other man was at liberty to receive or reject as he approved or disapproved the doctrine.  Christians, on the other hand, made a very ill use of revelation and reason both.  Instead of employing the superior principle to direct and confine the inferior, they employed it to sanctify all that wild imagination, the passions, and the interests of the ecclesiastical order suggested.  This abuse of revelation was so scandalous that whilst they were building up a system of religion under the name of Christianity, every one who sought to signalise himself in the enterprise—­and they were multitudes—­dragged the Scriptures to his opinion by different interpretations, paraphrases, comments.  Arius and Nestorius both pretended that they had it on their sides; Athanasius and Cyril on theirs.  They rendered the Word of God so dubious that it ceased to be a criterion, and they had recourse to another—­to Councils and the decrees of Councils.  He must be very ignorant in ecclesiastical antiquity who does not know by what intrigues of the contending factions—­for such they were, and of the worst kind—­these decrees were obtained; and yet, an opinion prevailing that the Holy Ghost, the same Divine Spirit who dictated the Scriptures, presided in these assemblies and dictated their decrees, their decrees passed for infallible decisions, and sanctified, little by little, much of the superstition, the nonsense, and even the blasphemy which the Fathers taught, and all the usurpations of the Church.  This opinion prevailed and influenced the minds of men so powerfully and so long that Erasmus, who owns in one of his letters that the writings of OEcolampadius against transubstantiation seemed sufficient to seduce even the elect ("ut seduci posse videantur etiam electi"), declares in another that nothing hindered him from embracing the doctrine of OEcolampadius but the consent of the Church to the other doctrine ("nisi obstaret consensus Ecclesiae").  Thus artificial theology rose on the demolitions, not on the foundations, of Christianity; was incorporated into it; and became a principal part of it.  How much it becomes a good Christian to distinguish them, in his private thoughts at least, and how unfit even the greatest, the most moderate, and the least ambitious of the ecclesiastical order are to assist us in making this distinction, I have endeavoured to show you by reason and by example.

It remains, then, that we apply ourselves to the study of the first philosophy without any other guides than the works and the Word of God.  In natural religion the clergy are unnecessary; in revealed they are dangerous guides.

*** End of the project gutenberg EBOOK, letters by Bolingbroke ***

This file should be named ltww10.txt or ltww10.zip Corrected editions of our eBooks get a new number, ltww11.txt versions based on separate sources get new letter, ltww10a.txt