, madame,' quoth the Doctor, 'that no
sensible man will tell.'

This doctor may be given as a type of the class of shrewd people who
despise superstition, but will say nothing about it, lest by so doing
they give a shock to prejudice, and thus put in peril certain
professional or other emoluments. Too sensible to be pious, and too
cautious to be honest, they must be extremely well paid ere they will
incur the risk attendant upon a confession of anti-superstitious faith.

Animated by a vile spirit of accommodation, their whole sum of practical
wisdom can be told in four words--BE SILENT AND SAFE. They are amazed at
the 'folly' of these who make sacrifices at the shrine of sincerity; and
while sagacious enough to perceive that superstition is a clumsy
political contrivance, are not wanting in the prudence which dictates at
least a _seeming_ conformity to prevailing prejudices.

None have done more to perpetrate error than these time-serving 'men of
the world,' for instead of boldly attacking it, they preserve a prudent
silence which bigots do not fail to interpret as consent. Mosheim says,
[47:1] 'The simplicity and ignorance of the generality in those times
(fifth century) furnished the most favourable occasion for the exercise
of fraud; and the impudence of impostors, in contriving false miracles,
was artfully proportioned to the credulity of the vulgar, while the
sagacious and the wise, who perceived these cheats, were overawed into
silence by the dangers that threatened their lives and fortunes, if they
should expose the artifice. Thus,' continues this author, 'does it
generally happen, when danger attends the discovery and the profession
of truth, the prudent are _silent_, the multitude _believe_, and
impostors _triumph_.'

Beausobre, too, in his learned account of Manicheism reads a severe
lesson to those who, under the influence of such passions as _fear_ and
_avarice_, will do nothing to check the march of superstition, or
relieve their less 'sensible,' but more honest, fellow-creatures from
the weight of its fetters. After alluding to an epistle written by that
'demi-philosopher,' Synesius, when offered by the Patriarch the
Bishopric of Ptolemais, [48:1] Beausobre says, 'We see in the history
that I have related a kind of hypocrisy, which, perhaps, has been far
too common in all times. It is that of ecclesiastics, who not only do
not say what they think, but the reverse of what they think.
Philosophers in the