xx       P R E F A C E.

And he adds ---- "If the laws of the church would be dispense with it, that he would philosophize at home, and talk abroad in the common strain, preaching up the general and received fables."            See note z, Leland vol. p. 344.
    Such is human prudence and wisdom! ---- but the divine wisdom saith ---- He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. Jer. xxiii. 28. There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in the light; and what ye bear in the ear, that preach (κηρύξατ�?/FONT>,  proclaim, publish) upon the house-tops. Matth. x. 26, 27.  Truth is like him that doeth truth---- it cometh to the light, neither cometh to the light, lest it cometh to the light, that its deeds may be manifest,  that they are wrought in GOD.  Error, like every one that doth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light lest its deeds should be reproved. John iii. 20.21.                                   GOD never revealed any thing but that it should be known.  When men want to conceal any part of divine revelation from the knowledge of others, it is too frequently with a purpose of preventing the detection of some errors in human systems, which, from some sinister view or other, they dread the discovery of. Thus the church of Rome,  jealous of the light of scripture, knowing that the whole dominion of popes and priests of the laity is founded in ignorance, keep, as far as they can, the scriptures out of their hands.

    Others there are, who, from well-meant, but mistaken, zeal, for principles which they have been taught to venerate, dread that these should be attackted: as thinking the cause of religion itself, is involved with the supposed truth of what they are accustomed to believe.  There can be no doubt, that when our reformers first attacked the POPE'S supremacy, the worship of the Virgin Mary, the celibacy of priests, and other pious lyes and forgeries of the church of Rome, many devout and zealous people thought, that religion itself  was,  like the ark of old,  I Sam. iv. 10, 11. about to be delivered into the hands of the Philistines; and cried out like Micah,  when the Danites took away his Levite and his Teraphim ---Ye have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest --- and what have I more?         See Judges xviii 24.
    If there be any thing in the Bible which ought to be concealed, it would be no very hard matter to prove, that it ought never to have been revealed.  But as it often happens with private individuals, that they are afraid of looking too narrowly into the scripture, for fear of meeting with something to shake their preconceived opinions and prejudices; so it is with all public and national systems.  As these have been fashioned by human contrivance, over-fond of too narrow a scrutiny on the single footing of divine revelatio; left, as they are formed like the feet of the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which were part of iron, and part of clay; so these being composed of the heterogeneous mixture of divine wisdom and human contrivance, a too curious investigator should like the STONE there mentioned ---- fall upon them, and break them to pieces.
    The Author of the following sheets professes himself a Free-thinker; not in the usual sense of that word, as what he has written must abundantly testify, but as an assertor of that right, which every reasonable creature is invested with, to search, think, and judge for himself. He therefore has endevoured to lay some points, which he cannot but esteem of the utmost consequence, before the world, that others may exercise their privelege as the Author hath done his.

P R E F A C E.        xxiii

    As for the abuse which any subject herein treated may be liable to --- What is not abused? What in nature, providence, or revelation, has not been abused and perverted to some purpose or other? The very GOSPEL OF PEACE hath been abused, to sanctify fraud, violence, oppression, and persecution ---- to justify massacres, tortures, murders, even to men's roasting alive their fellow-creatures, and thinking they did GOD service!  insomuch that, were we to judge of the great HEAD of our holy religion, by the abuse which has been made of His authority, we should invert what he says, Luke ix. 56. and imagine, that He came not to save men's lives but to DESTROY them. But what does this all prove? Nothing but ignorance, perverseness, cruelty, and wickedness of human nature; and that corruptio optimi fit pessima: but it does not prove, that the GOD of heaven, who foresaw and foreknew such abuses, should not have revealed His mind and will to mortals: nor that any part of that revelation should be concealed, suppressed, or hidden from the eyes of men, for fear of its being abused. For this may be taken as a certain rule,  that no abuse of the scriptures ever yet happened from a real understanding and knowledge of their contents, but from an ignorance, either in ourselves, or imposed on us by the design and artifice of others.

 xxiv        P R E F A C E.

The grand question to be tried is, whether a SYSTEM, filled with obligation and responsibility of men to women, and of women to men, even unto death itself, and this established by INFINITE WISDOM, of the female sex, with all its horrid consequences, both to the public and individuals, than a SYSTEM of human contrivance, where neither obligation nor responsibility are to be found, either of men to women, or of women to men, in instances of the most important concern for both, but more    especially to the weaker sex?
    The whole of the evidence on both sides is faithfully collected, and laid open, without any reserve or disguise, in this book ----- let every READER look upon himself as impannelled on the jury ----- let himself hearken to the cause ----- and a true verdict give according to the evidence.

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