The famous Peter Viret, who was pastor of the reformed church at Lyons, at this first appearance of the deists, not only wrote against them; but, we are sorry to say, he did more, he joined with the arch-bishop's vicar in persecuting them. What a motley figure! The voice of Jacob, and the hands of Esau!

Some of the more candid protestants contented themselves with making two observations, which they thought were sufficient to answer the objections of Rome on this article. First, they said, It is not true that there are no religious controversies in the church of Rome; there are two hundred and thirty-seven contrarieties of doctrine among the Romish divines. Secondly, if it were true, the quiet of the members of that church would not prove their unity in the faith. A negative unanimity, that is, a freedom from religious differences, may proceed from ignorance, negligence, or fear the two first resemble the quiet of the night, when all are asleep; or the stillness of a church-yard, where all are dead; and the last is the taciturnity of a slave under a tyrant's rod. These observations were not impertinent, for although none of our disputes are managed without humbling marks of human infirmity, yet, on a cool balance of accounts, it will appear, that the moral good produced by liberty of conscience is far greater than the moral evil suffered. Peevish tempers, and puerile mistakes, mix with free inquiry; but without inquiry fair and free we should have no religion at all.

Had the Protestants done only that with the writings of Moses and Paul, which they did with the writings of Homer and Tacitus, had they fetched them out of dusty holes in libraries, exposed them to public view, and left them to shift for themselves, their authenticity, we presume, would have shined with inimitable lustre; for fewer objections have lain against the book, than against the methods that have been used to enforce it. But that fatal notion of uniformity, this absurd dogma, unity in the faith is the test of a true church, misled those worthy men, and they adopted the spirit of persecution, that child of the mother of abominations, Rev. xvii. 5. whom folly had produced, and whom cruelty had hitherto maintained.

In order to vie with the church of Rome in point of uniformity, and to excel it in point of truth, the reformers extracted, what they supposed, the sense of scripture; not on plain, obvious, essential truths; but on doctrines extremely perplexed and difficult; these extracts they called Confessions of Faith, these they signed; and all who refused to sign them they disowned, and persecuted out of their communities.

Having done these things, not according to the pattern shewed by their divine Master, in his plain and peaceful sermon on the mount of Olives, Heb. viii. 5. but according to the arcana imperii of the noman, who sitteth on seven mountains, and who reigneth over the kings of the earth, Rev. xvii. 9. 18. they boasted of enjoying as good an uniformity as that of which the catholic church vaunted.

If they, who first prosecuted these unrighteous measures in the protestant churches, could have foreseen the dismal consequences of them, surely they must have lain in sackcloth and ashes, to lament their anti-christian zeal, which, by importing exotics from Rome, by planting them in reformed churches, and by flattering the magistracy into the dirty work of cultivating them, spoiled the growth of reason and religion, and cherished, under their deleterious shade, nothing but that unprofitable weed, implicit faith.

Let a dispassionate spectator cast his eye on the christian world, and, when he has seen the rigorous measures that have been used to establish, as it is called, the faith of the Reformers, let him turn his eye to the church of Rome on the one hand, and to sectaries on the other, and attend to the consequences of these measures among both. Catholics laugh at Protestant arguments against the infallibility of the Bishop of Rome. See, say they, mulant clypeos, the reformed have destroyed one Pope to create an hundred. Calvin is infallible at Geneva, Luther in Germany, in England Cranmer, and in Scotland Knox! How wise the doctrine of infallibility! how just and necessary the practice of the Inquisition! The pretended Protestants have tried in vain to govern churches without severity; they themselves, who have exclaimed the most violently against it, have been obliged to adopt it. Sectaries, on the other hand, avail themselves of these practices, and, not distinguishing between christianity itself and the professors of it, charge that on the laws of our prince,

which is chargeable only on the inadvertency of his subjects.

Other times, other manners! Whether the reproaches of the papists, the increase of learning, piety, and experience, or whatever else have meliorated the reformed churches, the French protestants rarely persecute; and when they do, it is plain, they do that as a body in a synod, which not one of them would dare to avow as a private divine. Dangerous distinction! Should an upright man vote for a measure which he would blush to enforce! Should he not endeavour to abrogate canons, which, for the soul of him, he has not impiety enough to execute? Shall protestants renounce that merchandise of Rome, which consist of odours, and ointments, and chariots, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and continue that more scandalous traffic which consists of slaves and souls of men? Rev. xviii. 12, 13.

If a counsel, or a work, be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, Acts v. 38, 39. is one of the surest axioms in the world; and if there be such a thing in the world as dignity, that is, propriety of character, it must be in that christian, who, disdaining every carnal weapon, maintains the truth of his religion by placid reasoning, and by a holy life. Other influence is unscriptural, and unnatural too. We may admire the genius of a deist, avail ourselves of bis learning, and lament his abuse of both: but we may not touch his person, his property, his liberty, his character, his peace. To his own Master he standeth or falleth, Rom. xiv. 4.

We beg leave to subjoin three observations in re gard to deism. Deists are not so numerous as so ne have imagined. Real christians have occasioned violent prejudices against christianity. Very few deists have taken up the argument on its true grounds; and they, who have, could not support it.

Deists are not so numerous as some have imagined. Mons. de Voltaire has thought proper to inform his countrymen, in his Additions to his General History, that " Deism, which Charles II. seemed openly to "profess, became the reigning religion" in England: that "the sect is become very numerous :" and that “ a "number of eminent writers have made open pro"fession of deism." How this agreeable French writer came to know this, who can tell, if, as he affirms a little lower, "Deists allow a diversity of opinions in others, and seldom discover their own;" and, if deists have only a private form of worship, "each worshipping God in his own house, and as"sisting without scruple at all public ceremonies ?" Surely Mons. Voltaire mistook, he meant to describe a hypocrite, and not a deist.

If a deist be one who, having examined the religion of nature, and the religion of scripture, gives the preference to the former, and rejects the latter, it may be affirmed, I think, that the number of Deists is very small. In a comparative view, the number is too inconsiderable to be mentioned. The rank of a Herbert, the wit of a Shaftesbury, the style of a Bolingbroke, the scurrilous buffoonery of a Woolston, along with the wisdom and piety of the Lockes, and Lelands, and Lardners, who have op