The considerations
above mentioned would acquire also strength from the prejudices which
men of rank and learning universally entertain against anything that
originates with the vulgar and illiterate; which prejudice is known to
be as obstinate as any prejudice whatever.
Yet Christianity was still making its way: and, amidst so many
impediments to its progress, so much difficulty in procuring audience
and attention, its actual success is more to be wondered at, than that
it should not have universally conquered scorn and indifference, fixed
the levity of a voluptuous age, or, through a cloud of adverse
prejudications, opened for itself a passage to the hearts and
understandings of the scholars of the age.
And the cause which is here assigned for the rejection of Christianity
by men of rank and learning among the Heathens, namely, a strong
antecedent contempt, accounts also for their silence concerning it. If
they had rejected it upon examination, they would have written about it;
they would have given their reasons. Whereas, what men repudiate upon
the strength of some prefixed persuasion, or from a settled contempt of
the subject, of the persons who propose it, or of the manner in which it
is proposed, they do not naturally write books about, or notice much in
what they write upon other subjects.
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