ested motives, and 'tis the common method
of Providence to bring good out of evil: history, both sacred and
profane, furnishes many examples of it. When they tell me I have forsook
the worship of my ancestors, I say I have had more ancestors heathen
than Christian, and my faith is certainly ancienter than theirs, since I
have added nothing to the practice of the primitive professors of
Christianity. As to the prosperity or extent of the dominion of their
church, which Cardinal Bellarmin counts among the proofs of its
orthodoxy, the Mahometans, who have larger empires, and have made a
quicker progress, have a better plea for the visible protection of
Heaven. If the fopperies of their religion were only fopperies, they
ought to be complied with, wherever it is established, like any
ridiculous dress in fashion; but I think them impieties: their devotions
are scandal to humanity from their nonsense; the mercenary deceits and
barbarous tyranny of their ecclesiastics, inconsistent with moral
honesty. If they object the diversity of our sects as a mark of
reprobation, I desire them to consider, that objection has equal force
against Christianity in general. When they thunder with the names of
fathers and councils, they are surprised to find me as well (often
better) acquainted with them than themselves. I show them the variety of
their doctrines, their virulent contests and various factions, instead
of that union they boast of. I have never been attacked a second time in
any of the towns where I have resided, and perhaps shall never be so
again after my last battle, which was with an old priest, a learned man,
particularly esteemed as a mathematician, and who has a head and heart
as warm as poor Whiston's. When I first came hither, he visited me every
day, and talked of me everywhere with such violent praise, that, had we
been young people, God knows what would have been said. I have always
the advantage of being quite calm on a subject which they cannot talk of
without heat. He desired I would put on paper what I had said. I
immediately wrote one side of a sheet, leaving the other for his answer.
He carried it with him, promising to bring it the next day, since which
time I have never seen it, though I have often demanded it, being of
my defective Italian. I fancy he sent it to his friend the Archbishop of
Milan. I have given over asking for it, as a desperate debt. He still
visits me, but seldom, and in a cold sort of a way. W