he visits us with chastisements, but we are not contrite. The
portion of the week set apart to the service of Religion we give up,
without reluctance, to vanity and dissipation. And it is much if, on the
periodical return of a day of national humiliation, having availed
ourselves of the certainty of an interval from public business to secure
a meeting for convivial purposes; we do not insult the Majesty of Heaven
by feasting and jollity, and thus deliberately disclaim our being
included in the solemn services of this season of penitence and
recollection[109].

But when there is not this open and shameless disavowal of Religion, few
traces of it are to be found. Improving in almost every other branch of
knowledge, we have become less and less acquainted with Christianity.
The preceding chapters have pointed out, among those who believe
themselves to be orthodox Christians, a deplorable ignorance of the
Religion they profess, an utter forgetfulness of the peculiar doctrines
by which it is characterized, a disposition to regard it as a mere
system of ethics, and, what might seem an inconsistency, at the same
time a most inadequate idea of the nature and strictness of its
practical principles. This declension of Christianity into a mere system
of ethics, may partly be accounted for, as has been lately suggested; by
considering the corruption of our nature, what Christianity is, and in
what circumstances she has been placed in this country. But it has also
been considerably promoted by one peculiar cause, on which, for many
reasons, it may not be improper to dwell a little more particularly.

Christianity in its best days (for the credit of our representations let
this be remembered, by those who object to our statement as austere and
contracted) was such as it has been delineated in the present work. This
was the Religion of the most eminent Reformers, of those bright
ornaments of our country who suffered martyrdom under queen Mary; of
their successors in the times of Elizabeth; in short of all the pillars
of our Protestant church; of many of its highest dignitaries; of
Davenant, of Hall, of Reynolds, of Beveridge, of Hooker, of Andrews, of
Smith, of Leighton, of Usher, of Hopkins, of Baxter[110], and of many
others of scarcely inferior note. In their pages the peculiar doctrines
of Christianity were every where visible, and on the deep and solid
basis of these doctrinal truths were laid the foundations of a
superstructur