1. The _first_ plan of _melioration_ which I would submit to the Fashionable World, is that of _renouncing the Christian religion_. In recommending this step, I proceed upon a supposition, that the government and laws and manners which now prevail, must _at all events_ be retained: and upon such a supposition, I contend, that _renouncing the Christian religion_ is a measure of indispensable necessity. For surely if duels must be fought, what can be so preposterous as to swear allegiance to a law which says—“_Thou shalt not kill_?” If injuries must _not_ be forgiven, where is the propriety of employing a prayer in which the petitioner declares, that he does forgive them? If the passions are to be _gratified_, what end is answered by doing homage to those Scriptures which so peremptorily declare, that they must be _mortified_? In a word, if swearing, prevarication, and sensuality; if a neglect of “the duties to God and inferiors,” be necessary, or even allowable, parts of a Fashionable character; where is the policy, the virtue, or even the decency, of connecting it with a religion which stamps these several qualities with the deepest guilt, and threatens them with the severest retribution? If a religion of _some_ sort be absolutely necessary, let such an one be chosen as may possess a correspondence with the other parts of the system: let it be a religion in which pride, and resentment, and lust, may have their necessary scope; a religion, in short, in which the God of this world may be the idol, and the men of this world the worshippers. Such an arrangement will go a great way towards establishing _consistency_: it will dissolve a union by which both parties are sufferers; and liberate at once the people of Fashion from a profession which involves them in contradiction, and Christianity from a connexion which covers her with disgrace.