that is, a structure designed by a munificent God, which, without conferring any additional good, should at least abridge a present source of pleasure; and which, perhaps, could not have been accomplished by an alteration of orga nization alone, but might require also the introduction of a different system of laws of light. Let the Deist reconcile this.

When the Deist propounded the following question, he should also have answered it. "What has man to do with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star called the north star, with the moving orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow from their being visible?" The cui bono question is easier proposed than satisfied. If the north star is of some use in practical astronomy, and the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites in determining the Longitude, and Venus (if it can be called a use) in determining the parallax, of what use all the rest are, it would be difficult to answer; except, perhaps, that sublime purpose they serve, in adding a confirmatory demonstration of the omnipotency of God. Hence, then, the reason assigned by Mr. Paine, why this vast "power of vision" was conferred on man, is futile and unphilosophical; futile because the power results accidentally from a general law; unphilosophical because it contradicts that simplicity of principle, by which the harmony of the universe is governed. Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora.

"The power of beholding an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space," does not belong to man; and nothing but an ignorance, a gross ignorance of Astronomy could have asserted it.

"It is by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their being visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of vision. But when he contemplates the subject in this light, he sees an additional motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for in vain would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing."

This paragraph is almost entirely answered in the comments upon the last, but it displays such a specimen of logick, as would disgrace the veriest noviciate of the humblest academy in Christendom. Man beholds a subject of scientific contemplation in the heavens, and thence infers the use of vision: very good. He next infers, by way of corollary, "that nothing is made in vain ;" though he surely needed not to have gone to "the starry heavens" for a proof of that. Then, mark Reader, how smoothly and independently the last conclusion flows from these premises: "for, in vain would be this power of vision if it taught man NOTHING!!" That is, A is valuable because it procures B; B therefore proves that A is not useless, and therefore A is in vain if it procure nothing." A common reasoner would have objected, that if A could not procure B, it might procure C and D &c, all of which might be as useful, or more so, than B. So the power of vision would not have been "in vain," if man had been forbid to have scanned the "starry heavens," provided it was sufficiently comprehensive for the economy of life, although that limited power would have required a greater complexity of organization, than that from which it now results..

That vision was designed to have its limits, is certain from the fact, that it may be carried further into space, or deeper into the structure of matter, by artificial assistance; and had utility been consulted, there is no question but that it would have resulted from a power of examining minute objects, and not from contemplating "the starry heavens." Whether we see one world or a million, is of no consequence to the interests of man; but, if what the German Philosophers call monads, (supposing such to exist) or the nuclei of crystals, or the effluvia of magnetism, electricity, and galvanism, or the particles of gases &c. had been rendered visible, we might have thence deduced an abundance of important truths, highly serviceable to the economy of man. Then the enlarged power would not have "been made in vain;" and the Christian knows and acknowledges, that the.

withholding of it, is also "not in vain." But this the Deist does not know.

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I humbly beg of the Reader to believe, that I should not have troubled him nor myself with exposing the false reasoning of Mr. Paine on subjects of philosophy, but for the purpose of exhibiting its fallacy on questions that admit of demonstration; and thence to excite a well grounded suspicion, that the same fallacy is employed by him in establishing his objections against Religion.

As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. That which is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names.

"The Greeks were a learned people; but learning with them did not consist in speaking Greek, any more than a Roman's speaking Latin, or a Frenchman's speaking French, or an Englishman's speaking English. From what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear that they knew, or studied any language but their own; and this was one cause of their becoming so learned; it afforded them more time to apply themselves to better studies. The schools of the Greeks were schools of science and philosophy, and not of languages: and it is in the knowledge of the things that science and philosophy teach, that learning consists.

Almost all the scientific learning that now exists, came to us from the Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language. It therefore became necessary to the people of other nations, who spoke a different language, that some among them should learn the Greek language, in order that the learning the Greeks had, might be made known in their nations, by translating the Greek books of science and philosophy into the native tongue of each nation.

The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner for the Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist, and the language thus obtained was no other than the means, as it were, the tools employed to obtain the learning the Greeks had. It made no part of the learning itself; and was so distinct from it, as to make it exceed

ingly probable, that the persons who had studied Greek sufficiently to translate those works, such for instance as Euclid's Elements, did not understand any of the learning the works contained."

There is nothing contained in these paragraphs that requires either comment or reply, except, that "the Chris tian system of faith has made a revolution in the state of learning." By "revolution" Mr. Paine meant, a relinquishing of scientific for classical knowledge. Did such al revolution come in with Christianity? What was the science that was abandoned? By whom professed? The fact is, that Mr. Paine, who before mistook the crucifixion for the deluge, has here confounded the tyrannic times of papacy with the earlier period of pure Christianity; and has fancied that because a Galileo, and a Vigilius &c. suffered under the barbarous hands of Romanism, that all the professors of science experienced the same treatment from the hands of the primitive Christians; than which nothing is more false. Nothing is more adverse to the pure spirit of Christianity, than persecution.

1

It is a truth, which even infidelity has never before denied, that we are indebted to Christianity for all the knowledge of antiquity, both classical and scientifical, that we now possess; and how they who had been the Preservers, could become the Destroyers of it, or the Persecutors of those who professed it, I shall leave for the imagination of the Deist to conceive.

That the Greeks did study other languages besides their own, is rendered probable, by the fact, that Solon, Lycurgus, Herodotus, and Plato &c. travelled into distant Countries for the purpose of deriving knowledge, and, like Ulysses,

"Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray'd, "Their manners noted, and their states survey'd:"

an undertaking that could not have been successfully carried on without an acquaintance with the languages of those Countries. Nor is it easy to imagine, how

treaties could be formed between different nations, or the missions of Ambassadors be understood, without a knowledge. and consequently a study of other languages.

The vast number of Hebrew roots in the Greek tongue, might lead us to suppose, that much intercourse had existed between the two nations; and that the antient Romans did study other languages besides Latin, we have abundant reed. Cicero, in his eloquent defence of the Poet Arch, says "Græca leguntur in omnibus fere gen 115 And education was not considered complete,

unless finished in Greece.

Mr. Paine has also betrayed in this paragraph great ignorane of the state of science as it existed in his own time, when he said, that "almost all the scientific learning that now exists, came to us from the Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language." The science derived from the Greeks was altogether elementary; even that cycle of science of Mr. Paine, that "book and school of science" Astronomy, was scarcely known in its elements by them; in its general laws it was not known at all; nor for hundreds of years afterwards, and not till Christianity was the Religion of Europe. It may appear unnecessary to mention the crudities of Thales, Anaximander, or Anaximenes, in support of this position, though, by the way, it may be observed, in opposition to Mr. Paine's former opinion, that the first of these lived long among the Egyptians, and, probably, understood their language as well as Greek.

"As there is nothing to be learned from the dead languages, all the useful books being already translated, the languages are become useless, and the time expended in teaching and in learning them, is wasted. So far as the study of languages may contribute to the progress and communication of knowledge, (for it has nothing to with the creation of knowledge) it is only in the living languages that new knowledge is to be found: and certain it is, that in general a youth will learn more of a living language in one year, than of a dead language în seven; and it is but seldom that the teacher knows much of it himself. The difficulty of learning the

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