CXXXVl. PROLEGOMENA. 



Wiioin they boast of as pillars of the church, and 

 very comfortable aids to thedifHculty of believing-, 

 because, instead of openly professini^ Deism, as so 

 many protestant astronomers, naturalists, and 

 jdiysiologists have done, they have affected an 

 attachment to religion. The manner in which 

 these men have differed from each other, to- 

 gether with their laxity of opinion in general, 

 form a curious contrast to the unity of sentiment 

 which pervfides our church. Of the two great 

 heretic leaders, Calvin the blasphemer was a 

 coldhearted persecuting predestinarian, while 

 Luther the profligate was just the reverse, and 

 in all their followers severally the utmost discord 

 marks every subdivision, and extends almost to 

 every individual who thinks at all. Now as for 

 the geniuses to which I have alluded, and other 

 great writers, Newton was a doubting unitarian ; 

 Bacon a versatile caitiff and timeserving philo- 

 sopher, who evidently concealed what he thought ; 

 and Locke was a wavering half Arian half 

 quaker, and whose opinions are the more to be 

 distrusted, because in the age of protestant perse- 

 cution, dungeons, and fagots, in which he lived, 

 no man dare speak his mind out ; Milton, the 

 vaunted author of Paradise Lost, was a noted re- 

 publican, and openly denied the Trinity, and the 

 validity of the Sabbath, as a divine institution of 

 Christianity, besides asserting the legitimate right 



