ON MATTERS OF BELIEF. 91 



fomewhat more than ufual reflection (for ufually they 

 are read without any reflection) will agree with me In 

 this : that Chrift. did indeed reform and purify the reli- 

 gion of his nation, but never intended to found any 

 properly new religion, ftill lefs any new political con- 

 jftitution of religion, but leaft of all that which, feveral 

 centuries after his death, was gradually introduced on 

 the foundation already laid by his difciples. The reli^ 

 gion of which he was at once the teacher and exemplar, 

 that which fuits, in the propereft fenfe, the name of 

 chriftian religion, that is, the religion of Chrift:, is no 

 inftitution that forms a part of civil government, but 

 merely an affair of the heart ; it is entirely grounded on 

 the relation between God, as the univerfal father of 

 mankind, and them, as his genuine or depraved, his 

 obedient or rebellious children. It exalts the obfcure 

 fentiment of God, which feems to be an innate pro- 

 perty of human nature, to the moft limple, the mod 

 humane reprefentation of God, the moft worthy of the 

 deity, and the moft adapted to the wants of mankind ; 

 purifying it from all daemon iftic and magical fuperfti- 

 tions *, and making it, in every human foul, in which it 



is 



* That tkis is the fpirit of the doftrine of Chrift, and the in- 

 Contellible refult of its primitive ideas, can hardly be denied by 

 any, who have gone for them immediately to the fountain 

 head. But why is not this fountain head itfelf cleared from 

 all dzemoniftic mire ? Certainly it was Chrift ; but not his dis- 

 ciples, to whom he and his dodlrine, notwithstanding their de- 

 pendance on his perfon, feems always to have remained, in fome 

 fort, an zenigma. He was feparated from them, before he could 

 free them from all the prejudices and fottiih conceits of their na- 

 tion 



