into his hands, which changed, in a moment, the whole course of his ideas.
What he had before regarded with reluctance and terror, this book taught
him to admire and love. The writer has the art of the grand deceiver; the
fatal art of carrying the worst poison under the name and appearance of
wholesome food; of disguising all that is impious, or blasphemous, or
licentious, under the guise and sanctions of virtue.

Colden had lived before this without examination or inquiry. His heart,
his inclination, was perhaps on the side of religion and true virtue; but
this book carried all his inclination, his zeal, and his enthusiasm, over
to the adversary; and so strangely had he been perverted, that he held
himself bound, he conceived it to be his duty, to vindicate in private and
public, to preach with vehemence, his new faith. The rage for making
converts seized him; and that Thomson was not won over to the same cause
proceeded from no want of industry in Colden.

Such was the man whom you had admitted to your confidence; whom you had
adopted for your bosom friend. I knew your pretensions to religion, the
stress which you laid upon piety as the basis of morals. I remembered your
objections to Talbot on this score, not only as a husband, but as a
friend. I could, therefore, only suppose that Colden had joined
dissimulation to his other errors, and had gained and kept your good
opinion by avowing sentiments which his heart secretly abhorred.

I cannot describe to you, Jane, my alarms upon this discovery. That
your cook had intended to poison you, the next meat which you should eat
in your own house, would have alarmed me, I assure you, much less. The
preservation of your virtue was unspeakably of more importance in my eyes
than of your life.