Dedicatory Epistle
To the Right Honourable Sir ANTHONY BATEMAN, Lord Mayor of the City of London, and the Honourable Court of Aldermen there.
Right Honourable,
IN obedience to your Order I here present you with a Sermon which you formerly heard. I know not how acceptable discourses of this nature may be, I am sure they are very seasonable in this degenerate age, in which Atheism and profaneness are grown so impudent, and notwithstanding the restraints of shame and laws, do appear with so bold a face in the world. When men arrive to that degree of confidence, as to tell the world that the notion of a spirit implies a contradiction, that fear and fancy are the parents of a deity, and ignorance and melancholy the true causes of devotion, and that religion is nothing else but the fear of an invisible power feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed; when it shall be counted brave to defy God, and every dabbler in natural philosophy, or mathematics, or politics, shall set up for an Atheist; sure then it is high time to resist this growing evil. For this purpose I have enlarged that part of the discourse, which is more immediately levelled against Atheism, beyond what the limits of time would allow me in the preaching of it; and in hope that it may do some service to that end, it is now humbly offered to you by
Your Honours most humble servant John Tillotson.
