Page:Thoughts on a French invasion.pdf/17

             to the People of Great Britain.              17

man of property? and reduce the lower orders to the condition of her own peasantry and artificers—black bread, onions and water.

It is now somewhat more than seventy years, since certain men who esteemed themselves philosophers, and who, unquestionably, were men of talents, began in different parts of the continent, but especially in France and Germany, to attack the Christian religion. The design has been carried on by them and others, under various denominations, from that time to the present hour. In order to accomplish their end, they have published an infinity of books, some of them distin- guished by wit and ridicule, unbecoming the vast im- portance of the subject, and all of them stuffed with false quotations and ignorant or designed misrepresen- tations of scripture, or filled with objections against human corruptions of faith, and for which Christianity cannot be accountable.

A familiar attempt, I have reason to believe, has for some years been carrying on amongst ourselves, and by the same means. Irreligious pamphlets have been circulated with great industry, sold at a small price, or given away to the lowest of the people, in every great town in the kingdom. The prophane style of these pamphlets is suited to the taste of the wicked, land the confident assertions which they contain are well calculated to impose on the understanding of the unlearned; and it’s among the wicked and the igno- rant that the enemies of religion and government are endeavouring to propagate their tenets.

It is here supposed that the enemies of religion are also the enemies of government; but this must be un- derstood with some restriction. There are, it may be said, many deists in this-country, who are sensible of the advantages of a regular government, and who would be as unwilling as the most orthodox believers in the kingdom that our own should be overturned— this may be true—but it is true also that they who wish to overthrow the government are not only, gen- rally speaking, unbelievers themselves, but that they found their hopes of success in the infidelity of the common