"Drag, drag me out--I freeze--I die." "Your peace, my friend, is made on high; Full absolution here I give; Saint Peter will your soul receive: Wash'd clean from sin, and duly shriven, New converts always go to heaven; No hour for death so fit as this; Thus, thus I launch you into bliss!" So said--the Father in a trice His convert launch'd beneath the ice.
But enough of this bringing forward accusations and objections of the Deists, and answering them myself. Let them be brought against us in the regular way, and we will readily refute them. In fact, there will be some novelty in such an occupation to many of our divines, who have passed many years in the continued sameness of preaching to congregations who are much too passive and obedient ever to dissent a single syllable from the doctrine laid down. It is now several years since our Doctors of Divinity really exerted their talents, viz. ever since the first publicacation of the Age of Reason. I think it downright inconsistency for our authorities to prosecute those who publish works of this kind, seeing those works absolutely benefit Christianity. For did not the above production give rise to innumerable answers, each of which was sufficient in itself, to prove the divine origin and infalibillity of the sacred Scriptures! Read Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible, for instance, a work _replete with genius_; a work which will confer lasting honour on its reverend author; and wherein we cannot perceive the _least traces_ of what our adversaries term _priestcraft_, and not a _single sentence_ which may be called _a quibble_. Another answer to the Age of Reason, by a _wit_, named Robert Thompson, also deserves to be made honourable mention of, as being neither _scurrilous nor contemptible_; as does likewise an answer, by a layman of the name of Padman, a work of vast _profundity_, and in which there is not to be found any _perversion or pitiful misrepresentation of passages_ in Mr. Paine's book. Should these two last gentlemen be still in existence, and chance to peruse this, they will be extremely grateful, I am sure, for my thus noticing them; but they may reserve all thanks, for the encomiums I have passed upon them are nothing more than their real deserts. 1 But to conclude. Seeing, I say, that deistical works are beneficial to our holy and only true religion, by making its ministers exert their talents, let them be printed and freely circulated, and in so doing we shall no longer lay under the vile odium of being oppressors and persecutors for righteousness sake.