men to an atheistical obliquity of judgment. On the other hand, ignorance of nature, impatience to pry into futurity, the wayward turns of a -man's fortune, and above all, a certain but mistaken and extravagant reverence for things established, carry us, in the general, too promptly into fanaticism and bigotry. Sound philosophy is, then, alone truth and religion. But what, you will ask me, is this sound philosophy? Sound philosophy appears to me to consist, among other things, in embracing that religion which God has revealed to us by facts, and in making a proper use of it as far as we are capable of understanding it. Human wisdom may, indeed, conjecture, and may talk of her prerogatives; but she seems too often to find a pleasure in starting questions, and creating difficulties for the exercise and display of her own penetration. Let her not, however, fancy herself entitled to judge of nature, because she can judge of numbers and properties. Can she change, let me ask her, that which is; or can she even dive into the essence of an emmet?

There are, indeed, those who talk of nothing but of extended reason; and of the increased and sublime vigour of the human understanding; who confine themselves, within a set of

dry

dry notions, altogether void of the beautiful and attractive, and without calling in the least assistance from the imagination; as if sound reason were inconsistent with good taste. But have not the three short chapters that compose the sermon of our Saviour on the Mount done more good to society, in illustrating a few luminous maxims, by lively and affecting images, than all the logic in the world? And have they not conveyed more light and morality among men, than all the long, tedious, and separating categories, ethics, and metaphysics, that ever were spun by the stagyrite, or were ever knotted into bundles by his indefatigable commentators?

But this is not altogether clear, you will tell me; and that if I will only consult experience, that infallible testimony will prove to me,. on the contrary, it has been nothing but holy illusion, which, for these eighteen hundred years past, has overwhelmed mankind with the bitterness of every real misfortune.* What! without religion should we not have had earthquakes,, storms, wars, plagues, sicknesses, or death? Without religion, should we not have been pestered by avarice, libertinism, intemperance, or all or any of the fashionable propensities which murder

Syst. de la Nat.

murder the peace of the innocent, and plunge the keenest daggers into the well being of society?

Craft, I have all along acknowledged, has deformed the fair face of pure Christianity. The most absurd and contradictory schemes of ignorant and wicked men have been vended under the name of Evangelical Truths. Nor do I feel the smallest disposition to consider such characters, as they have tenderly been looked upon, as unhappy exceptions, no more to be blamed than a dropsical person is to be blamed for an immoderate thirst, or a lethargic person for inactivity. God forbid, the visitatio Dei should ever by me be construed into a crime! Insanity has the commiseration of the world at large. But in what language are impious interested knavery and insanity synonimous? Call the beaux esprits, if you please, an abject, a slavish, and a bigotted ge neration. Their counterpart, however, are equally bad. If there be a freethinker out of the church, there is also a freethinker in the church. And the pretensions of both are no better than that which the profligate have to be free-livers, and the savages to be free men; that is, that they may think whatever they have a mind to, and give themselves up to whatever conceit the extra

I

vagancy

vagancy of their inclination, or their fancy, may suggest, without being controuled by the impertinency of such formal things as decency, or even

common sense.

Spinoza, you must remember, roundly declares, that every man has a natural right to do whatever he has power to do, and to which his inclination prompts him. The right, says he, extends as far as the force. And the natural right, or law, jus et institutum naturæ, is nothing more than the rules of the nature of each individual, according to which it is determined to act and exist after a certain manner. Thus, the large fishes, as an example, are determined by nature to devour the smaller; and they have a right so to do. And thus there is no difference between men and other individuals of nature; nor between those who make a right use of their reason, and those who do not make a right use of their reason; nor between wise men and fools. The natural right of every man is determined, not by sound reason, but by inclination, by appetite, and by ability to enforce it."

*

The days of Trajan were celebrated, we are told, for this, that men might think as they pleased,

Tract. Theolog. Polit.

"Rara

pleased, and speak as they thought. temporum felicitata, ubi sentire quæ velis, et quæ sentias dicere licet."* Are modern times, however, much behind hand, give me leave to ask, in such toleration? Visionaries and enthusiasts are not now surely persecuted. Philosophy has a free course; reason has fair play; learning and science flourish; nor can any age or country be mentioned, in which men have had a greater freedom of declaring their sentiments, either with regard to civil or religious matters; or where they have had auditories upon which they could make a deeper, or more permanent impression. But why is it that liberty, which, when rightly improved, is the best friend to truth, should be so incessantly abused and disgraced by licentiousness?

If it be true, as even Shaftesbury says, that, among the vulgar, a devil and a hell may prevail, when a jail and a gallows would be insuffieient;" why, as a lover of his country, should this patriot have taken off so, necessary a restraint on the manners of the multitude? Had he forgot that his favourite heathen philosophers allowed, "it was lawful and expedient even to deceive for the public good?" The lofty Bolingbroke also asserts,

* Tapitus.