while we dwell on earth, but its momentous interests extend to another and to an eternal state of existence; and if the prospects and hopes of immortality, a blessed immortality, be blighted by finding that they have been vainly sought, or that the conditions upon which we have been led to attain them are untrue, and not real, there is then prepared for the mind a bitterness which brings on sickness and despair, a bitterness which renders our being a curse instead of a blessing, and tends to make the author of it despised rather than adored. It is, therefore, the first duty of every nation to set forth and establish a religion which the best and most learned of its luminaries, on the surest grounds, conceive to be true, and the truth of which the experience of ages and the consent of mankind have confirmed. Indeed, the responsibility is dreadfully awful, which imposes upon a government the propriety of establishing a public form of worship for the moral and spiritual benefit of the community over which it presides and as this responsibility is surely the most fearful, what must be that of those who impugn and weaken it, unless they can produce reasons and arguments strong and weighty for their contrary opinions. The government, as the guardian of the uninformed and ignorant of the land, steps in, as in the present instance, between them and the promulgers of unholy doctrines, to screen them from imposition

and delusion; and as it possesses the power to give a form of worship, so it has the ardent desire that the people committed to its charge may enjoy, and be secured in the enjoyment of, all the advantages and comforts which flow from a true and genuine religion. If other classes of the community have the power of investigating these things, and can form satisfactory, though different, opinions as to what they feel called upon to believe, they are left to the guidance of their own discretion, and they may, for the benefit of others capable of forming conclusions in these high matters, publish and declare the motives and arguments by which they have been led to differ from the mass around them, provided, as I have before observed, they do so in a manner, and by such means, as are rational, serious, and inoffensive. While they thus act, the State holds out protection to them in the public exercise of their peculiar form of worship: but if they quit the limits thus fairly prescribed, and go forth to the public, declaring the national religion, the Christian religion, false; and attempt to poison the minds of the discontented and factious, or unsettle and disturb those of the great aggregate of the community, who have not the power nor the opportunity to discriminate between the true and false; and in doing so, declare Scripture, which is the foundation and rock upon which the Church of Christ is built, to be in many parts fictitious,

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and not the word of God; then, among the ignorant and uninstructed, doubts are immediately raised as to what they ought to believe the current of their consolatory hopes is stopped by a barrier which they cannot remove; and distrust, despair, and impiety, follow as the natural consequences of these declarations.

I am aware that, among many, an opinion prevails, that it would be better for the Legislature to permit works of an impious and blasphemous description to pass unnoticed, and to leave the principles thus propagated to be refuted by those to whom the charge of preserving true principles of religion is committed, or by others who have a zeal and knowledge of divine things: but in my view of the case, it is with the utmost propriety that the Legislature retains the power of inflicting punishment for notorious scandals upon our religion, and especially when our adversaries depart from the course of regular and legitimate reasoning, and have recourse to light and indecent ribaldry in assailing the received doctrines of Christianity and though it is not my intention to accuse the defendants as guilty in this respect, I do not hesitate to place this offence to the necessary effects of their writings; and sure I am, that the Legislature will never be backward in effectually protecting from ridicule and insult those sacred truths which are, and have been received

with reverence and awe by the great body of Christians in all ages and countries. The Law will not sanction blasphemy, - the Law is the guardian of our religion, and will not suffer the Christian faith to be wounded and maimed; but upon all occasions of great and momentous import, when Christianity is wilfully and impiously assailed, will punish the delinquents, I do not say with severity, but in such a manner as to show a proper and due sense of veneration and respect for what is truly esteemed holy and sacred. We have many

laws on our statute books which are seldom if ever put in force; if, then, it be asked, Why retain what is obsolete and unserviceable? I reply, That it is wise to permit them to remain, if it be only to show what is the spirit of our laws; - to show that they discountenance, if they do not punish, offences of this nature; and it is with the same view of discouraging blasphemy, rather than of punishing or treating it with any sort of severity, that the Defendants are now brought before you. Surely, when men with bold effrontery come forward, and, with the aid of great but perverted talents, assail the strong holds of Christianity, representing adoration to its Author as impious, and our belief in him as blasphemous; when they openly charge us with dishonesty in adding to the Book of Life, while they are heedless of the curse on those who take aught from

it'; and represent us as unwise and foolish in our interpretation of it, as Heathens and Polytheists; and all this, under the colour of profound reading, liberal sentiments, and enlarged capacity of reasoning;—if this torrent of misrepresentation and error be not checked by some sort of public disapproval and censure; who is to calculate upon the effects which such infidelity must produce upon the moral conduct and religious feeling of a people? It is here, then, that I again repel the charge of a narrow and persecuting spirit, in bringing the present prosecution, which I urge, not against the arraigned as individuals, but against their principles,-principles pernicious and impious, tending to the substitution of a cold morality, and blighting Deism, for all the glorious blessings and privileges of Christianity.

From the pernicious doctrines which the persons before you have promulged, a sect has recently sprung up, who, under the name of "Free-thinking

If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, &c. Rev. xxii. 19.

"It is true," says Doddridge," this particularly refers to the book of the Revelation; but the parity of reason extending to other books, I doubt not the terror of the threatening does so too.".." I think this passage should make men very cautious, that they may not rashly incur any censure on this account; though, undoubtedly, the terror of the threatening is planted against any designed erasement or addition."