_J. D._ Perhaps he will say that he handleth the laws of nature there, only so far as may serve to the constitution or settlement of a commonwealth. In good time, let it be so. He hath devised us a trim commonwealth, which is founded neither upon religion towards God, nor justice towards man; but merely upon self-interest, and self-preservation. Those rays of heavenly light, those natural seeds of religion, which God himself hath imprinted in the heart of man, are more efficacious towards preservation of a society, whether we regard the nature of the thing, or the blessing of God, than all his _pacts_, and _surrenders_, and _translations of power_. He who unteacheth men their duty to God, may make them eye-servants, so long as their interest doth oblige them to obey; but is no fit master to teach men conscience and fidelity. _T. H._ He has not yet found the place where I contradict either the existence, or infiniteness, or incomprehensibility, or unity, or ubiquity of God. I am therefore yet absolved of atheism. But I am, he says, inconsistent and irreconcileable with myself; that is, I am (though he says not so) he thinks, a forgetful blockhead. I cannot help that: but my forgetfulness appears not here. Even his Lordship, where he says, “those rays of heavenly light, those seeds of religion, which God himself hath imprinted in the heart of man (meaning natural reason), are more efficacious to the preservation of society, than all the _pacts, surrenders_, and _translating of power_,” had forgotten to except the old pact of the Jews, and the new pact of Christians. But pardoning that, did he hope to make any wise man believe, that when this nation very lately was an anarchy, and dissolute multitude of men, doing every one what his own reason or imprinted light suggested, they did again out of the same light call in the king, and peace again, and ask pardon for the faults, which that their illumination had brought them into, rather than out of fear of perpetual danger and hope of preservation? _J. D._ Without religion, societies are like but soapy bubbles, quickly dissolved. It was the judgment of as wise a man as T. H. himself, though perhaps he will hardly be persuaded to it, that Rome owed more of its grandeur to religion, than either to strength or stratagems. _We have not exceeded the Spaniards in number, nor the Gauls in strength, nor the Carthaginians in craft, nor the Grecians in art, &c. but we have overcome all nations by our piety and religion._