[83]Cicero, "In Defense of Cluentius," Ch. 61, Sect. 171.

     [84]<The War with Catiline>, Ch. 51, Sect. 16-20.

     [85]C/ICERO\ (<Tusculan Disputations>, Bk. I, Ch. 5-6) and
S/ENECA\ (Letter 24), as also Juvenal (Satire 2, Line 149 ff.),
maintain that there is no boy or old woman so ridiculous as to
believe the poets in their accounts of a future state. Why then does
L/UCRETIUS\ so highly exalt his master for freeing us from these
terrors? Perhaps the generality of mankind were then in the
disposition of C/EPHALUS\ in P/LATO\ (, Bk. I, 330d-e) who
while he was young and healthful could ridicule these stories; but
as soon as he became old and infirm, began to entertain
apprehensions of their truth. This we may observe not to be unusual
even at present.

     [86]Sextus Empiricus, <Against the Physicists>, Bk. I, Sect.
182-90.

     [87]Xenophon, <Memorabilia>, Bk. I, Ch. 1, Sect. 19.

     [88]It was considered among the ancients, as a very
extraordinary, philosophical paradox, that the presence of the gods
was not confined to the heavens, but were extended every where; as
we learn from L/UCIAN\ ("Hirmotimus," Sect. 81).

     [89]Plutarch, , Bk. II, "Superstition," Ch. 10, 170a-
b.

     [90]Lucian, "Menippus," Sect. 3.

     [91]B/ACCHUS\, a divine being, is represented by the heathen
mythology as the inventor of dancing and the theatre. Plays were
anciently even a part of public worship on the most solemn
occasions, and often employed in times of pestilence, to appease the
offended deities. But they have been zealously proscribed by the
godly in later ages; and the playhouse, according to a learned
divine, is the porch of hell.

     But in order to show more evidently, that it is possible for a
religion to represent the divinity in still a more immoral and
unamiable light than he was pictured by the ancients, we shall cite
a long passage from an author of taste and imagination, who was
surely no enemy to Christianity. It is the Chevalier R/AMSAY\, a
writer, who had so laudable an inclination to be orthodox, that his
reason never found any difficulty, even in the doctrines which free-
thinkers scruple the most, the trinity, incarnation, and
satisfaction: His humanity alone, of which he seems to have had a
great stock, rebelled against the doctrines of eternal reprobation
and predestination. He expresses himself thus: "What strange ideas,"
says he,

     would an Indian or a Chinese philosopher have of our holy

     religion, if they judged by the schemes given of it by our

     modern freethinkers, and pharisaical doctors of all sects?

     According to the odious and too  system of these

     incredulous scoffers and credulous scribblers, "The God of the

     Jews is a most cruel, unjust, partial, and fantastical being.

     He created, about 6000 years ago, a man and a woman, and placed

     them in a fine garden of A/SIA\, of which there are no remains.

     This garden was furnished with all sorts of trees, fountains,

     and flowers. He allowed them the use of all the fruits of this

     beautiful garden, except one, that was planted in the midst

     thereof, and that had in it a secret virtue of preserving them

     in continual health and vigour of body and mind, of exalting

     their natural powers and making them wise. The devil entered

     into the body of a serpent, and solicited the first woman to

     eat of this forbidden fruit; she engaged her husband to do the

     same. To punish this slight curiosity and natural desire of

     life and knowledge, God not only threw our first parents out of

     paradise, but he condemned all their posterity to temporal

     misery, and the greatest part of them to eternal pains, though

     the souls of these innocent children have no more relation to

     that of A/DAM\ than to those of N/ERO\ and M/AHOMET\; since,

     according to the scholastic drivellers, fabulists, and

     mythologists, all souls are created pure, and infused