MR. BINNEY.  “Choose their tenets” is the expression.

Tenets are opinions, I believe.  The mass of one’s religious tenets makes up one’s religion.

Now, it is evident that Mr. Girard meant to found a school of morals, without any reference to, or connection with, religion.  But, after all, there is nothing original in this plan of his.  It has its origin in a deistical source, but not from the highest school of infidelity.  Not from Bolingbroke, or Shaftesbury, or Gibbon; not even from Voltaire or D’Alembert.  It is from two persons who were probably known to Mr. Girard in the early part of his life; it is from Mr. Thomas Paine and Mr. Volney.  Mr. Thomas Paine, in his “Age of Reason,” says:  “Let us devise means to establish schools of instruction, that we may banish the ignorance that the ancient regime of kings and priests has spread among the people.  Let us propagate morality, unfettered by superstition.”

     MR. BINNEY.  What do you get that from?

The same place that Mr. Girard got this provision of his will from, Paine’s “Age of Reason.”  The same phraseology in effect is here.  Paine disguised his real meaning, it is true.  He said:  “Let us devise means to establish schools to propagate morality, unfettered by superstition.”  Mr. Girard, who had no disguise about him, uses plain language to express the same meaning.  In Mr. Girard’s view, religion is just that thing which Mr. Paine calls superstition.  “Let us establish schools of morality,” said he, “unfettered by religious tenets.  Let us give these children a system of pure morals before they adopt any religion.”  The ancient regime of which Paine spoke as obnoxious was that of kings and priests.  That was the popular way he had of making any thing obnoxious that he wished to destroy.  Now, if he had merely wished to get rid of the dogmas which he says were established by kings and priests, if he had no desire to abolish the Christian religion itself, he could have thus expressed himself:  “Let us rid ourselves of the errors of kings and priests, and plant morality on the plain text of the Christian religion, with the simplest forms of religious worship.”

I do not intend to leave this part of the cause, however, without a still more distinct statement of the objections to this scheme of instruction.  This is due, I think, to the subject and to the occasion; and I trust I shall not be considered presumptuous, or as trenching upon the duties which properly belong to another profession.  But I deem it due to the cause of Christianity to take up the notions of this scheme of Mr. Girard, and show how mistaken is the idea of calling it a charity.  In the first place, then, I say, this scheme is derogatory to Christianity, because it rejects Christianity from the education of youth, by rejecting its teachers, by rejecting the ordinary agencies of instilling the Christian religion into the minds of