up for freethinkers, are such as endeavour by a
little trash of words and sophistry, to weaken and destroy those very
principles, for the vindication of which, freedom of thought at first
became laudable and heroic.[104] These apostates, from reason and good
sense, can look at the glorious frame of Nature, without paying an
adoration to Him that raised it; can consider the great revolutions in
the universe, without lifting up their minds to that Superior Power
which hath the direction of it; can presume to censure the Deity in His
ways towards men; can level mankind with the beasts that perish; can
extinguish in their own minds all the pleasing hopes of a future state,
and lull themselves into a stupid security against the terrors of it. If
one were to take the word "priestcraft" out of the mouths of these
shallow monsters, they would be immediately struck dumb. It is by the
help of this single term that they endeavour to disappoint the good
works of the most learned and venerable order of men, and harden the
hearts of the ignorant against the very light of Nature, and the common
received notions of mankind. We ought not to treat such miscreants as
these upon the foot of fair disputants, but to pour out contempt upon
them, and speak of them with scorn and infamy, as the pests of society,
the revilers of human nature, and the blasphemers of a Being, whom a
good man would rather die than hear dishonoured. Cicero, after having
mentioned the great heroes of knowledge that recommended this divine
doctrine of the immortality of the soul, calls those small pretenders to
wisdom who declared against it, certain minute philosophers,[105] using
a diminutive even of the word "little," to express the despicable
opinion he had of them. The contempt he throws upon them in another
passage[106] is yet more remarkable, where, to show the mean thoughts he
entertains of them, he declares, he would rather be in the wrong with
Plato, than in the right with such company. There is indeed nothing in
the world so ridiculous as one of these grave philosophical
freethinkers, that hath neither passions nor appetites to gratify, no
heats of blood nor vigour of constitution that can turn his systems of
infidelity to his advantage, or raise pleasures out of them which are
inconsistent with the belief of a hereafter. One that has neither wit,
gallantry, mirth, nor youth, to indulge by these notions, but only a
poor, joyless, uncomfortable vanity of disti