eir disciples should attain to no higher a strain of virtue
than those who rejecting their Divine authority, should still adhere to
the old philosophy?

But it may perhaps be objected that we are forgetting an observation
which we ourselves have made, that Christianity has raised the general
standard of morals; to which therefore Infidelity herself now finds it
prudent to conform, availing herself of the pure morality of
Christianity, and sometimes wishing to usurp to herself the credit of
it, while she stigmatizes the authors with the epithets of ignorant
dupes or designing impostors!

But let it then be asked, are the motives of Christianity so little
necessary to the practice of it, its principles to its conclusions, that
the one may be spared and yet the other remain in undiminished force?
Still then, its _Doctrines_ are no more than a barren and inapplicable
or at least an unnecessary theory, the place of which, it may perhaps be
added, would be well supplied by a more simple and less costly scheme.

But can it be? Is Christianity then reduced to a mere creed? Is its
practical influence bounded within a few external plausibilities? Does
its essence consist only in a few speculative opinions, and a few
useless and unprofitable tenets? And can this be the ground of that
portentous distinction, which is so unequivocally made by the Evangelist
between those who accept, and those who reject the Gospel: "He that
believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not
the Son, shall not see life: but the wrath of God abideth on him?" This
were to run into the very error which the bulk of professed Christians
would be most forward to condemn, of making an unproductive faith the
rule of God's future judgment, and the ground of an eternal separation.
Thus not unlike the rival circumnavigators from Spain and Portugal, who
setting out in contrary directions, found themselves in company at the
very time they thought themselves farthest from each other; so the bulk
of professed Christians arrive, though by a different course, almost at
the very same point, and occupy nearly the same station as a set of
enthusiasts, who also rest upon a barren faith, to whom on the first
view they might be thought the most nearly opposite, and whose tenets
they with reason profess to hold in peculiar detestation. By what
pernicious courtesy of language is it, that this wretched system has
been flattered with the name of Christian