The author, sensible of the prejudices of the age, does not directly affirm himself an atheist; he goes no further than to pronounce that atheism is the most perfect degree of freethinking; and leaves the reader to form the conclusion.

Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas, more daring than the vision of a palpable day of judgment.

Atheism, idolatry, heresy, hypocrisy, though they have one common root, that is indulgence to corrupt affection, yet their growth is different, they have divers symptoms, occasions, and must have several cures and remedies.

As William Law, the prince of apologists, has it: "Atheism is not the denial of a first omnipotent cause.

Like Locke, the author thinks that atheism is a legitimate case for such coercion.

The free-voyaging intellect of the age found this one way of outlet, but if literary evidences are to be trusted sixteenth and seventeenth century atheism was a very crude business.

But it cannot be conceived that Aristophanes should, without punishment, publish himself an atheist, unless we suppose that atheism was the opinion, likewise, of the spectators, and of the judges commissioned to examine the plays; and yet this cannot be suspected of those who boasted themselves the most religious nation, and, naturally, the most superstitious of all Greece.