ABSTRACT
* I see nothing in this paragraph which I wish to retract. I have only said what is fact, that many mal-contents avow themselves to be infidels; that the most furious of them were generally such. The conduct of some serious professors of religion is accounted for on other principles. To show that what I have stated is the case abroad as well as at home, hear the words of Dr. Watson, Bishop of Landaff, in his late elegant and animated “Address to the People of Great-Britain,” “It is here supposed,” says he, “that the enemies of religion are also the enemies of government; but this must be understood with some restriction. There are, it may be said, many deists in this country, who are sensible of the advantages of a regular government, and who would be as unwilling as the most orthodox believers in the kingdom, that our own should be overturned. This may be true, but it is true also, that they who wish to overthrow the government are not only, generally speaking, unbelievers themselves, but that they found their hopes of success in the infidelity of the common people. They are sensible that no government can long subsist, if the bulk of the people have no reverence for a supreme being, no fear of perjury, no apprehension of futurity, no check from conscience; and foreseeing the rapine, devastation and bloodshed, which usually attend the last convulsions of a state struggling for its political existence, they wish to prepare proper actors for this dreadful catastrophe, by brutalizing mankind; for it is by religion more than by any other principle of human nature, that men are distinguished from brutes.” As to the leading object of Thomas Paine, I have expressed an opinion. It is certain that his principles directly tend to confusion, and every evil work. Any favorable mention which I may have made of this man, I wish to be obliterated and forgotten.
