Page:Thoughts on a French invasion.pdf/20

 20             The Bishop of Llandaff's Address

cient fabric, may, by mere force, be defaced and thrown down; but it requires the knowledge and cau- tion of an architect to beautify and repair it. You are sensible that the most ingenious piece of mechanism may be spoiled by the play of a child, or broken to pieces by the blow of an ideot or a madman: and can you think that the machine of government, the most ingenious and complicated of all others, may not at once be despoiled of all its elegance, and deprived of all its functions, by the rude and bungling attempts of the unskilful to amend its motion?

I have not time to lay before you the rise and pro- gress of that infidelity with respect to revealed religion —-of that scepticism with respect to natural religion— of that insanity with respect to government, which have, by their combined influence overwhelmed with calamity one of the mightiest states in Europe, and which menace with destruction every other. I have not time to shew you by detailed quotations from the writings of the French and German philosophers— that the superstition of the church of Rome made them infidels—that a misapprehension of the extent of hu- man knowledge made them sceptics—and that the tyranny of the continental governments made them enemies of all governments, except of that silly system of democratic liberty and equality, which never has had, nor never can have a permanent establishment amongst mankind.

Though I cannot, in this short and general address, enter fully or deeply into these matters, I may be allow- ed to say to those philosophers—how has it happened , that men of your penetration, in shunning one vice, have fallen, like fools, into its opposite? Docs it follow that Jesus Christ wrought no miracles, because the church of Rome has pretended to work many ? Does it follow that the apostles are not honest men because there have been priests, bishops, and popes, who were hypocrites? Is the Christian religion to be ridiculed as more absurd than Paganism, to be vilified as less credible than Ma- hometanism, to be represented as impious and abomin- able, because men, in opposition to every practise of                                                 the