HKB
Of the term Christian there is no positive ground for a parallel, because it is one of no definite meaning. We call ourselves, as a nation, Christians; yet we are divided into a hundred forms of {172}religion, and many of them in the articles of faith contradictory and antagonistic. Yet, in the fundamental principles of morality, we are, in common with all civilized races, agreed. The Christian religion happens to belong to the highest civilization, and we frequently use the term as synonymous with the morality of this civilization. But when we come to define strictly according to the theological import of the word, there are many of us who are not Christians. In the former sense, Mr. Paine and Junius were Christians; in the latter sense, they were not. And now for the proof. Junius says, in Letter 15, to the Duke of Grafton: "It is not, indeed, the least of the thousand contradictions which attend you, that a man marked to the world by the grossest violation of ceremony and decorum, should be the first servant of a court in which prayers are morality*, and *kneeling is religion." For this, and his attacks on the priesthood, and his frequently putting piety in antithesis to morality, he was at last accused of being an impious and irreligious man. He now puts Philo Junius forward to explain his religious views, who says, in