prodigious impiety is here? How confutes he it? Must it be taken for impiety upon his bare calumny? I said superstition was fear without reason. Is not the fear of a false God, or fancied demon, contrary to right reason? And is not atheism boldness grounded on false reasoning, such as is this, _the wicked prosper, therefore there is no God_? He offers no proof against any of this; but says only I make atheism to be more reasonable than superstition; which is not true: for I deny that there is any reason either in the atheist or in the superstitious. And because the atheist thinks he has reason, where he has none, I think him the more irrational of the two. But all this while he argues not against any of this; but enquires only, what is become of my natural worship of God, and of his existency; infiniteness, incomprehensibility, unity, and ubiquity. As if whatsoever reason can suggest, must be suggested all at once. First, all men by nature had an opinion of God’s existency; but of his other attributes not so soon, but by reasoning, and by degrees. And for the attributes of the true God, they were never suggested but by the Word of God written. In that I say atheism is a sin of ignorance, he says I excuse it. The prophet David says, _the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God_. Is it not then a sin of folly? It is agreed between us, that right reason dictates, there is a God. Does it not follow, that denying of God is a sin proceeding from misreasoning. If it be not a sin of ignorance, it must be a sin of malice. Can a man malice that which he thinks has no being? But may not one think there is a God, and yet maliciously deny him? If he think there is a God, he is no atheist; and so the question is changed into this, whether any man that thinks there is a God, dares deliberately deny it? For my part I think not. For upon what confidence dares any man, deliberately I say, oppose the Omnipotent? David saith of himself, _My feet were ready to slip when I saw the prosperity of the wicked_. Therefore it is likely the feet of men less holy slip oftener. But I think no man living is so daring, being out of passion, as to hold it as his opinion. Those wicked men that for a long time proceeded so successfully in the late horrid rebellion, may perhaps make some think they were constant and resolved atheists: but I think rather that they forgot God, than believed there was none. He that believes there is such an atheist, comes a little too near that opinion himself; nevertheless if words spoken in passion signify a denial of a God, no punishment preordained by law, can be too great for such an insolence; because there is no living in a commonwealth with men, to whose oaths we cannot reasonably give credit. As to that I say, _an atheist is punished by God not as a subject by his king, but as an enemy_; and to my argument for it, namely, _because he never acknowledged himself God’s subject_, he opposeth, that if nature dictate that