Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/101

 and avowed Contempt of all Opinions, Principles, (or, if you please) Prejudices, instilled into the infant Mind, as the necessary Regulators of human Conduct: By exalting unaided human Reason, far beyond the Rank she holds in Nature: By debasing all those Assistances which the Wisdom of Ages had prescribed and consecrated, as the necessary Means of correcting her vague and wandering Dictates.

While These Authors made this illjudged, and perhaps undesigned Attack, on the Foundations of civil Liberty; others made a still bolder and more fatal Inroad; and opened a wider Door for Licentiousness, by an Attack on Christianity itself.

In this List of Enemies to their Country, it must be a Mortification to every Friend of Virtue and Liberty, to find the noble Author of the Characteristics. His Morals were unblemished, his Love of Virtue and Freedom indisputable: But by confounding two Things, which he saw accidently united, though in their Nature