"Let rational piety be thoroughly established": Secker on superstition and rationalism

From Secker's Sermon I, on Proverbs 9:10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom":

The danger of superstition is a very powerful reason, why religious belief and practice should be watched over, and directed right: but cannot possibly be a reason, why dissolute profaneness should be encouraged or suffered. Let rational piety be thoroughly established, and superstition falls of course. But if the former be rooted out, the latter will certainly grow up in its place. There is a natural bent in human minds to believe and respect an invisible power: and if it be turned aside from pointing, in a proper manner, towards its proper object, it will soon acquire some other form; probably an absurd and pernicious one. Infidelity promises great freedom and enjoyment of life: but in fact it proves, in proportion as it prevails, a state of madness and confusion, of perpetual danger from others, of discomfort and desperate resolutions within men's own breasts: and therefore, after some trial of it, they will eagerly run away from it into the opposite extreme.