Spinoza said, of things which have nothing in common, one cannot be the cause of the other; and to the Author of this Apology, it seems eminently unphilosophic to believe a Being having nothing in common with anything, capable of creating or causing everything.  ’Only matter can be touched or touch;’ and as the Christian’s God is not material, his adorers are fairly open to the charge of superstition.  An unknown Deity, without body, parts or passions, is of all idols the least tangible; and they who pretend to know and reverence him, are deceived or deceivers.  Knowledge of, and reverence for an object, imply, the power of conceiving that object; but who is able to conceive a God without body, parts, or passions?

In this Christian country where men are expected to believe and called ‘infidel’ if they cannot believe in a ‘crucified Saviour,’ it seems strange so much fuss should be made about his immateriality.  All but Unitarian Christians hold as an essential article of faith, that in him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily, in other words, that our Redeemer and our Creator; though two persons are one God.  It is true that Divines of our ‘Reformed Protestant Church,’ call everything but gentlemen those who lay claim to the equivocal privilege of feasting periodically upon the body and blood of Omnipotence.  The pains taken by Protestants to show from Scripture, Reason and Nature, that Priests cannot change lumps of dough into the body, and bumpers of wine into the blood of their God, are well known and appreciated.  But the Roman Catholics are neither to be argued nor laughed out of their ’awful doctrine’ of the real presence, to which they cling with desperate earnestness.  Proselytes are apt to misunderstand, and make sad mistakes about, that doctrine.  Two cases are cited by Hume in his ’Essay of the Natural History of Religion,’ which he announces as ’pleasant stories, though somewhat profane.’  According to one, a Priest gave inadvertently, instead of the sacrament, a counter, which had by accident fallen among the holy wafers.  The communicant waited patiently for some time, expecting that it would dissolve on his tongue, but finding that it still remained entire, he took it off.  I hope, said he, to the Priest, you have not made a mistake; I hope you have not given me God the Father, he is so hard and tough that there is no swallowing him.  The other story is thus related.  A famous General, at that time in the Muscovite Service, having come to Paris for the recovery of his wounds, brought along with him a young Turk whom he had taken prisoner.  Some of the doctors of the Sorbonne (who are altogether as positive as the dervises of Constantinople) thinking it a pity that the poor Turk should be damned for want of instruction, solicited Mustapha very hard to turn Christian, and promised him for encouragement, plenty of good wine in this world and paradise in the next.  These allurements were too powerful to be resisted; and therefore having been well instructed