the importance
of the subject? The fact is, and it is a fact which redounds to the
honour of Christianity, that infidelity is not the result of sober
inquiry and deliberate preference. It is rather the slow production of a
careless and irreligious life, operating together with prejudices and
erroneous conceptions, concerning the nature of the leading doctrines
and fundamental tenets of Christianity.

Take the case of young men of condition, bred up by what we have termed
nominal Christians. When children, they are carried to church, and
thence they become acquainted with such parts of Scripture as are
contained in our public service. If their parents preserve still more of
the customs of better times, they are taught their Catechism, and
furnished with a little farther religious knowledge. After a while, they
go from under the eyes of their parents; they enter into the world, and
move forward in the path of life, whatever it may be, which has been
assigned to them. They yield to the temptations which assail them, and
become, more or less, dissipated and licentious. At least they neglect
to look into their Bible; they do not enlarge the sphere of their
religious acquisitions; they do not even endeavour, by reflection and
study, to turn into what may deserve the name of knowledge and rational
conviction, the opinions which, in their childhood, they had taken on
trust.

They travel, perhaps, into foreign countries; a proceeding which
naturally tends to weaken their nursery, prejudice in favour of the
Religion in which they were bred, and by removing them from all means of
public worship, to relax their practical habits of Religion. They return
home, and commonly are either hurried round in the vortex of
dissipation, or engage with the ardour of youthful minds in some public
or professional pursuit. If they read or hear any thing about
Christianity, it is commonly only about those tenets which are subjects
of controversy: and what reaches their ears of the Bible, from their
occasional attendance at church; though it may sometimes impress them
with an idea of the purity of Christian morality, contains much which,
coming thus detached, perplexes and offends them, and suggests various
doubts and startling objections, which a farther acquaintance with the
Scripture would remove. Thus growing more and more to know Christianity
only by the difficulties it contains; sometimes tempted by the ambition
of shewing themselves superi