POST SCRIPT.

THE Reader may not be difpleafed, after this fermon of Mr.

Willats's, to perufe an account fent by Mr. Fellebien to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and printed in their Memoirs, by which is fully evinced the abfolutely incapacity of man, uninAtructed, for making or thinking of any religion.

"The fon of a tradefiman in Chartres, who had been deaf from his birth, and confequently dumb, when he was about twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, began on a fudden to fpeak, without its being known that he had ever heard. This event drew the attention of every one, and many believed it to be miraculous. The young man, however, gave a plain and rational account, by which it appeared to proceed wholly from natural causes. He faid, that about four months before he was furprized by a new and pleafing fenfation, which he afterwards discovered to arise from a ring of belis; that, as yet, he heard only with one ear, but afterwards a kind of water came from his left ear, and then he could hear diftinctly with both that from this time he liftened, with the utmost curiofity and attention, to the founds which accompany thofe motions of the lips, which he had before remarked to convey ideas from one perfon to another. In fhort, he was able to understand them, by noting the thing to which they related, and the action they produced. And after repeated attempts to imitate them when alone, at the end of four months he thought himself able to talk. He therefore, without having intimated what had happened, began at once to fpeak, and affected to join in converfation, though with much more imperfection than he was aware of.

"Many Divines immediately vifited him, and questioned him concerning God, and the foul, moral good and evil, and many other fubjects of the fame kind; but of all this they found him totally ignorant, though he had been ufed to go to mass, and had been inftructed in all the externals of devotion, as making the fign of the cross, looking upwards, kneeling at proper feafons, and ufing geftures of penitence and prayer. Of death itself,

which may be confidered as a fenfible object, he had very confused and imperfect ideas, nor did it appear that he had ever reflected upon it. His life was little more than animal and fenfitive. He feemed to be content with the fimple perception of fuch objects as he could perceive, and did not compare his ideas with each other, nor draw inferences, as might have been expected from him. It appeared, however, that his understanding was vigorous, and his apprehenfion quick; fo that his intellectual defects must have been caufed, not by the barrenness of the foil, but merely by the want of neceffary cultivation."

The above is not the only inftance of the kind that has oc curred, the reader's own reflection may perhaps furnish him with feveral others. And if he is ftill defirous of farther fatisfaction on the subject treated of in the above fermon, I would beg leave to recommend to him a book, entitled, "The Knowledge of Divine Things from Revelation, not from Reason and Nature,” wrote by John Ellis, D. D. fometime of Brazen-Nose College, Oxford; now Vicar of St. James's, and Chaplain to the Royal Hofpital in Dublin.-Printed for Dod in London, and fold by all the book fellers. I know not whether to promise the reader more benefit or pleasure in the perufal of a book, in which purity of diction, and folidity of just reasoning, drawn from the most convincing topicks, are fo exceedingly remarkable.

THE

TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY

DEMONSTRATED;

IN A

DIALOGUE

BETWIXT A

CHRISTIAN AND A DEIST:

WHEREIN THE CASE OF THE JEWS IS LIKEWISE CONSIDERED.

THE

TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY

DEMONSTRATED.

IT

(1.) CHRISTIAN.

you

T is ftrange you fhould stand it out so against your own happinefs, and employ your whole wit and skill to work in yourfelf a disbelief of any future rewards or punishments, only that may live easy (as you think) in this world, and enjoy your plea fures. Which yet you cannot enjoy free and undisturbed from the fear of thofe things that are to come, the event of which you pretend not to be fure of; and therefore are fure of a life full of trouble, that admits not of any confolation, and of a miserable and wretched death, according to the utmost that you yourself propofe.

DEIST. How can you fay that, when I propose to live with, out any fear of those things? I fear not hell, and I have dif carded the expectation of heaven, because I believe neither.

CHR. Are you fure there are no fuch things?

DE. That is a negative, and I pretend not to prove it.

CHR. Then you must remain in a doubt of it. And what a condition is it to die in this doubt, when the iffue is eternal mifery! And this is the utmoft, by your own confeffion, that you can propofe to yourself. Therefore I called yours a disbelief, rather than a belief of any thing. It is we Chriftians who believe, you Deifts only difbelieve.

And if the event fhould prove as you would have it, and that we fhould all be annihilated at our death, we should be in as