ust, and was resolved to assert the freedom of his own mind.
To a man fond of bold novelties and daring paradoxes, solid argument
would be flat, and truth would be dull, merely because it is not
new. Mr. Fantom believed, not in proportion to the strength of the
evidence, but to the impudence of the assertion. The trampling on
holy ground with dirty shoes, the smearing the sanctuary with filth
and mire, the calling prophets and apostles by the most scurrilous
names was new, and dashing, and dazzling. Mr. Fantom, now being set
free from the chains of slavery and superstition, was resolved to
show his zeal in the usual way, by trying to free others; but it
would have hurt his vanity had he known that he was the convert of a
man who had written only for the vulgar, who had _invented_ nothing,
no, not even one idea of original wickedness; but who had stooped to
rake up out of the kennel of infidelity, all the loathsome dregs and
offal dirt, which politer unbelievers had thrown away as too gross
and offensive for the better bred readers.

Mr. Fantom, who considered that a philosopher must set up with a
little sort of stock in trade, now picked up all the common-place
notions against Christianity, which have been answered a hundred
times over: these he kept by him ready cut and dried, and brought
out in all companies with a zeal which would have done honor to a
better cause, but which the friends to a better cause are not so apt
to discover. He soon got all the cant of the new school. He prated
about _narrowness_, and _ignorance_, and _bigotry_, and _prejudice_,
and _priestcraft_ on the one hand; and on the other, of _public
good_, the _love of mankind_, and _liberality_, and _candor_, and
_toleration_, and above all, _benevolence_. Benevolence, he said,
made up the whole of religion, and all the other parts of it were
nothing but cant, and jargon, and hypocrisy. By benevolence he
understood a gloomy and indefinite anxiety about the happiness of
people with whom he was utterly disconnected, and whom Providence
had put it out of his reach either to serve or injure. And by the
happiness this benevolence was so anxious to promote, he meant an
exemption from the power of the laws, and an emancipation from the
restraints of religion, conscience, and moral obligation.

Finding, however, that he made but little impression on his old club
at the Cat and Bagpipes, he grew tired of their company. This club
consisted of a few sober cit