The necessary art of social life would have been little cultivated.
The plough and the loom would have stood still. Agriculture,
manufactures, trade, and navigation, would not, I think, have
flourished, if they could have been exercised at all. Men would have
addicted themselves to contemplative and ascetic lives, instead of lives
of business and of useful industry. We observe that St. Paul found it
necessary frequently to recall his converts to the ordinary labours and
domestic duties of their condition; and to give them, in his own
example, a lesson of contented application to their worldly employments.
By the manner in which the religion is now proposed, a great portion of
the human species is enabled and of these multitudes of every generation
are induced, to seek and effectuate their salvation through the medium
of Christianity, without interruption of the prosperity or of the
regular course of human affairs.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SUPPOSED EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY.
That a religion which under every form in which it is taught holds forth
the final reward of virtue and punishment of vice, and proposes those
distinctions of virtue and vice which the wisest and most cultivated
part of mankind confess to be just, should not be believed, is very
possible; but that, so far as it is believed, it should not produce any
good, but rather a bad effect upon public happiness, is a proposition
which it requires very strong evidence to render credible.
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