d progress of truth;--that, in conformity with this
design, everything be stated with integrity, with method, precision,
and simplicity; and above all, that whatever is published in
opposition to received and confessedly beneficial persuasions, be
set forth under a form which is likely to invite inquiry and to meet
examination. If with these moderate and equitable conditions be
compared the manner in which hostilities have been waged against the
Christian religion, not only the votaries of the prevailing faith,
but every man who looks forward with anxiety to the destination of
his being, will see much to blame and to complain of. By _one
unbeliever_, all the follies which have adhered in a long course of
dark and superstitious ages, to the popular creed, are assumed as so
many doctrines of Christ and his Apostles, for the purpose of
subverting the whole system by the absurdities which it is _thus_
represented to contain. By _another_, the ignorance and vices of the
sacerdotal order, their mutual dissensions and persecutions, their
usurpations and encroachments upon the intellectual liberty and
civil rights of mankind, have been displayed with no small triumph
and invective; not so much to guard the Christian laity against a
repetition of the same injuries (which is the only proper use to be
made of the most flagrant examples of the past,) as to prepare the
way for an insinuation, that the religion itself is nothing but a
profitable fable, imposed upon the fears and credulity of the
multitude, and upheld by the frauds and influence of an interested
and crafty priesthood. And yet, how remotely is the character of the
clergy connected with the truth of Christianity! What, after all, do
the most disgraceful pages of ecclesiastical history prove, but that
the passions of our common nature are not altered or excluded by
distinctions of name, and that the characters of men are formed much
more by the temptations than the duties of their profession? A
_third_ finds delight in collecting and repeating accounts of wars
and massacres, of tumults and insurrections, excited in almost every
age of the Christian era by religious zeal; as though the vices of
Christians were parts of Christianity; intolerance and extirpation
precepts of the Gospel; or as if its spirit could be judged of from
the counsels of princes, the intrigues of statesmen, the pretences
of malice and ambition, or the unauthorized cruelty of some gloomy
and virulent