ed in so many
clouds, is by no means astonishing, since, beside the difficulties
that are peculiar to it, thought itself has, till this moment, ever had
shackles imposed upon it, and free inquiry, by the intolerance of
every religious system, been interdicted. But now that thought is
unrestrained, and may develope all its powers, we will expose in the
face of day, and submit to the common judgment of assembled nations,
such rational truths as unprejudiced minds have by long and laborious
study discovered: and this, not with the design of imposing them as a
creed, but from a desire of provoking new lights, and obtaining better
information.

"Chiefs and instructors of the people! you are not ignorant of the
profound obscurity in which the nature, origin, and history of the
dogmas you teach are enveloped. Imposed by force and authority,
inculcated by education, maintained by the influence of example, they
were perpetuated from age to age, and habit and inattention strengthened
their empire. But if man, enlightened by experience and reflection,
summon to the bar of mature examination the prejudices of his infancy,
he presently discovers a multitude of incongruities and contradictions,
which awaken his sagacity, and call forth the exertion of his reasoning
powers.

"At first, remarking the various and opposite creeds into which nations
are divided, we are led boldly to reject the infallibility claimed
by each; and arming ourselves alternately with their reciprocal
pretensions, to conceive that the senses and the understanding,
emanating directly from God, are a law not less sacred, and a guide not
less sure, than the indirect and contradictory codes of the prophets.

"If we proceed to examine the texture of the codes themselves, we shall
observe that their pretended divine laws, that is to say, laws immutable
and eternal, have risen from the complexion of times, of places, and
of persons; that these codes issue one from another in a kind of
genealogical order, mutually borrowing a common and similar fund of
ideas, which _every_ institutor modifies agreeably to his fancy.

"If we ascend to the source of those ideas, we shall find that it is
lost in the night of time, in the infancy of nations, in the very origin
of the world, to which they claim alliance: and there, immersed in
the obscurity of chaos, and the fabulous empire of tradition, they are
attended with so many prodigies as to be seemingly inaccessible to the
hum