The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

From a late New-Jersey Paper.

An ADDRESS to the ATHEISTS, INFIDELS, DEISTS, and FREETHINKERS of the present Age.

Men, Brethren, and Fathers,

We are endowed with reason to think, to judge, act and determine between good and evil, as your understandings and thinking faculties shall (unbiased by corrupt inclination) naturally induce you; but is the gift of reason improved or abused by you? Are your rational qualifications suitably prized and thankfully enjoyed? Do ye differ from the brute creation by your good use as well as gift of reason? Do ye glorify the Almighty Giver, while ye possess the gift? These questions are absolutely necessary to be put to you, to me, to all.

However ye might be partial, I cannot think ye are real Atheists, if in the full enjoyment of your reason. The works of Nature, not to add those of Providence and Grace, sufficiently evidence the wisdom, power, and goodness of the All-Wise Creator, to prove his being and existence beyond a doubt; respecting every one open to conviction, and unprejudiced by the immorality and impiety of a vicious age.

Although the sacred scriptures may be esteemed as the productions of enthusiasm, and the dictates of priestcraft and delusion, does not conscience frequently apprise you of the certainty of a future state, wherein virtue shall be rewarded and vice punished? Does not your own experience join with that of all ages to corroborate by frequent disquieting apprehensions, in the moments of solitude, or in the views of dissolution, the probability at least, if not the certainty, of a judgment to come? O Sirs, remember, as ye cannot be assured of annihilation, the mere probability of a life after death, is sufficient to strike terror into the most obdurate and abandoned, especially in the agonies of a fatal disease.

Ye who boast in the title of Freethinkers, and glory in living and acting according to your appellation, what can be your consolation in the thoughts of death, if ever you entertain such thoughts? As ye live without God in the world, what can otherwise be the consequence than to die with the dreadful thought, Suppose there should be one?

Could I imagine you to believe that all things were made or came by Chance, I would ask, If the world was made by chance, suppose there should also be a Hell made by chance, and you should get into it by chance, and so by chance be damned to all eternity, what a sad chance that would be?

AN AMERICAN.