Well might Bishop Watson ask Gibbon, “Suppose the mighty work accomplished, the cross trampled upon, Christianity every where proscribed, and the religion of nature once more become the religion of Europe; what advantage will you have derived to your country or to yourselves from the exchange?—I will tell you from what you will have freed the world; you will have freed it from its abhorrence of vice, and from every powerful incentive to virtue; you will, with the religion, have brought back the depraved morality of Paganism: you will have robbed mankind of their firm assurance of another life; and thereby you will have despoiled them of their patience, of their humility, of their charity, of their chastity, of all those mild and silent virtues which, (however despicable they may appear in your eyes) are the only ones which meliorate and sublime our nature; which Paganism never knew, which spring from Christianity alone.” {124} Nor does this able writer, in his Letters to Paine, state less clearly and forcibly the evils which the infidel school inflict upon society. “In accomplishing your purpose you will have unsettled the faith of thousands; rooted from the minds of the unhappy virtuous all their comfortable assurance of a future recompense; have annihilated, in the minds of the flagitious, all their fears of future punishment; you will have given the reins to the domination of every passion; and have thereby contributed to the introduction of the public insecurity, and the private unhappiness usually, and almost necessarily, accompanying a state of corrupted morals.” {125} Would that the anti-christian school of this day could be induced to forego their unwearied exertions to make proselytes, by considering the poor substitute they have to offer for an holy faith, which is the hope of the prosperous, the consolation of the afflicted, the comfort of the sick, and the support of the dying! To man, who feels his want of some holy light to guide his erring steps, some blessed solace to cheer an aching heart, in a world of perplexity and woe, the infidel has nothing to offer but the laws, for the guidance of his public conduct, and for his internal monitor and comforter,—a poor philosophy. But what to teach him how to die? Nothing: for he has nothing to offer but the trite aphorisms of heathen philosophers. What to take away the fear of something after death? Nothing: for he who believes nothing which Christianity has revealed can know nothing of a state of future existence, uncognizable by unassisted reason.