A Propensity To Hope And Joy Is

I Never Asserted Such An Absurd Thing As That Things Arise Without A Cause.

But The Most Common Species Of Love Is That Which First Arises From Beauty, And Afterwards Diffuses Itself Into Kindness And Into The Bodily Appetite. Kindness Or Esteem, And The Appetite To Generation, Are Too Remote To Unite Easily Together. The One Is, Perhaps, The Most Refined Passion Of The Soul; The Other The Most Gross And Vulgar. The Love Of Beauty Is Placed In A Just Medium Betwixt Them, And Partakes Of Both Their Natures: From Whence It Proceeds, That It Is So Singularly Fitted To Produce Both.

That The Corruption Of The Best Thing Produces The Worst, Is Grown Into A Maxim, And Is Commonly Proved, Among Other Instances, By The Pernicious Effects Of Superstition And Enthusiasm, The Corruptions Of True Religion.

The Christian Religion Not Only Was At First Attended With Miracles, But Even At This Day Cannot Be Believed By Any Reasonable Person Without One.

Nothing Is So Convenient As A Decisive Argument ... Which Must At Least Silence The Most Arrogant Bigotry And Superstition, And Free Us From Their Impertinent Solicitations. I Flatter Myself, That I Have Discovered An Argument ... Which, If Just, Will, With The Wise And Learned, Be An Everlasting Check To All Kinds Of Superstitious Delusion, And Consequently, Will Be Useful As Long As The World Endures. For So Long, I Presume, Will The Accounts Of Miracles And Prodigies Be Found In All History, Sacred And Profane.