of being esteemed for those discoveries, he was sentenced to renounce them, or the opinions resulting from them, as a damnable heresy. And prior to that time Vigilius was condemned to be burnt for ascertaining the Antipodes, or in other words, that the earth was a globe, and habitable in every part where there was land: yet the truth of this is now too well known even to be told."

When Mr. Paine asserted, that " the setter up and the advocates of the Christian system of faith," dreaded the discoveries of science, and the cultivation of knowledge, he should have explained, how that "setter up, and those advocates" contrived to overpower all the evidence of all the science and knowledge that then existed in the world? For, let it be remembered, that the “setter up of the Christian system of faith" was not a despotic monarch armed with secular power, but " despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief;" nor were the "advocates" of it better conditioned to tyrannize over learning and philosophy. For, like their master, they had no temporal authority; and when it is told that they were fishermen, it will not easily be suspected, that they were skilled in the arts of persuasion. They had not half the means to establish Christianity that Mr. Paine had to establish Deism. But they "rejected science," for he says, they dreaded it. It is certain, that whatever science the world possessed before the promulgation of Christianity, it has possessed incomparably more since; nor are the dead languages better understood now than every branch of philosophy; and Christianity is more dominant than ever. If science was designed to be the destruction of Religion, Religion ought, contrary to experience, to have been retrogressive for the last hundred years. This is another difficulty for the disciples of Mr. Paine.

When Mr. Paine, says, that " the study of the sciences was rejected out of the Christian Schools," he might, had. he been acquainted with the revival of literature in Europe, have found an easy and satisfactory explanation of the cause of this neglect of science and devotion to languages without

having recourse to the apprehensions of the Christians for the stability of their system of faith. The reason why the study of languages was almost exclusively encouraged in the early schools, was not because they "fearfully rejected science," for there was but little science to reject, but because almost the whole of knowledge, moral, metaphysical, and politial, was to be found in "the dead languages," and no where else; because the records of History, the labours of Philosophy, and the charms of Poetry, were hidden in them. It was to read the works of Aristotle and Plato, of Herodotus, Thucydides and Homer &c. or the labours of Cicero and Tacitus, of Livy, of Virgil, and of Horace &c. that the languages were so sedulously, and, almost exclusively, taught in the schools; and not because the Christian dreaded the works of Euclid, of Appolonius, or Archimedes: and the sudden blaze of science which commenced about two hundred years ago, sprang out of natural causes, and quite independently of Religion. The learning of Antiquity was already explored and familiarized, naturalized, if I may so speak, and men began to think for themselves; and this led to the discoveries of science.

Mr. Paine is guilty of a slight error when he assigns the invention of the Telescope to Galileo; Galileo invented the Telescope as the Deist finds out the moral Governor of the world, being first assured of his existence. It was Jansen, if not Jansen's children, that first invented the Telescope; nor does the anecdote ascribe it to "devotional contemplation.' After Galileo heard of it, he not only made one himself, but demonstrated the principles of its construction. He was the first to apply it to any use.

Mr. Paine forgot the maxim, ab abusu ad usum non valeat, when he complains, that seven ignorant cardinals, pronounced the discoveries of Galileo to be "damnable heresies." Those Cardinals were Catholics, and to them Religion was a trade. Galileo's researches were likely to prove fatal to it. They had forbidden the use of

the Scriptures to the unlearned, by locking them up in an unknown tongue. They understood not the value of the treasure they possessed; nor knew that it would increase, the more it was scattered; that it was the right of man.

In strict truth, the discoveries of Galileo, made by the assistance of the Telescope, were not the "damnable heresies," for which the Inquisition condemned him. It was for asserting, what Copernicus had tremblingly asserted before, that the sun was the centre of the planetary system, and that the earth revolved round it; truths that are neither proved nor illustrated by the Telescope. The Telescope made him acquainted with the surface of the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, and the ring of Saturn; but these were not among his imputed "heresies."

