OLYMPIC DIALOGUE. 



conduit their lives rationally or irrationally. And their 

 pofterity, when hereafter feeling the confequences of 

 the unwife decrees of their Valentinian, Gratianus, and 

 Theodofms, will fee caufe enough to rue the rafh pre- 

 cautions which have brought on their giddy heads a 

 torrent of new and intolerable calamities of which the 

 world, while^addicted to the old belief or fuperftition, 

 Had no idea. It would be another thing, if, by the new 

 inftitution, they were actually bettered ! Which of us 

 could or would take it amifs of them ? But exactly 

 the reverfe ! they are like a man, who, to remove ai* 

 inconliderable malady, with which he might live to be 

 as old as Tithon, Ihould have recourfe to a remedy 

 that fhould bring upon him ten others, ten times worfe. 

 Thus, for example, they raife a terrible outcry againft 

 Dur priejis, for keeping the vulgar, who are every where 

 fuperftitious^ and ever will remain fo, in deceptions, 

 from whence the ftate derived as much profit as they. 

 Will their priefts act any better ? At this injiant they 

 are laying the foundations of a fuperftition which will 

 be ufeful to none but themfelves ; and, inftead of con- 

 firming the political confliitution, will confound and 

 undermine every human and civil relation ; a fuperfti- 

 tion which will lie like lead in mortal brains, preventing 

 accefs to every found idea of natural and moral things ; 

 and, under pretext of a chimerical perfection, poifon 

 every bud of humanity in the breaft of man, Whe& 

 the worft is faid that can with truth be faid of the fu- 

 perftition that has hitherto been adopted by the world, 

 it muft hereafter be confeffed that it was far more hu- 

 mane, more harmlefs, and beneficent, than the new 

 one, fet up in its room. Our pricfts were infinitely 



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