defire you to Print the following Paper. The Notions ⚫ therein advanced are, for ought I know, new to the English Reader, and if they are true, will afford room ' for many useful Inferences. NO Man that reads the Evangelists, but must observe that our Bleffed Saviour does upon every occasion bend all his Force and Zeal to rebuke and correct the Hypocrity of the Pharifees. Upon that Subject he shews 3 Warmth which one meets with in no other part of his Sermons. They were fo enraged at this Publick • Detection of their Secret Villanies, by one who faw through all their Difguifes, that they joined in the • Profecution of him, which was so vigorous, that Pilate at last consented to his Death. The Frequency and • Vehemence of these Reprehenfions of our Lord, have ⚫ made the Word Pharifee to be looked upon as odious among Chriftians, and to mean only one who lays ⚫ the utmost Stress upon the Outward, Ceremonial, and Ritual Part of his Religion, without having fuch an inward Senfe of it, as would lead him to a general and • fincere Obfervance of those Duties which can only arise ⚫ from the Heart, and which cannot be fupposed to spring from a Defire of Applause or Profit. THIS is plain from the History of the Life and • Actions of our Lord, in the four Evangelifts. One of them St Luke, continued his History down in a se'cond Part, which we commonly call the Acts of the Apostles. Now it is obfervable, that in this. fecond Part in which he gives a particular Account of what the Apostles did and fuffered at Jerufalem upon their firit entering upon their Commillion, and alfo of what • St. Paul did after he was confecrated to the Apostlefhip 'till his Journey to Rome, we find not only no Oppofition to Christianity from the Pharifees, but fe'veral fignal Occafions in which they affifted its first Teachers, when the Chriftian Church was in its infant State. The true, zealous and hearty Perfecutors of Christianity at that Time were the Sadducees, whom we may truly call the Free-thinkers among the Jews. They believed neither Resurrection, nor Angel, nor Spirit, i. e. in plain English, they were Deifts, at least, if not Atheifts. They could outwardly comply with, 6 6 ⚫ and ' and conform to the Establishment in Church and State, and they pretended forfooth to belong only to a parti'cular Sect, and because there was nothing in the Law ' of Mofes which in fo many Words afferted a Refurrecti. on, they appeared to adhere to that in a particular 'manner beyond any other part of the Old Testament. 'Thefe Men therefore justly dreaded the spreading of Christianity after the Afcenfion of our Lord, because it was wholly founded upon his Resurrection. ACCORDINGLY therefore when Peter and John had cured the lameMan at the beautiful Gate of the Temple, and had thereby raised a wonderful Expectati⚫on of themselves among the People, the Priests and Sad• ducees, Acts 4. clapt them up, and fent them away for the first Time with a fevere Reprimand. Quickly af'ter, when the Deaths of Ananias and Saphira, and the many Miracles wrought after thofe fevere Instances of the Apoftolical Power had alarmed the Priests, who looked upon the Temple Worship, and confequently 'their Bread, to be ftruck at, thefe Priefts, and all they 'that were with them, who were of the Sect of the Sadducees, imprisoned the Apoftles, intending to examine ⚫ them in the great Council the next Day. Where, when the Council met, and the Priefts and Sadducees propo ed to proceed with great Rigor against them, we • find that Gamaliel a very eminent Pharifee, St. Paul's • Master, a Man of great Authority a:nong the People, many of whofe Determinations we have itill preferved in the Body of the Jewish Traditions, commonly called the Talmud, oppofed their Heat, and told them, for ought they knew, the Apoftles might be acted by "the Spirit of God, and that in fuch a Cafe it would be in vain to oppose them, fince if they did fo, they would only fight against God, whom they could not overcome. Gamaliel was fo confiderable a Man ⚫ amongit his own Sect, that we may reasonably believe ⚫he fpoke the Sense of his Party as well as his own. St. Stephen's Martyrdom came on presently after, in which we do not find the Pharifees, as fuch, had any Hand; it is probable that he was profecuted by those who had before imprisoned Peter and John. One Novice indeed of that Sect was fo zealous that he kept the Clothes • Clothes of those that ftoned him. This Novice, whose • Zeal went beyond all Bounds, was the great St. Paul, who was peculiarly honoured with a Call from Heaven by which he was converted, and he was afterwards, by God himself, appointed, to be the Apostle • of the Gentiles. Befides him, and him too reclaimed in fo glorious a Manner, we find no one Pharifee either • named or hinted at by St. Luke, as an Oppofer of