fity, we cannot long hefitate in determing wherefore they are fo generally practifed.-There is no inftance in which man acts fo contrary to his own interest, as in the performance of evil, for whatever pleasure may be derived from a temporary gratification,-it invari ably reverts injurioufly to himself.-Though facts preach fo loudly to us the confequences of vice, and every day prefents us with fome teftimony of its deftructive influence, though it robs us of almost every comfort, our peace of mind,-reputation,-friends,-though it annihilates our most valuable enjoyments, and renders our animal fyftem as a distempered prifon,-though it enervates the vigour of youth, and entails the infirmities of age, though it threatens prefent, and future mifery, yet we blindly purfue it. If we are thus infatuated in the flavery of vice-it must indifputably arise from an innate depravity of mind, that furmounts even the dictates of reason, or the fill more powerful voice of self-interest.

Vice acquired by our first parents is hereditary,-conftitutional,and tranfmitted to their whole pofterity. The contenders for human dignity deny this glaring truth,-but the vitiofity of men and manners in general are a fufficient teltimony.Far greater than corporeal ruin is produced by it, fince it endangers every mental power, and the foul itself. Not fatisfied with the wrecks of plunder and devastation in the human frame, it extends its poisonous darts unto the feat of life; and that which was formed for blifsful immortality, it threatens with eternal woe.

Vice is the friend of Death, and the fister of Destruction; the former it has enfured, the latter it defires. It is diftinguished from virtue, as the former is the path to mifery, the latter the road to happiness. Vice admits of degrees, and though an univerfal evil, not of equal prevalence. Were it to reign triumphant over the mental shore †, and claim unlimited domain, man would exceed the beaft, and brutality might claim the preference. The whole five fenfes become impaired by it, and ruin effected through the whole natural fyftem. The fight or understanding is blinded to every fense of virtue, the hearing deaf to the voice of reafon, or prudence ;the smelling infenfible of the loathfome nature of vice;-the tafte nauseated with the fruits of virtue, fo as to loath and abhor it;-and the feeling benumbed by the deftroying winter of fin.

Thus vice threatens every faculty of foul and body with destruction. Happiness and contentment afford no afylum-peace and comfort no retreat,-ruin founds the dread alarm, and the shattered building falls a wretched victim. Beauty now becomes deformed,— wifdom, foolishness,-and riches,-poverty. It frequently effects

thefe changes.

• Original, as well as actual guilt, is included in the present theme; the former fome deny, the latter all confefs.--Reason proves them true, and Revelation now confirms it.-A man must be apprized of danger, before he feeks relief.-Hence fo many are easy in the flavery of vice, fince they are not apprehenfive of their danger.

It should have been corporal.

Of this metaphor the Author is fo fond, that he has twice made ufe of it.

Philofophers

Philofophers would refer us to reafon as a warning; but vice overrules reafon, and drowns it in the depth of madnefs. Here morality is at a fland, and its limits finifh;-it condemns,-dehorts and reproves; but cannot change.-Nature being depraved, cannot be changed by nature -This is a rational paradox. There must be fomething fupernatural to change nature, fince fuperiority of power is required to effect a natural purpofe. Learning, fays the rationalift, is an acquifition; will not that effect the defign? Prudence is a rational virtue, feated in the mind; will not that produce the change? The negative reafonably replies. According to the philofophic notions, vice cannot exift in the foul of man, or in the rational part, which they call the mind, becaufe nature oppofes it. Nature itfelf, being depraved, affents to,-instead of oppofing, vice.-The mind itfelf is vitiated, confequently reafon alone cannot eradicate this ingrafted evil.

Vice, fo far as it prevails, has dominion over reafon, though the conqueft is not complete. Prudence yields to vice, fince nature is itfelf inclined thereunto. Every human refuge failing, whither muft offenders feek for pardon? Revelation, far fuperior to all other means of knowledge, directs the inquiring penitent to a medium, in which every divine attribute fhines with equal luftre.-Juttice and mercy embrace each other, and are mutually exalted. The offender is pronounced righteous, and the offended Deity reconciled. Here human reafon is confounded. Nature teaches moral obedience, though incapacitated for the duty. Reafon feeks for human fatisfaction, but nature cannot grant it.

"Omnipotence furmounts thefe difficulties, and with fupernatural wifdom provides a way, in which vice can be atoned for, and the Almighty juft.-To the aftonishment of all ages-and the confusion of the unbelieving world, we are prefented in the facred pages of Revelation, with a view of perfect equity and confummate mercy,-uniting in one act of divine munificence.-Enemies become the favourires of heaven, and rebels the heirs of an eternal inheritance.-The offended is the propitia:ory facrifice for offenders, and man, who had no claim to favour enjoys it uninterruptedly. Do we boat of fympathy or compaflion?-Is benevolence in anywife the chara&eriftic of man? Does the diftrefs of others affail our most refined feelings? Can we prefer the intereft--the pleasure-the happiness of others to our own? If a fpark of philanthropy dwells in our breaft, --what a diffufive flame of boundless compaflion has appeared in the restoration of a ruined, world!-Every benefit we derive in common -all that we can expect in future,-arifes folely from this fource of ultimate felicity.-While Virtue holds forth every focial bleffing,-Vice, every impending evil,-may infinite Wifdom direct our choice-that while we purfue the one,-avoid the other!'

