The National Register.
London, England, 1818-01-05 00:00:00

br 0,

No. 517.—V0L. XI.

POLITICAL DISQUISITION.

ON THE PROGRESS OF INFIDELITY.

IT has been well observed, that during the reign of
Charles the Second, the follies, the vices and impiety
of the continent had so inundated this country, that pie-
ty and morality began to pass for marks of disaffection
towards the government. Now, however, the very
reverse of this is the case, the impiety of republican
France has tainted us deeply, and those who have in
any degree escaped the contagion, are stigmatized by
their infected countrymen, as slaves of a tyrannical go-
vernment. According to them, there is no political
virtue, but in those who have learnt to rise superior
to the slavish notions of religion :—there is no spirit
but in those who have courage to render religion r idicu-
kus in the estimation of the unthinking. If this ir-
religious spirit were unconnected with politics, we
should be little alarmed about the consequences, for
there is such a commanding sanctity in true religion, that
men only of the most callous natures, can lung with-
stand the daily and hourly appeals which it makes to
their reason. In the moment of earthly triumph, in
the hour of exuberant health, in the hey-day of youth
and thoughtlessness, they may treat the sacred truths of
religion with levity, and even with scorn, but when dis-
ease, or want, or any of the many calamities "that flesh
is heir to" press upon them, reason comes to their aid,
and with a power which they cannot resist, points to
that sour:e front whence only true comfbrt and conso-
lation can flow. But when to scepticism in religion,
are joined principles in politics, hostile to every set-
tled system, when nothing is relished but what is new,
when the same foot that, in scorn, treads down the
word of God, would also tread down the political con-
stitution of the country, we may well be alarmed, and
inquire. Why is this ? DoCs a want of religion neces-
sarily mal:e anon encodes to the tranquillity of their
countm or logs their political hostility lead them to
reject the most selcum religious truths? 'We confess
our belief that in modern times irreligious opinions have
engendered politital hostility. The writings of those
whom we class in time school of Voltaire, by sapping
the foundations of their countrymen's religious faith,
brought an them all the horrors of a sanguinary revolu-
tion, and, what generally succeeds to such an event,
a grinding and pitiless tyranny.
Acquainted, as we all are, with the calamities which
these unholy scoffers produced, is it not surprising that
we who have always been accounted a sober, thinking
.people, should give in to all the foppery of their infi-
delity. . .We have not even the merit of originality in
our mode of sinning, for we copy the example of our
neighbours to the very letter. We insinuate our frcc
thoughts, as they did, into the most unlikely materials ;
a chemical or geological essay furnishes a ground of
doubt as to the existence of afird.cause; a biographical
sketch gives full opportunity of praising the moat
wicked of mankind, if' they have had but political or
*cies* 'nor:h. It is only the bold and impudent pau-
per in the field of literature that advances his pestilent
doctrines without disguise ; and what his success is, we
can judge by recent events. We have no wish to say
one severe word against the poor man who has lately
been the subject of prosecution for blasphemy. He fell
into the taste of the party to which he had long had a
leaning, and what he wrote he wrote for bread ; a wife
and seven starving children migh drive a man to the
commission of a greater crime than that M r. Hone was
guilty of, and his subsequent conduct thews that ha is
not insensible to the nature of his A:nice. But no
apology of this sort can web be oifered for the conduct
of those who have come forward with such alacrity in
his behalf. To relieve the ncees.dties of the man was
an act becoming a British public, and the appeal which
b,p t,7ta4 to the feelings of the jury on the third day of his