Christianity in thofe earliest Days. What others might do we know not. But we find the Sadducees pursuing • St. Paul even to Death at his coming to Jerufalem, in the 21t of the A&ts. He then, upon all Occafions, ⚫ owned himself to be a Pharifee. In the 22d Chap. he told the People, that he had been bred up at the Feet of Gamaliel after the ftricteft Manner, in the Law of his Fathers. In the 23d Chap he told the Council that he was a Pharifee, the Son of a Pharifee, and that he was accused for afferting the Hope and Resurrection of the dead, which was their darling Doctrine. Hereupon the Pharifees flood by him, and tho' they did not own our Saviour to be the Meffiah, yet they would not deny but fome Angel or Spirit might have fpoken to him, and then if they oppofed him they fhould fight against God. This was the very Argument Gamaliel had used before. The Refurrection of our Lord, which they faw fo ftrenuously afferted by the Apoftles, whofe Miracles they also faw and owned, (Acts 4,16.) feems to have itruck them, and many of them were converted (Acts 15 5.) even without a Miracle, and the reft ftood ftill and made no Op6 pofition. *WE fee here what the Part was which the Pharisees acted in this important Conjuncture. Of the Sadducees, we meet not with one in the whole Apoftolic Hiftory that was converted. We hear of no Miracles wrought to convince any of them, tho' there was an eminent one wrought to reclaim a Pharifee. St. Paul, we fee, after his Converfion always gloried in his having been breda Pharifee. He did fo to the People of Jerufalem, to the great Council, to King Agrippa, and to the Philippians. So that from hence we may juftly infer, that it was not their Institution, which was in itself lauda .ble, ་ 'ble, which our Bleffed Saviour found fault with, but it was their Hypocrify, their Covetoufness, their Oppreffion, their Overvaluing themselves upon their Zeal 'for the Ceremonial Law, and their adding to that • Yoke by their Traditions, all which were not properly Effentials of their Inftitution, that our Lord blamed. · BUT I must not run on. What I would obferve, • Sir, is, that Atheism is more dreadful, and would be more grievous to Human Society, if it were invefted ⚫ with fufficient Power, than Religion under any Shape, • where its Profeffors do at the bottom believe what they profess. I despair not of a Papift's Converfion, tho' I would not willingly lie at a Zealot Papift's Mercy, (and no Proteftant would, if he knew what Popery is) tho' he truly believes in our Saviour. But the Free-thinker, who fcarcely believes there is a God, ⚫ and certainly disbelieves Revelation, is a very terrible • Animal. He will talk of natural Rights, and the juft Freedoms of Mankind, no longer than 'till he himfelf gets into Power; and by the Inftance before us, we have small Grounds to hope for his Salvation, or that God will ever vouchsafe him fufficient Grace to • reclaim him from Errors, which have been so immediately levelled against himself. IF these Notions be true, as I verily believe they ⚫ are, I thought they might be worth Publishing at this time, for which Reason they are fent in this Manner ⚫ to you by, N° 94. Monday, June 29. Ingenium, fibi quod vacuas defumpfit Athenas,. S Hor. INCE our Succefs in Worldly Matters may be said to depend upon our Education, it will be very much to the Purpose to inquire if the Foundations of our Fortune could not be laid deeper and furer than they are. The Education of Youth falls of Neceffity under the Direction of those who, thro' Fondness to us and our Abili ties, as well as to their own unwarrantable Conjectures, are very likely to be deceived, and the Mifery of it is, that the poor Creatures, who are the Sufferers upon wrong Advances, feldom find out the Errors 'till they become irretrievable. As the greater Number of all Degrees and Conditions have their Education at the Univerfities, the Errors which I conceive to be in those Places fall moft naturally under the following Obfervation. The firft Milmanagement in thefe Publick Nurferies, is the calling together a number of Pupils, of howfoever different Ages, Views and Capacities, to the fame Lectures: But furely there can be no Reason to think, that a delicate tender Babe, juft wean'd from the Bosom of his Mother, indulged in all the Impertinencies of his Heart's Defire, fhould be equally capable of receiving a Lecture of Philosophy, with a hardy Ruffian of full Age, who has been occafionally fcourged thro' fome of the great Schools, groaned under conftant Rebuke and Chastisement, and maintained a ten Years War with Literature under very ftrict and rugged Difcipline. I know the Reader has pleased himself with an Answer to this already, viz. That an Attention to the particular Abilities and Defigns of the Pupil, can't be expected from the |