"

mons, invectives, and even laws, will be ineffectual.

You of course frequent fuch preachers as you find most edifying. Shew that you are edified by them in the fobriety and integrity of your lives. A good life is the fure proof of a good man; without it, pious profeffions, repeated devotions, and all the parade of ordinances, furnish no folid proofs; for the worst men, and great hypocrites, may act the fame part, and wearing a religious mask, may pass for religious men.

It is far from being an affront to religion to try it by morality, which is the law of nature; and the law of nature is a perfect law, as many able writers and divines have amply fhewn, particularly your prefent bishop in a fermon preached many years ago, before the fociety for propagating the gospel in foreign parts: he there avers, and thinks he has proved, that chriflianity is as old as the creation, and, when it appeared, was no more than a republication of the law of

nature.

Agreeably therefore to his lordship's doctrine, whatever is not warranted by reafon, ought not to be received as religion. A noble principle !

VOL. I.

Р

principle which had it been attended to, would have done infinite good to the world, by preventing infinite evil in it, Mahometanifm, and all other impoftures, enthufiafts, crazy fyftems, and falfe zeal for them; that zeal, which is always keenest when blindeft, monks, perfecution, and fpiritual tyranny; all lying prophecy, falfe alarms, and pious panics from the common works of nature

Upon an earthquake in queen Elizabeth's time, the bishops applying to her, to appoint a general fast, had a negative answer, and her reafon for it he told them, "her people "were frightened enough already.”

During an earthquake in Catanea (a city in Sicily, deftroyed by it) the inhabitants, crouding first into the street, then into the fields, were perfuaded by the priests and friars to return, and repair to the churches, particularly to the great one dedicated to St. Agathe, and to pay their devotion to the reliques of the faint, for deliverance. The poor people did fo, and all perished, above eleven thousand, most of them under the ruins of the church. Had they followed their firft guides, their eyes and their fenfes, they might have faved their lives. The monks were then certainly fatal uides, and always are when their guidance is

not

not warranted by common fenfe and reason, more efpecially when it contradicts both.

Let us all live good lives, and then we need not fear death nor earthquakes.

I am,

My good friends and neighbours,

With affectionate zeal,

Your fincere humble fervant,

A LAYMAN.

P 2

A

CATHOLIC,

But now lying in Durance under the Sufpicion of fecret INIQUITY.

In which are occafionally inferted fome weighty arguments for calling a general Council of the Nonjuring Doctors, for the further propagation of Ceremonies, Unity, Diffention, and Anathemas; and for the better Improvement of Exorcifm and March-Beer.

Noctem peccatis, & fraudibus objice Nubem.

Horat. Ep.

First printed in the Year 1723.

a Francis Atterbury, late bishop of Rochefter.

b The Pretender.