Johnson
is well known to be, that great triumph to religionists; it requires
courage as well as sense to break the shackles of a pious education;
but if merely a resolve to reason upon their force can break them, what
can we observe in conclusion but
_"Magnus est veritas et prevalebit."_
That religion or belief of a Deity cannot bear the force of argument is
well known by Divines in general, is manifest by their annexing an idea
of reproach to the very term of arguing upon the subject. These arguers
they call Free-thinkers, and this appellation has obtained, in the
understanding of pious believers, the most odious disgrace. Yet we
cannot argue without thinking; nor can we either think or argue to any
purpose without freedom. Therefore free-thinking, so far from being a
disgrace, is a virtue, a most commendable quality. How absurd, and how
cruel it is in the professors of divinity, to address the understanding
of men on the subject of their belief, and to upbraid those very men
who shall exercise their understanding in attending to their arguments!
No tyranny is greater than that of ecclesiastics. These chain down our
very ideas, other tyrants only confine our limbs. They invite us to the
argument, yet damn us to eternal punishment for the use of reason on
the subject. They give to man an essence distinct from his corporeal
appearance and this they call his soul, a very ray and particle of the
Divine Being; the principal faculty of this soul they allow to be that
of reasoning, and yet they call reason a dark lanthorn, an erroneous
vapour, a false medium, and at last the very instrument of another
fancied Being of their own to lead men into their own destruction.
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