-when we fee that every virtue, every fentiment, every feeling, religious, moral, or even natural, is made by turns a common fubject of ridicule with the vicious, the thoughtless, or the designing votaries of Infidelity—and when we see the Government of a great nation daily iffuing the most direct and glaring violations of truth and honour, in its manifeftoes, decrees, and official reprefentation of facts, even to its own fubjects—a system abfolutely unknown to any former age-we should furely believe, that the Power of this hydra had attained its zenith, if the prospect of a rifing generation educated in these principles, and formed by these examples, did not forbid the hope-a hope to which, I fear, the word of Prophecy is equally unfavourable!

Prophetic intimations of the laft days," exactly correfponding with the Character, Principles, and Conduct, of modern Infidels.

Having thus taken a general fketch of the face of the world, let us paufe to compare it with a general view of the Prophetic intimations concerning thefelaft days," before we examine the particular refemblance between

THE

THE NEW SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY WITH THE SECOND BEAST; AND THE REVOLUTIONARY TYRANNY OF FRANCE WITH THE REIGN OF THE IMAGE; according to the interpretation adopted in the Introductory Chapter. The Prophets have indeed delineated these "false teachers," who have occafioned this wretched scene, with a moft correct, and, as it were, biftoric pencil; and this general view of their character, principles, and conduct, will be found to agree fo exactly with their own DESCRIPTIONS OF THEMSELVES, and with the appropriate prophecies of "the second beaft and his image," that it will both elucidate and strengthen their particular application.

The Apostles have not only given us sketches of their general character, but of their propenfity to SATIRE AND RIDICULE-of the INCONSISTENCIES of thofe opinions which they propose to substitute for the principles of Christianity-and of their ATTEMPTS to fubvert the truth of the MOSAICAL HISTORY by the DISCOVERIES Of MODERN PHILOSOPHY, and the invention of NEW THEORIES OF THE EARTH.

The perfons predicted by St. Peter to appear in the last days, eminent for their hostility to the Christian name, are scOFFERS―those

who, in their attacks upon it, exercise the fneers of farcafm, and the taunts of mockery, where the facred nature of the fubject peculiarly demands the gravity of argument, and the most perfect seriousness of attention. To whom can this characteristic mark of the Apostle be applied fo appofitely, as to those who ridicule the Scriptures, and deride the profeffors and teachers of Christianity, as well as its peculiar doctrines and precepts ? Such has been the invariable practice, and such the prominent feature in the works of Voltaire, of Gibbon, and of Paine. They have employed every engine of mockery and scoffing against the facred bulwarks of Revelation; and they have in every part of their works combined every image that was ludicrous, and every idea that was grofs and profane, with the truths of the Gofpel,

The most celebrated of these falfe teachers" are fometimes at variance with themfelves, and fometimes with each other, whilft they endeavour, by the aid of their own reason only, to settle the first principles of religion, or to fhew that none can be found. Hume * in one paffage of his dialogues entertains no

See Ogilvie on Scepticism.

doubt

doubt as to the exiftence of a Supreme Being; and in another afferts, that he has met with nothing but a blind nature impreg nated with a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap without difcernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive offspring.-Shaftesbury afferts, that the Deity is a good Being; whereas Bolingbroke maintains that he is not a good Being. -With refpect to the origin of the world, Hume concludes, from the appearances of the univerfe, and from fome hiftorical facts, that the world was framed at no remote era. Voltaire, on the contrary, infers from facts likewife, to which he gives the most implicit faith, that its origin is to be carried back to a period far beyond the Scriptural chronology.-Bolingbroke, when confidering the nature of man, maintains that his foul is mortal, and that it dies with the body; but Hume afferts that man has no foul, but is a piece of ingenious mechanism constructed by a blind nature." Even in the first letters of Frederick II. King of Pruffia, there with the ridiculous pride of a pedantic King, all the versatility and hypocrify of a fophift. Frederick in 1737 denies, when Voltaire fupports, liberty. With Voltaire, man, in

appears,

1771, is a pure machine: Frederick then

maintains that man is free. In one place we are free precifely because we can form a clear idea of freedom. In another, man is all matter; though one can hardly form a more confufed idea, than that of matter thinking, free, or arguing, though it were with Frederick's own verfatility." Voltaire at nearly fourfcore confiders Scepticism concerning a Deity and a Soul, as the most rational state of mind. Frederick thinks" we have a fufficient degree of probability to conftitute a certainty that death is an eternal fleep ;" and maintains that man is not twofold, but only matter animated by motion; that there exifts no relation between animals and the fupreme Intelligence, and is certain that matter can think as well as have the property of being electric.--Frederick had written that the Chriftian religion yielded none but poisonous weeds; and Voltaire had congratulated him as having above all princes fortitude of foul, and sufficient infight and knowledge, to fee that for the 1700 years paft, the Chriftian fect had never done any thing but harm." Yet we afterwards find Frederick the opponent of that infamously profligate work, "the Syftem of Nature," and "tempted to accufe its author of want

Barruel.

of