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believe fuch a fenfible alteration of genius and man- 

 ners amongft wandering nations become lavage, 

 living, without principles, laws, education, or civil » 

 government* which might ferve to bring them back 

 to the antient manners. Cuftoms are ftill more ea- 

 fily deftroyed. A new way of living introduces 

 new cuftoms, and thofe which have been forfaken 

 are very foon forgotten. What mail I fay of the 

 abfolute want of fuch things as -are mod neceffary 

 to life ? And of which, the neceffity of doing with* 

 out, caufes their names and ufe to perilh together. 



Laftly, nothing has undergone more fudden, fre- 

 quent, or more furprizing revolutions than religion. 

 When once men have abandoned the only true one, 

 they foon lofe it out of their fight, and find them- 

 felves entangled and bewildered in fuch a labyrinth 

 of incoherent errors, inconfiftency and contradic- 

 tion being the natural inheritance of falfhood, that 

 there remains not the fmalleft thread to lead us back 

 to the truth. We have feen a very fenfible exam- 

 ple of this in the laft age. The Buccaneers of St, 

 Domingo, who were chriflians, but who had no 

 commerce except amongft themfelves, in lefs than 

 thirty years, and through the fole want of religious 

 worfhip, instruction, and an authority capable of 

 retaining them in their duty, had come to fuch a 

 pais, as to have loft all marks of chrmianity, ex- 

 cept baptifm alone. Had thefe fubfifted only to 

 the third generation, their grandchildren would have 

 been as void of chriftianity as the inhabitants of 

 Terra Auftralis, or New-Guinea. They might 

 poffibly have preferved fome ceremonies, the reafon 

 of which they could not have accounted for, and 

 is it not precifely in the fame manner, that fo many 

 infidel nations are found to have in their idolatrous 

 E 2 wor* 



