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The subject is of deep importance: let me press it on your notice, and caution you against all atheistical opinions. If you allow all sense of a God, who made you what you are—preserves you by his unwearied goodness, and exercises a righteous government over you—and, of course, all sense of religious obligation, to be banished from your mind; or, if through the infatuation of vice, you come to be so insensible of his existence, and your relation to him, as never to enquire where is God, your Maker, how can you then know him? or how can you acknowledge his benefits with affection and gratitude? You must give up your claim to the rank and honors of rational beings; you must degrade yourselves to the level of the the brute creation. And can your honourable pride submit to such a degradation ? Shall the trifling honors of this world, which set us a little above each other, be sought by you with eagerness, and the honors which would render you happy for ever, be by you undervalued and despised ? Atheism will rob you of the highest honor, which consists in your likeness to God. You should seriously consider, that man was designed to be not only a moral but religious being; he must therefore be a very imperfect creature, if he be not a religious one; he must be as imperfect without religion, as a human body is imperfect without some of its most important members. His beauty is not only deformed, but entirely destroyed. While religion sheds around him a venerable grandeur, Atheism destroys all the dignity of his character, by blotting out of existence that God, the belief of whose being and perfections is necessary to make
