4 
greatness, the seeds of premature and 
rapid decay. London wil] increase, as 
Jong as certain causes operate which she 
cannot controul, and after those cease to 
operate for a season, her population will 
require to be renewed by new supplies 
of wealth; these failing, the houses will 
become too numerous for the inhabi- 
tants, and certain. districts will be occu- 
pied by beggary and vice, or become 
depopulated. This disease will spread 
like an atrophy in the human body, and 
ruin will follow ruin, till the entire city 
is disgusting to the remnant of the inha~ 
bitants; they flee one after another to a 
more thriving “spot; and at length the 
whole becomes a heap of ruins! Such 
have been the causes of the decay of all 
overgrown cities. Nineveh, Babylon, 
Antioch, and Thebes, are become heaps 
of ruins, tolerable only to reptiles and 
wild beasts. Rome, Delhi, and Alex- 
andria, are partaking the same inevita- 
ble fate; and Lonedon must some time, 
from similar causes, succumb under the 
destiny of every thing human. 
Dec. 13,1810. © Common SENSE. 
a 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
THE ENQUIRER.—No. XXVII. 
Is uniformity of Religious Opinion de- 
sirable in the State ? 
’ These institutions are the products of én- 
thusiasm; they are the instruments of wis- 
dom. Burke. 
" half_a dozen painters were employed 
to take a view of Saint Paul’s Church, 
the one would place himself in front, and 
bring out its majestic vestibule ; a second 
would include in his sketch the semicir- 
cular portal on the side; athird would 
choose his station behind, on the roofs of 
the houses, that nothing below might with- 
draw attention from the stately dome; a 
fourth would place himself at the ruins of 
the Albion-mill, that the colossality of the 
cathedral might be rendered obvious from 
@ comparison with surrounding objects : 
and others would select for delineation, a 
transverse or a longitudinal section of the 
inside. These imitations, though differ- 
ing widely from each other, might all be 
faithful alike, and executed with equal 
skill. Why should any patent or privi- 
lege, be given to the engraver of the se- 
cond, orihird, of these drawings, to vend’ 
exclusively /zs view of Saint Paul’s? Let 
them al! be etched, and exposed to sale ; 
the antpjuary may prefer the one, the di- 
letiante another, the architect a third, 
ssprescutation, 
7 
‘The Enquirer. —No. AXVIT 
! on 9. k 
[Febety 
It is thuswith religion.—Every « eminent 
teacher chooses a different point of view. 
The Popish delineator of Christianity wil- 
lingly withdraws from his devotees the 
discussion of doctrine, and aims at ine 
pressing the sentiments of the church by 
the arts of eloquence and music—of painte 
ing and sculpture. The Bucerist relies 
more on an industry addressed to the 
mind than to the senses; on the perpe- 
tual repetition of vernacular liturgies : bis 
appeal is to a public of less taste, but of. 
more literature. The Calvinist argues 
and terrifies: his scripture is the law of 
God—his God a pitiless lawgiver ; and he 
corroborates by terrestrial excommunica= 
tions the terrors of his threatened futuri= 
ty; he allies himself with fear, the most 
prolific parent of superstitions. The Unie 
tarian trusts to the shortness of his creed, 
for its eventual adoption. So many more 
articles of religion are taught in the cate- 
chisms than are retained in the progress 
of enquiry, that a wish often supervenes 
in mid-life to be fettered with the fewest 
possible dogmas, and to sit under the 
teacher who exacts least of a positive 
creed. Why may not instructors of each 
description find an appropriate public, 
disseminate in'that public a purer moral 
zeal, and a warmer activity of benefi- 
cence; and thus ripen a greater crop of 
national virtue, than could have been 
grown by any one of these four classes of 
teachers singly? On the supposition of 
-an exclusive, or uniform, public religion, 
three out of the four denominations would - 
want adapted guides. 
The more closely humapJife is observed, 
the more it will be perceived, that all the 
different. sects of Christianity have their 
several merits and excellencies—their se- 
vera] defects and inconveniences: but to 
suppose that there can be danger from 
any one of them, to the good order of 
society, and to the eventual happiness of 
mankind, is to blaspheme the founder of 
the religion. Sectsarise by selecting pe-- 
culiar passages of Scripture for habitual 
attention: the emphatic texts of one so- 
ciety are insignificant phrases in the next 
conventicle, Hence it naturally happens 
that some sects carry one virtue, others 
another, to the highest practicable excel- 
lence; and itis well that men should ad- 
dict themselves to those religious parties 
which enforce the line of conduct most 
adapted to th¢ir constitutional disposition, 
Thus they are more easily known. The 
philosophic sects of antiquity classed man- 
kind conveniently ; every one was aware 
what conversation and habits, and morals, 
_ & 
