the produce of labour, and for such manufactures as employ multitudes of people, can never be misapplied. It might easily be made appear, that there is not a piece of wrought silk, linen, or woollen cloth, which has not contributed to the maintenance of more than an hundred thousand industrious people, who must be all kept alive one way or other.

As it is the highest crime to destroy our beings, so it is proportionably wicked to endeavour to make them miserable: the glory and honour of God are best consulted, in promoting the happiness of mankind. It is profane, and a kind of blasphemy, to attempt to persuade people, that the good God takes pleasure in the vexing and tormenting his creatures. He is not pleased by human sacrifices, nor by human sufferings of any kind: a pale aspect, the griping of the guts, wry and distorted faces, and being ghosts before our time, will contribute to no ends of religion; and therefore, I confess, that I cannot see how fasting can serve God, or answer any purposes of devotion, or indeed can enhance any appetite, unless to a good dinner.

Nothing consequently can be more ridiculous, than for the Romish clergy to tell us, that any part of religion consists in fasting days, and fasting weeks; which oblige the wretched people to insipid and unwholsome diet, whilst they indulge themselves, and riot in the richest wines, and the luxurious dishes of salmon and turbot; with all the costly inhabitants of the liquid element. Besides, it is impolitic, as well as uncharitable; it discourages trade and industry, depopulates nations, and depreciates matrimony, by rendering the people unable to maintain and raise their families.

Riches and labour are two words which signify the same thing. Nature spontaneously supplies but little to the use of man; all the rest is the produce of invention and industry: and therefore whatever does contribute to make mankind idle and less useful to one another, conduces so far to their want and misery. One holiday, strictly kept, robs the poor of more than a whole year's charity will sup

ply. A little loose money picked up at the church doors, and afterwards divided between the parson, church-wardens, and a few favourite objects, will make but poor amends for the taxation of the nation, and of every person in it, with the loss of a day's labour, and profit of his trade; which loss probably cannot amount to less than two hundred thousand pounds, without having any regard to the extravagance and debaucheries committed upon those days; which often consume the acquisitions of a week, and render the common people listless, and unwilling to return to their labour again. I may therefore venture to affirm, that there is more charity in taking away one saint's day, than in building and endowing twenty colleges.

However, to do right to my countrymen and their genuine clergy, I must freely confess, that we suffer very little from the penitential observance or fasting part of our holidays; for the poor do not fast at all, unless they can get nothing to eat; and the rich, in imitation of their guides, hold out no longer than is necessary to digest their former excesses, and get better stomachs to a double dinner: as old experienced sinners often live a day or two with sobriety and innocence, to enjoy a debauch the remaining part of the week. At the universities, as I am told, it is quite given up, and there is not more epicurism than on those days; and to their churches there are ancient vestries annexed, which are the consecrated repositories of pipes, sack, and tobacco, where the reverends take regularly a whiff and a cup, to prepare them for the fatigues of the ensuing service.

But how little soever holidays and stated fasts contribute either to the temporal or eternal happiness of the laity, yet the Romish clergy have been able sufficiently to find their own account in them. When all other shops are shut, theirs are open,—where they sell their spiritual cargo of grimaces, visions, beads, indulgences, and masses, for silver and gold, lands and tenements; and to enhance the value of their merchandise, and persuade the people of the reasonableness of such an exchange, they make it their

business, and exert all their endeavours, to depreciate worldly happiness, and cry down all the good things of this earth, that they may have them all to themselves. If they can extinguish the appetites which God has given us, and teach us the secret to live without our estates, or to make us think it dangerous to live on them, they hope to have them for their pains; for who can have a better title to our superfluities than our spiritual guides, who have inspired us with so much refined devotion, and have given to us lasting estates in paradise, in lieu of a few momentary pleasures, and frail and earthly tabernacles below?

By these arts, and many others, which I shall show in the progress of this paper, the priests are become possessed of so much dominion and wealth.

G.

No. XIX.-OF AUTHORITY, AND THAT DOCTORS

DIFFER.

