minds, who have only the ability to infuse into their scholars those
false ideas with which they are themselves infected. Here, without
doubt, is the real source from whence springs that universal corruption,
that wide-spreading depravity, of which moralists, with great justice,
so loudly complain; without, however, pointing out those causes of the
evil, which are true as they are necessary: instead of this, they search
for it in human nature, say it is corrupt, blame man for loving himself,
and for seeking after his own happiness, insist that he must have
supernatural assistance, some marvellous interference, to enable him to
become good: this is a very prejudicial doctrine for him, it is directly
subversive of his true happiness; by teaching him to hold himself in
contempt, it tends necessarily to discourage him; it either makes him
sluggish, or drives him to despair whilst waiting for this grace: is it
not easy to be perceived, that he would always have it if he was well
educated; if he was honestly governed? There cannot well exist a wilder
or a stranger system of morals, than that of the theologians who
attribute all moral evil to an original sin, and all moral good to the
pardon of it. It ought not to excite surprise if such a system is of no
efficacy; what can reasonably be the result of such an hypothesis? Yet,
notwithstanding the supposed, the boasted free-agency of man, it is
insisted that nothing less than the Author of Nature himself is
necessary to destroy the wicked desires of his heart: but, alas! no
power whatever is found sufficiently efficacious to resist those unhappy
propensities, which, under the fatal constitution of things, the most
vigorous motives, as before observed, are continually infusing into the
will of man; no agency seems competent to turn the course of that
unhappy direction these are perpetually giving to the stream of his
natural passions. He is, indeed, incessantly exhorted to resist these
passions, to stifle them, and to root them out of his heart; but is it
not evident they are necessary to his welfare? Can it not be perceived