing the motives of justice, law, conscience, or
honour, every man adjusts his principles to those of the party he hath
chosen, and among whom he may best find his own account: But by reason
of our frequent vicissitudes, men who were impatient of being out of
play, have been forced to recant, or at least to reconcile their former
tenets with every new system of administration. Add to this, that the
old fundamental custom of an