ness of mankind is the great aim of these freethinkers; and therefore, as those among them who remain incredulous, will not oppose you, so those whom reason enlightened by grace has made believers, may be sorry, and may express their sorrow, as I have done, to see Religion perverted to purposes so contrary to her true intention, and first design. Can a good christian behold the ministers of the meek and humble Jesus, exercising an insolent and cruel usurpation over their brethren? or the messengers of peace and good news setting all mankind together by the ears? or that religion, which breathes charity and universal benevolence, spilling more blood, upon reflection and by system, than the most barbarous heathen ever did in the heat of action, and fury of conquest? Can he behold all this without a holy indignation, and not be criminal? Nay, when he turns his eyes from those tragical scenes, and considers the ordinary tenour of
therto upon record in the history of any age or nation. Mallet had a pecuniary temptation to assassinate the morals and happiness of his country at Bolingbroke's instigation: his crime therefore is not equally a proof of natural depravity, though it is impossible to suppose he had less conviction of the mischief he was doing; and it is also impossible to suppose, that he could seriously think any obligation to print Bolingbroke's infidelity, in consequence of his injunction, equivalent to the obligation he was under to suppress it, arising from the duty, which, as a man, he owed to human nature. The paragraph in lord Bolingbroke's will, by which his writings are bequeathed to Mallet; the letter, which lord Cornbury wrote to Mallet, upon hearing he was about to publish the letters, including those on sacred history, and Mallet's answer; are, for the reader's satisfaction, printed at the end of this collection. Lord Cornbury's letter is a monument, that will do more honour to his memory, than all that mere wit or valour has achieved since the world began.
