Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/158

Hoards of Irreligion, is like searching for Hope in Pandora's Box; where the sole Reward of Industry can only be Pestilence, Despair and Death. National Virtue never was maintained, but by national Religion: He, therefore, who shakes the essential Principles of Religion, undermines the Virtue of his Fellow-Subjects; and therefore deserves to feel the Rigour of the Law, as a determined Enemy of his Country—This may seem a practicable Remedy: But how to destroy those irreligious Writings, which already lie exposed on Stalls and Counters, or deposited in private Libraries, like so many Heaps of Poison, for the Gratification of Vice, and the Destruction of Virtue:—Or how to pluck from the Minds of Men those poisoned Arrows, which these Authors have already planted there!—That were a Task indeed!—The Shaft is already flown; and cannot be recalled: And this Nation, thro' succeeding Times will have Cause to say,—"Haeret Lateri lethalis Arundo."