INFLUENCE OF SCRIPTURE ON THE MORALS OF CHRISTIANS.—The morality of Christendom being irreconcilable with the New Testament, cannot be its legitimate offspring—Inspiration can have no higher authority than the human testimony on which its existence is arrogated—Injurious influence of unreasonable restriction—No one would believe that a capable farmer would make such a mistake as to sow garlic instead of wheat; yet God, while represented as having intended to sow Protestantism, is considered as having caused throughout Christendom a crop of Catholicism, in the Roman or Grecian form, for more than a thousand years: those weeds still occupying more than half of the whole soil—Letter of William Pitt, afterward Earl of Chatham—Offer of guidance by a mundane spirit—Improper use of the epithet Infidel—On Atonement—On the massacre at Sinope—Opinions of God held by Sir Isaac Newton—On God and his attributes, by Seneca—On the better employment of the first day of the week—Additional remarks respecting the observance of the Sabbath, so called—If creatures be not so created as to love their neighbours as themselves, precepts can no more alter them in this respect than change the colour of their hair or the number of cubits in their stature—Attacks upon the authenticity of Scripture cannot endanger the prevalent morality, which, while superior to that of the Old Testament, indicates a recklessness of the precepts of Christ, excepting so far as faith is upheld as a counterpoise for sin—The doctrine of a peculiar belief being necessary to salvation, and a counterpoise for sin, a source of discord originally confined to Judea, expanded with Christianity and Islamism: verifying Christ’s allegation, that he came “as a sword, not as a messenger of peace”—Superior morality and far less questionable certainty of the communications from the spirit world—Quotation from Mosheim—Quotation from Gibbon—For more than a thousand years, the Grecian or Roman Catholic clergy were the solo depositaries of the word of God, so called, and regulators of religious morals; yet, according to Bishop Hopkins, during that time, the clergy were for the most part pre-eminent in vice, as compared with the rest of the community; whence it is inferred that, like Pope Boniface, the wicked clergy in general were unbelievers in the truth of the gospel—If the morals of the modern clergy are better, it is neither from the barbarous example furnished them in the Old Testament, nor the ultra precepts of the gospel; being too much enlightened to be governed by either—Summary made by Bishop Hopkins—Any religion, like that of Moses, which does not make immortality a primary consideration, must be chiefly confined to worldly objects, and, of course, unworthy of consideration. People profess Christianity more from a desire to do right, than they do right in consequence of their professions—A