ed into
play-houses, exchanges, market-houses, common dormitories, and other
public edifices.

I hope I shall be forgiven a hard word if I call this a perfect cavil. I
readily own there hath been an old custom, time out of mind, for people
to assemble in the churches every Sunday, and that shops are still
frequently shut, in order, as it is conceived, to preserve the memory of
that ancient practice; but how this can prove a hindrance to business or
pleasure is hard to imagine. What if the men of pleasure are forced, one
day in the week, to game at home instead of the chocolate-house? Are not
the taverns and coffee-houses open? Can there be a more convenient
season for taking a dose of physic? Is not that the chief day for
traders to sum up the accounts of the week, and for lawyers to prepare
their briefs? But I would fain know how it can be pretended that the
churches are misapplied? Where are more appointments and rendezvouses of
gallantry? Where more care to appear in the foremost box, with greater
advantage of dress? Where more meetings for business? Where more
bargains driven of all sorts? And where so many conveniences or
incitements to sleep?

There is one advantage greater than any of the foregoing, proposed by the
abolishing of Christianity, that it will utterly extinguish parties among
us, by removing those factious distinctions of high and low church, of
Whig and Tory, Presbyterian and Church of England, which are now so many
mutual clogs upon public proceedings, and are apt to prefer the
gratifying themselves or depressing their adversaries before the most
important interest of the State.

I confess, if it were certain that so great an advantage would redound to
the nation by this expedient, I would submit, and be silent; but will any
man say, that if the words, whoring, drinking, cheating, lying, stealing,
were, by Act of Parliament, ejected out of the English tongue and
dictionaries, we should all awake next morning chaste and temperate,
honest and just, and lovers of truth? Is this a fair consequence? Or if
the physicians would forbid us to pronounce the words pox, gout,
rheumatism, and stone, would that expedient serve like so many talismen
to destroy the diseases themselves? Are party and faction rooted in
men's hearts no deeper than phrases borrowed from religion, or founded
upon no firmer principles? And is our language so poor that we cannot
find other terms to express them? Are env