on historical facts; from thence are drawn the principal motives of credibility, as they are called. We give credit to facts recorded in history, when they are related by an historian of credit; when other historians agree with him; and from the concurrence of other circumstances.[1] But what idea has a totally ignorant man of the weight of the concurrence of historians, or the coincidence of facts? or what knowledge of history at all? Certainly none. Hence, being deprived of the belief, he of course is deprived of all the other advantages of religion.
With respect to morals: Civilisation has a two-fold effect on the morals of the people; first, by depriving them of their original share of things, and reducing them to a state of both comparative and absolute poverty, it subjects them to more and much stronger temptations. Secondly, by their extreme ignorance, and little sense of religion in consequence of it, they are deprived of the strongest motives to resist them. Thus, all their temptations rendered stronger, their powers of resistance weaker, they could not be expected to be different from what we find them.[2]
