[Footnote 7: The Sweet-Singers were a fanatical sect of wailers, founded in Scotland, but which had no long life. [T.S.]] Christ himself commands us to be freethinkers; for he bids us search the scriptures, and take heed what and whom we hear; by which he plainly warns us, not to believe our bishops and clergy; for Jesus Christ, when he considered that all the Jewish and heathen priests, whose religion he came to abolish, were his enemies, rightly concluded that those appointed by him to preach his own gospel, would probably be so too; and could not be secure, that any set of priests, of the faith he delivered, would ever be otherwise; therefore it is fully demonstrated that the clergy of the Church of England are mortal enemies to Christ, and ought not to be believed. [Footnote 8: Yet Whiston, who receives this side-cut, was himself an anxious combatant of Collins, in his "Reflections on an Anonymous Pamphlet, entitled, 'A Defence of Freethinking.'" 1713. [S.]] But, without the privilege of freethinking, how is it possible to know which is the right Scripture? Here are perhaps twenty sorts of Scriptures in the several parts of the world, and every set of priests contend that their Scripture is the true one. The Indian Brahmins have a book of scripture called the Shaster; the Persees their Zundivastaw;[9] the Bonzes in China have theirs, written by the disciples of Fo-he, whom they call _God and Saviour of the world, who was born to teach the way of salvation, and to give satisfaction for all men's sins_: which, you see, is directly the same with what our priests pretend of Christ. And must we not think freely, to find out which are in the right, whether the Bishops or the Bonzes? But the Talapoins, or heathen clergy of Siam, approach yet nearer to the system of our priests; they have a Book of Scripture written by Sommonocodam, who, the Siamese say, was "born of a virgin," and was "the God expected by the Universe;" just as our priests tell us, that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, and was the Messiah so long expected. The Turkish priests, or dervises, have their Scripture which they call the Alcoran. The Jews have the Old Testament for their Scripture, and the Christians have both the Old and the New. Now among all these Scriptures, there cannot above one be right; and how is it possible to know which is that, without reading them all, and then thinking freely, every one of us for ourselves, without following the advice or instruction of any guide, before we venture to choose? The parliament ought to be at the charge of finding a sufficient number of these Scriptures, for every one of Her Majesty's subjects, for there are twenty to one against us, that we may be in the wrong: But a great deal of freethinking will at last set us all right, and every one will adhere to the Scripture he likes best; by which means, religion, peace, and wealth, will be for ever secured in Her Majesty's realms.