By faith is often, if not most commonly, meant, an inward persuasion or determined assent of the mind to a religious proposition affirmed, or denied; and such consent can never be given but by the conveyance and from full conviction, of the senses, or the manifest operation of the Holy Ghost; and therefore must depend wholly upon what appears to be infallible inspiration, or infallible information. In this sense of the word, I doubt there can be no such thing in the world; for as no man living ever saw the miracles of Christ and his apostles, or can prove his particular system from self-evident propositions, or can be sure that he is inspired by the Holy Ghost; so he cannot have faith in this sense, whatever he himself may imagine.

Therefore the only reasonable sense of the word is, an assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition, upon probable arguments, or upon the testimony of other persons; which can never produce certainty, but only opinion or belief; which must be stronger or weaker, according to

the many degrees of probability. A probable evidence can only produce a suitable assent; and when anything does not appear at all probable to us, we cannot avoid dissenting as to the truth of it. Almighty God does not require of us to give the lie to our understandings, and to put out and extinguish the only light he has given to men, by which they can discern truth from falsehood, and virtue from vice.

The apostles and evangelists, who were evidently endowed from above with extraordinary gifts and graces, were undeniable witnesses of the truth of the gospel, to those who saw their miracles: and their writings, and the testimony which they bequeathed to their followers, sealed as it was with their blood, have passed the examination of many ages, and constitute the highest degree of human probability, and consequently carry along with them an irrisistible authority, and can admit of no disobedience or dispute: they are a real authority, in the most strict sense of the word; I mean, as it is applied to the propagation of religious opinions, and as producing a lively faith next to persuasion.

But no decisions or resolutions of uninspired men are, or ought to be, of any weight with us, but so far as they will bear the examination of our senses and our reason. The only motive which any man can have to believe, or to put this confidence in another, is, that the person trusted is not deceived himself, and will not deceive him; neither of which he can have any tolerable assurance of: for no man is infallible; and the gravest and most solemn pretenders, are as easily cheated as the mere vulgar; and, what is more, will as often lie and cheat others; and therefore there can be no such thing as authority in this sense amongst men. For let a matter in itself be ever so certain, I am by no precept, human or divine, obliged to believe it true, till it is proved true; and it is the business of my reason alone to distinguish what is so from what is otherwise.

God's word, though to be believed without proof, yet

ought first to be proved to be his; which proof, it is the province of my understanding to examine. The words and allegations of men, or of the church, ought, before they are believed, to be proved, either by divine authority, or by reason: If by reason; then reason must judge of reason, and every man who has it, is a judge: If by Divine authority; even here our reason must be satisfied, whether it be Divine authority or not. So that human authority is either nothing at all; or at most only an opportunity given, or an invitation made, to examine by private judgment, the truth of what it says.

All books therefore, except the Holy Scriptures, and all names, except those of our blessed Saviour and his inspired followers, ought to be of no authority with us, any farther than to convince our understandings by solid arguments, and self-evident truths; and a beggar or a cobler, when he can do this, is so far entitled to equal credit, or, if you will, to equal authority, with councils and fathers.

Every man that reasons with you, appeals to your reason, and his arguments lie at your mercy, whether you will believe them or no: and every man who brings you only his assertions, ought also to bring you his proofs, or else you are at full liberty to reject or despise them: it adds nothing to his weight in this matter, that perhaps he wears a cloven cap or a sable gown: there have been no greater deceivers of mankind, than such as have worn these emblems of gravity; and indeed gravity has ever been one essential characteristic of imposture.

There is no authority in sounding and sanctified names, whether they be those of archbishops, bishops, priests, or deacons. It is very certain, that these goodly words are so far from having any charm in them against deceit and roguery, that the completest of all villanies, and the most masterly and mischievous of all delusions, have been, and still are protected and propagated by them in Popish and other priest-ridden nations. His holiness, and most holy, are terms appropriated to St Peter's chair, (and in our precious pope Laud's days they began to be current at Lam