The Works Author:Hannah More Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. I. DECLINE OF CHRISTIANITY SHOWN, BY A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE RELIGION OF THE GREAT IN PRECEDING AGES. If the general position of this little tract ... more »be allowed, namely, that religion is at present in no very flourishing state among those whose example, from the high ground on which they stand, guides and governs the rest of mankind, it will not be denied by those who are ever so superficially acquainted with the history of our country, that this has not always been the case, Those who make a fair comparison must allow that however the present age may be improved in other important and valuable advantages, yet that there is but little appearance remaining among the great and the powerful of that "righteousness which exalteth a nation:" — they must confess that there has been a moral revolution in the national manners and principles, very little analogous to that great political one which we hear so much and so justly extolled; that our public virtue bears little proportion to our public blessings; and that our religion has decreased in a pretty exact proportion to our having secured the means of enjoying it. That the antipodes to wrong are hardly ever right, was very strikingly illustrated about the middle of the last century, when the fiery and indiscreet zeal of one party was made a pretext for the profligate impiety of the other: who, to the bad principle which dictated a depraved conduct, added the bad taste of being proud of it: — when even the least abandoned were absurdly apprehensive that an appearance of decency might subject them to the charge of fanaticism, a charge in which they took care to involve real piety as well as enthuthiastic pretence, till it became the general fashion to avoid no sin but hypocrisy, to dread no imputation but that of seriousness...« less