Brydone, Patrick; Beckford, William: A Tour Through Sicily And Malta: in a series of letters to William Beckford ; in 2 vol. (Band 2) (1775)

SICILY AND MALTA. 185
faith or acl of worship, she is but too apt, in
the raidst of her disgust, to reject the whole.
The great misfortune is, that, in these coun-
tries, the most violent champions for religion
are commonly the most weak and ignorant:
—And certainly, one weak advocate in
any cause, but more particularly in a mys-
terious one, that requires to be handled
with delicacy and address, is capable of
hurting it more, than fifty of its warmest
opponents.—Silly books, that have been
written by weak well-meaning men, in
defence of religion, I am confident have
made more infidels than all the works of
13olingbroke, Shaftesbury, or even Voltaire
himself: they only want to make people
believe that there are some ludicrous things
to be said against it; but these grave plod-
ding blockheads do all they can to perluade
us that there is little thing to be said for it.
■—The universal error of these gentry, is
that they ever attempt to explain, and re-
concile to sense and rcason, those very mys-
teries