at their
real weight and place in the argument deserve, still more shall we
discover of management and disingenuousness in the _form_ under
which they are dispersed among the public. Infidelity is served up
in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the
imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem; in interspersed
and broken hints, remote and oblique surmises; in books of travels,
of philosophy, of natural history; in a word, in any form rather
than the right one, that of a professed and regular disquisition.
And because the coarse buffoonery and broad laugh of the old and
rude adversaries of the Christian faith would offend the taste,
perhaps, rather than the virtue, of this cultivated age, a graver
irony, a more skilful and delicate banter is substituted in its
place. An eloquent historian, beside his more direct, and therefore
fairer, attacks upon the credibility of Evangelic story, has
contrived to weave into his narration one continued sneer upon the
cause of Christianity, and upon the writings and characters of its
ancient patrons. The knowledge which this author possesses of the
frame and conduct of the human mind must have led him to observe,
that such attacks do their execution without inquiry. Who can refute
a _sneer_? Who can compute the number, much less, one by one,
scrutinize the justice of those disparaging insinuations which crowd
the pages of this elaborate history? What reader suspends his
curiosity, or calls off his attention from the principal narrative,
to examine references, to search into the foundation, or to weigh
the reason, propriety, and force of every transient sarcasm and sly
allusion, by which the Christian testimony is depreciated and
traduced; and by which, nevertheless, he may find his persuasion
afterwards unsettled and perplexed?"

"But the enemies of Christianity have pursued her with poisoned
arrows. Obscenity itself is made the vehicle of infidelity. The
fondness for ridicule is almost universal; and ridicule to many
minds is never so irresistible as when seasoned with obscenity,
and employed upon religion. But in proportion as these noxious
principles take hold of the imagination, they infatuate the
judgment; for trains of ludicrous and unchaste associations,
adhering to every sentiment and mention of religion, render the mind
indisposed to receive either conviction from its evidence, or
impressions from its authority. And this effect, being exerted upon