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No . CCCCVI . Preamble to Laws cf Zaleucus . I would here call upon all moralists and legislators , and ask them if they have said any thing more noble or more useful than the exordium of the laws of Zaleucus , who nourished before Pythagoras , and who was the first magistrate of the Locrians .
" Every citizen ought to be persuaded of the existence of the Divinity . It is sufficient to observe the order and harmony of the universe , to be convinced that chance cannot have formed
* t . Every man ought to have command Jjver his soul , to purify it and to remove from it all evil , persuaded that God cannot be served by the perverse , and that he is unlike wretched mortals who ^ take delight in magnificent ceremonies and sumptuous offerings . Virp . tue alone , and the constant disposition l do good , can please him . We ou gat , then , to seek to be just in Principle and in practice : by this means we shall obtain the approba-
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tion of the Divinity . What leads to ignominy ought to be feared much more than what conducts to poverty . He who abandons fortune for justice , ought to be looked upon as the best citizen ; but those whom their violent passions hurry on to evil , men , women , citizens , simple inhabitants , ought to be admonished to think of the gods , and often to bear in mind the severe
justice they exercise against the guilty : let them have constantly before their eyes the hour of death , that fatal hour which awaits us all , that hour when the recollection of faults brings remorse , and the vaia repentance of not having made all our actions subservient to equity .
" It therefore behoves all men to conduct themselves at each moment of their lives as if this moment were the last 5 but if an evil genius excites them to crime , let them take refuge at the foot of the altars : let them
pray to heaven to remove far from them this evil genius ; let them espe- * cially throw themselves into the arms of worthy people , whose counsels will bring them back to virtue by representing to them the goodness of God and his vengeance . "
There is nothing in all antiquity which can be preferred to this plain but sublime passage , dictated by reason and virtue , stripped of enthusiasm , and of those gigantic figures which good sense rejects . —Voltaire > Histoire GtnSrale .
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Cleaning's . 469
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Should Mr . Manning know any thing of this publication , he will , I dare say , obligingly inform you . The " answer to Powell g Sermon /' ( p . 324 , ) was , I suppose , contained in the " Serious and Free Thoughts on the present State of the Church
and Religion , " published in 1756 , according to Mr . Manning , in his Life of Mr . Towgood . 1 have a pamphlet dated 17 / 2 , and entitled , « ' A Calm and Plain Answer to the Inquiry , Why are you a Dissenter from the Church of England ? By the author of the Dissenting Gentlemen's Letters to White . "
Should Mr . Manning oblige your readers with any explanatory notes on the " Letters of Voltaire , ' I beg leave to remind him that besides what occurs at the beginning of the " Traite sur la Tolerance , " all the judicial proceeding' on the Calas family are detailed m the " Continuation des
Causes C&fcbres . " ( Amst . 177 U I have only the fourth volume , which ends with the execution of Calas in March 1762 , and the disposal of his family . This volume will be much at Mr . M / s service . J . T . RUTT .
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No . CCCCVII . Corruptions of Christianity the Ar moury of Unbelief The Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen every man his ax , ( 1 Samuel xiii . 20 , ) and unbelievers in Protestant countries are
wont to resort to Rome to whet their sneers at the Christian religion . Almost any deistical book would furnish examples of this artifice * The follow * ing is from Gibbon , ( Decline andJfaU , 8 vo . Vol . VIII . p . 123 , note 14 , ) who was always pleased when he could escape from the gravity of his
historical text to play the buffoon or worse in his notes . —•> " Gregory , the Roman , supposes that the Lombards adored a she-goat , which they were accustomed to sacrifice to the gods of their fathers . \ I know but of one religion ia which the God and the victim are the &ame *
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CLEANINGS ; OR , SELECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS MADE IN A COURSE OF GENERAL , READING .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1823, page 469, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1787/page/37/
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