In like manner, there ought to be no restraint at all on thinking freely upon any proposition, however impious or absurd.  There is not the least hurt in the wickedest thoughts, provided they be free; nor in telling those thoughts to everybody, and endeavouring to convince the world of them; for all this is included in the doctrine of freethinking, as I shall plainly show you in what follows; and therefore you are all along to understand the word freethinking in this sense.

If you are apt to be afraid of the devil, think freely of him, and you destroy him and his kingdom.  Freethinking has done him more mischief than all the clergy in the world ever could do; they believe in the devil, they have an interest in him, and therefore are the great supports of his kingdom.  The devil was in the States-General before they began to be freethinkers.  For England and Holland[4] were formerly the Christian territories of the devil; I told you how he left Holland; and freethinking and the revolution banished him from England; I defy all the clergy to shew me when they ever had such success against him.  My meaning is, that to think freely of the devil, is to think there is no devil at all; and he that thinks so, the devil’s in him if he be afraid of the devil.

[Footnote 4:  Collins is supposed to have imbibed his freethinking philosophy during his repeated visits to Holland. [S.]]

But, within these two or three years, the devil has come into England again, and Dr. Sacheverell[5] has given him commission to appear in the shape of a cat, and carry old women about upon broomsticks:  And the devil has now so many “ministers ordained to his service,” that they have rendered freethinking odious, and nothing but the second coming of Christ can restore it.

[Footnote 5:  See note on p. 147.]

The priests tell me, I am to believe the Bible, but freethinking tells me otherwise in many particulars:  The Bible says, the Jews were a nation favoured by God; but I who am a freethinker say, that cannot be, because the Jews lived in a corner of the earth, and freethinking makes it clear, that those who live in corners cannot be favourites of God.  The New Testament all along asserts the truth of Christianity, but freethinking denies it; because Christianity was communicated but to a few; and whatever is communicated but to a few, cannot be true; for that is like whispering, and the proverb says, that there is no whispering without lying.

Here is a society in London for propagating freethinking throughout the world, encouraged and supported by the Queen and many others.  You say, perhaps, it is for propagating the Gospel.  Do you think the missionaries we send will tell the heathens that they must not think freely?  No, surely; why then, it is manifest, those missionaries must be freethinkers, and make the heathens so too.  But why should not the king of Siam, whose religion is heathenism and idolatry, send over a parcel of his priests to convert