It would be a pleasure to me, reverend pastors of the church, and illustrious professors of divinity, to declare aloud how much physick is indebted to religion; I would gladly vindicate the principles of physicians from the imputations of ancient calumny, and prove that religion is strongly supported by a science, which, being totally conversant in the contemplation of an admirable creature, demonstrates from the wonderful mechanism of a man in health, and the surprising cures of the sick, the existence and great wisdom of the Supreme Artificer, and that even to the most obstinate. Do men forget the Deity? Physicians stand forth, and theology is entirely reviv’d; for who have spoken more truth, or in a sublimer stile concerning God, than they? There would be no end, were I to cite them all; but I must not pass over in silence HIPPOCRATES, the first who ever asserted that fate produc’d nothing, but that all those events, which we call fortuitous, are regulated by the will of God: the next to him is GALEN, who diffusively proves, that the existence of God is demonstrated by the position of the thumb alone; and calls his treatise concerning the use of the parts, a monument to the glory of the Deity: to him must be added POLYCHRESTUS, to whom the illustrious sir-name of _Lover of God_ was given, on account of his great piety: BOYLE, who wrote excellent works himself, and founded an admirable institution for the promotion of religion, which he nobly endow’d; his friend SYDENHAM; the immortal LOCK; HOFFMAN, who carried his piety so far, that he was not entirely free from superstition; the admirable TRALLES; and my dear and worthy friend HALLER, who in an excellent treatise has asserted the utility of religion in a manly stile, as usual, and exerts himself to the utmost to promote its cause. Physicians indeed laugh at the idle tales of old women, at the extravagancies of the vulgar, and thereby incur the censure of weak and superstitious people; they deride the inventions of imagination; and whilst every divine lays down his own opinion as the rule of truth, physicians make a jest of the phantoms which these set up for religion, and refuse to embrace a cloud for a Juno: thence all these clamours, these accusations, these reproaches, and these calumnies. But if some of our society have in fact been led astray by error, which I am sorry to say cannot be denied, the severe censure of their colleagues has soon convinced the public how much they disapprov’d of their principles.