ith everything necessary for
their wants and their happiness; they had only one duty to perform, by
their obedience to prove their love and devotion to their Creator. In
this they failed, and death--or the fear of death--became a curse upon
their race; but the father of mankind repented, and his instinctive or
intellectual powers given by revelation were transmitted to his offspring
more or less modified by their reason, which they had gained as the fruit
of their disobedience. One branch of his offspring, however, in whom
faith shone forth above reason, retained their peculiar powers and
institutions and preserved the worship of Jehovah pure, whilst many of
the races sprung from their brethren became idolatrous, and the clear
light of heaven was lost through the mist of the senses; and that Being,
worshipped by the Israelites only as a mysterious word, was forgotten by
many of the nations who lived in the neighbouring countries, and men,
beasts, the parts of the visible universe, and even stocks and stones,
were set up as objects of adoration. The difficulty which the divine
legislators of the Jewish people had to preserve the purity of their
religion amongst the idolatrous nations by whom they were surrounded,
proves the natural evil tendency of the human mind after the fall of man.
And, whoever will consider the nature of the Mosaical or ceremonial law
and the manner in which it was suspended before the end of the Roman
Empire, the expiatory sacrifice of the Messiah, the fear of death
destroyed by the blessed hopes of immortality established by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and
the triumphs of Christianity over paganism in the time of Constantine,
can I think, hardly fail to acknowledge the reasonableness of the truth
of revealed religion as founded upon the early history of man; and
whoever acknowledges this reasonableness and this truth, must I think be
dissatisfied with the view which Philalethes or his genius has given of
the progress of society, and will find in it one instance, amongst many
others that might be discovered, of the vague and erring results of his
so much boasted human reason.

_Onu_.--I fear I shall shock Ambrosio, but I cannot help vindicating a
little the philosophical results of human reason, which it must be
allowed are entirely hostile to his ideas. I agree with Philalethes that
it is the noblest gift of God to man; and I cannot think that Ambros