One complete answer remains to the whole of the charge contained in this paragraph. Science is now every where encouraged; all that Galileo taught, or Vigilius believed, is admitted; and with all this Christianity flourishes, more and more.

"If the belief of errors not morally bad do no mischief, it would make no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. There was no moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a trencher, any more then there was moral virtue in believing it was round like a globe; neither was there any moral ill in believing that the Creator made no other world than this, any more than there was moral virtue in believing that he made millions, and that the infinity of space is filled with worlds. But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different ground. It is then that errors not moraly bad become fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were It is then that the truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the criterion, that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by contradictory evidence the reality of the religion itself. In this view of the case, it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other part of creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But this the supporters or partizans of the Christian system, as if dread

ing the result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors. Had Newton or Descartes lived three or four hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as they did, it is most probable, that they would not have lived to have finished them; and had Franklin drawn lightning from the clouds at the same time, it would have been at the hazard of expiring for it in flames."

The adaptation of the Christian Religion to "the supposed system of the creation" is an unsupported conjecture of Mr. Paine. There is no article in the Christian creed, none in the creed of the Jews, that depends on, or "grows out of the supposed system of the creation." Had we been in possession of no system of the creation at all, as far as it regards the structure of the universe: or of one every way different to that which we do possess our system of Religion would have been the same. The only connexion of Christianity and Judaism with the system of the creation, is the circumstances under which man was formed in relation to his Maker that we may satisfactorily understand, why he is now surrounded with so many evils; and what are his prospects of escaping from them. Natural reason never solved the problem. The Persians, who ascribe all that is good in the world to the agency of Oromasdes, and all that is evil to Arimanius, formed as inartificial an opinion as the mind of man could suggest. But, whilst it removes one difficulty, it creates a greater; namely, how two self-subsistent Beings, of infinite powers, and of opposite natures, could co-exist? And, if they have recourse to the superintending providence of Mithra, it is making the scheme more complex, and less consistent. All this is clearly explained away in the Mosaical account of the creation of man. There, every thing appears worthy of an omnipotent Being; no contradictions are involved; no mystery envelopes; truth shines in its native splendour.

If it were not superfluous in a work like this, it might easily be shown, that not only the metaphysical questions concerning moral and physical evil; the immortality

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of the soul; the existence of a moral Governor of the world, are answered in that account, but also that the explorations of the Geologist, and the most subtle investigations of the Mechanician are elucidated, and their best hypothesis confirmed by it. Even the figure of the earth, which Moses, as a mere man, could never have anticipated to be of the form of an oblate spheroid; but which has been proved to be of that form by the reasoning of Newton, and the admeasurement of Cassini and others, presupposes, that the materials of the globe were once in a fluid, or semi-fluid state; and that state is actually assigned by Moses.

But, Mr. Paine says, "the supporters or partizans of the Christian system, as if dreading the result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors." Gibbon, who certainly was no friend to Christianity, has at once removed this odium from it, and assigned, in a quotation from Eusebius, the reason why the sciences were not so generally encouraged by its professors. After acknowledging the classical, and other acquirements of several of the Fathers of the Church, he proceeds to observe, that even the study of philosophy was at length introduced among the Christians." There is no intimation of its rejection at any time: and when he says, that "it (philosophy) was not always productive of the most salutary effects," but " that knowledge was as often the parent of heresy as of devotion," he by no means bears out the sweeping and unfounded charge of Mr. Paine, that the supporters of Christianity incessantly opposed the sciences;" nor, that an acquaintance with science led men to distrust its truth, but withdrew them from it: as will be seen in the following quotation. "They (the followers of Artemon) presume to alter the holy scriptures, to abandon the ancient rule of faith and to form their opinions according to the subtle precepts of Logic. The science of the Church is neglected for the study of Geometry; and they lose sight of heaven, while they are employed in measuring the earth,