Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of philofophy. It will be fair then, and moft unexceptionable to our adverfaries, to meet them on their own ground : to endeavour to turn their weapons againlt themfelves. We wifh not to fhield religion under the protection of the civil power or any authority ; but to fhew that we are not afraid of reafon and of fair difcuffion ; we diffike only their prophane fneers, and their wanton blafphemy. Great advantage is fotnetimes gained to a caufe by the fkilful management of names, in loading our opponents with terms of reproach ; and in affuming to ourfelves pompous titles and profeffions to procure the good opinions of the weak and the ignorant, or names of refpect to court the good-will of the virtuous. The infidels have not failed to profit by this advantage. In their attacks on religion, they treat it as the w.eaknefs of reafon, as the work of prieflcraft, or the offspring of fuperftition. And on the other hand infidelity is extolled, as that fyfletn which delivers you from all fears, fupported by reafon, and alone worthy of the dignified name of philofophy. By fuch fnares do they allure the proffigate, the giddy, the unprincipled, and the vain. To deprive them then of this unfair advantage, and to procure a fair hearing from thofe whom they have enfnared by their flattering promifes, it will be proper to begin with proving, that they have no right to the exclufive title of philofophers: that the man of religion and virtue is the only perfon who governs himfelf by the principles of phi- chapter{Section 4lofophy or real wifdom. For he governs himfelf by principles built upon reafon, and that lead to happinefs. And if he mould be finally miftaken, this miftake will have no dreadful confequence?. Non vereor, ne himc errorem rneum mortui philofopbi irrideant. Thefe are the w...