charter which was on all hands acknowledged to be
derived from Heaven: and that, as a spirit of research and curiosity
was happily revived, and men were now obliged to make a choice among
the contending doctrines of different sects, the proper materials for
decision, and above all, the Holy Scriptures, should be set before them;
and the revealed will of God, which the change of language had somewhat
obscured, be again, by their means, revealed to mankind.

The favorers of the ancient religion maintained, on the other hand, that
the pretence of making the people see with their own eyes was a mere
cheat, and was itself a very gross artifice, by which the new preachers
hoped to obtain the guidance of them, and to seduce them from those
pastors whom the laws, whom ancient establishments, whom Heaven itself,
had appointed for their spiritual direction: that the people were by
their ignorance, their stupidity, their necessary avocations, totally
unqualified to choose their own principles; and it was a mockery to set
materials before them, of which they could not possibly make any proper
use: that even in the affairs of common life, and in their temporal
concerns, which lay more within the compass of human reason, the laws
had in a great measure deprived them of the right of private judgment,
and had, happily for their own and the public interest, regulated their
conduct and behavior: that theological questions were placed far beyond
the sphere of vulgar comprehension; and ecclesiastics themselves, though
assisted by all the advantages of education, erudition, and an assiduous
study of the science, could not be fully assured of a just decision,
except by the promise made them in Scripture, that God would be ever
present with his church, and that the gates of hell should not prevail
against her: that the gross errors adopted by the wisest heathens,
proved how unfit men were to grope their own way through this profound
darkness; nor would the Scriptures, if trusted to every man's judgment,
be able to remedy; on the contrary, they would much augment, those fatal
illusions: that sacred writ itself was involved in so much obscurity,
gave rise to so many difficulties, contained so many appearing
contradictions, that it was the most dangerous weapon that could be
intrusted into the hands of the ignorant and giddy multitude: that the
poetical style in which a great part of it was composed, at the same
time that it occasioned uncertain