"To establish a new religion, even amongst a few people, or in one
single nation, is a thing in itself exceedingly difficult. To reform
some corruptions which may have spread in a religion, or to make new
regulations in it, is not perhaps so hard, when the main and principal
part of that religion is preserved entire and unshaken; and yet this
very often cannot be accomplished without an extraordinary concurrence
of circumstances, and may be attempted a thousand times without success.
But to introduce a new faith, a new way of thinking and acting, and to
persuade many nations to quit the religion in which their ancestors have
lived and died, which had been delivered down to them from time
immemorial; to make them forsake and despise the deities which they had
been accustomed to reverence and worship; this is a work of still
greater difficulty." (Jortin's Dis. on the Christ. Rel. p. 107, 4th
edit.) The resistance of education, worldly policy, and superstition, is
almost invincible.
If men, in these days, be Christians in consequence of their education,
in submission to authority, or in compliance with fashion, let us
recollect that the very contrary of this, at the beginning, was the
case.
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