evolving on its axis, as the earth does, should
have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated
animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed
its revolution, and that without a second general prostration. Is this
arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most
within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament.
It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the
opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born
of a virgin, suspended and reversed the laws of nature at will, and
ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of
illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set
out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was
punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the
Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by
whipping, and the second by exile, or death _in furea_. See this law in
the Digest, Lib. 48. tit. 19. Sec. 28.3. and Lipsius Lib. 2. de cruce.
cap. 2. These questions are examined in the books I have mentioned,
under the head of Religion, and several others. They will assist you in
your inquiries; but keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading
them all. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its
consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will
find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in
its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you
find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are
acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast
additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a
happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that
Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and
love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both
sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other
persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your
own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are
answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision. I
forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should
read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of
ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those