The author of this Apology has no sympathy with
either, but of the two much prefers Popery. There is about it a breadth
of purpose, a grandeur, and a potency which excites some respect, even
in the breast of an enemy. Unreasonable it assuredly is, but Christians
who object to it on that ground, may be told--religion was never meant
to be reasonable; and that an appeal to rational principles will as
little avail one religion as another, as little avail Protestant as
Roman Catholic faith. All religion is unreasonable, and, moreover, to
rationalize would be to destroy it. Hobbes could discover nothing in
superstition essentially different from religion, nor can we. He deemed
true religion as the religion which is fashionable, and superstition as
the religion which is not fashionable.
So do we, so do all absolute Atheists. The notion that false religion
implies the true, just as base coin implies the pure, will have weight
with those, and only those, who cannot detect the sophistry of an
argument _a rubii toto caelo differentibus_; or in plain English, from
things entirely different presumed to be similar.
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