Thofe of our Readers who can digeft the abfurdity of an of-: fended Deity becoming a propitiatory facrifice for the offenders, may have a judgment and tafte fufficiently perverted to approve of our Author's manner of writing. The more rational and judicious will, we believe, equally condemn his ftyle and fentiments. The reflections on the principles of Deifm are indeed REV. Feb. 1782.

H

written

written in rather a more fober manner: but the Author's propenfity to the falfe fublime frequently betrays itself, and the fame kind of involved and inconclufive reasoning is here employed as in the effays.

It is with fome regret that we give fo unfavourable a character of this publication, as the Author appears to have written with a good defign, and to be a man of a benevolent and liberal turn of mind. The ancients, from whom he fo frequently quotes, might at least have taught him, that eafe and fimplicity are effential properties of good writing.

ART. III. A Philofophical and Experimental Enquiry into the first and general Principles of Animal and Vegetable Life: likewife into AtmoSpherical Air, &c. With a Refutation of Dr. Priestley's Do&rine of Air: Proving, by Experiment, that the Breathing of Animals, Putrefaction. &c. do not phlogifticate, but dephlogiflicate the Air; and that the Office of that effential Organ, the Lungs, is not to discharge Phlogiston to the Air, but to receive it from the Air By Robert Harrington, of the Corporation of Surgeons, London. 8vo. 5 s. Boards. Cadell. 1781.

AS

S the title-page of this performance, and particularly the laft part of it, which indicates a refutation of Dr. Priestley's doctrine of Air, will naturally excite fome curiofity among our philofophical Readers; we shall give a fuller account of it than it is intitled to from its intrinfic merits, or importance. It is evidently the work of a perfon, who, having early adopted a particular hypothefis, afterwards fees every philofophical fact through that particular medium only which beft correfponds with his preconceived theory. Of a philofophical work, founded on fuch a bafis, little is to be faid: fome fpecimens, however, of the Author's manner may be expected, in justification of what we have already intimated. We fhall principally confine ourselves to that part of the Author's work, in which, according to the title-page, he undertakes to fhew, by experi ment, that the breathing of animals, putrefaction, &c. do not phlogisticate, but dephlogifticate the air;' or rather to two experiments which he adduces, in proof of this ftrange doctrine.

One animal,' fays the Author, will fwallow another when alive, throwing into his ftomach all the effete and noxious fumes of phlogifton, which the devoured animal poffeffed; yet it is f far from killing the devourer, that it is fo immediate to its life, it could not live without it. I took a dog, and after making him very hungry, he ferociously devoured two quarts of blood, drawn warm from an ox, when thofe poifonous fumes, agreeable to the Doctor,'-meaning Dr. Prieftley, or rather, we should fuppofe, his doctrine- were exhaling rapidly; yet he breathed

them;

them; and instead of killing the dog, as from the Doctor's theory might be expected, they fenfibly cherished him, making him eat with greater glee and rapidity. In this fact, the noxious fumes and effete matter not only entered the stomach in immenfe quantity, but was likewife received by the lungs; yet, fo far from taking life was the consequence, it was the support and feeder of life.'

The Author was so adventurous-and this is his fecond experiment-as to introduce his head into a veffel containing fome warm bullock's blood. I argued,' fays he, from rational and philofophical principles, a priori, that if this fume is fo very noxious and effete, as the Doctor calls it, that it would kill me, &c.-nobody being along with me at the time, to drag me from those pernicious fumes, in cafe I had been convulfed : but instead of its having that ferious confequence, I found not the least bad effects from it; on the contrary, I found the living principle entertained by it, feeding its appetite.'

On the ftrength of thefe experiments, the Author's good opinion of phlogifton has fince carried him fo far as to order confumptive patients to attend flaughter-houses, and to hang their heads over large collections of warm blood; and, that they might imbibe as much of the effluvia as poffible, to give the blood motion with a ftick; and their tender difeafed lungs have found the advantage of it.'-Nay, butchers, he tells us, who according to Dr. Priestley's doctrine ought not to live five minutes,' in their flaughter-houses, thrive and grow fat there:the lucky, but ignorant, rogues, it seems, owing all their thrift and fat to phlogiston.

Such are the Author's experiments. They incontrovertibly prove that a hungry hound can tofs down two quarts of warm blood into his ftomach with great glee, and much to his advan→ tage; and that a hardy experimenter may fnuff up the fteam arifing from a bucket of blood, without being thrown into convulfions. Farther than this, our logic will not carry us.

We shall give one curious inftance more of the Author's `mode of reafoning; where he undertakes to prove, that, in re fpiration, putrefaction, and other phlogistic proceffes, as they are called, the air is not phlogifticated, but dephlogisticated, or robbed of its phlogifton. We muft beg leave to abridge confiderably his pompous account of a putrefying animal fubftance, which is diffused through four pages.

Take, fays he, that part of the animal, which is moft fufceptible of putrefaction, viz. the animal mucus. You will find it to be an infipid, inodorous body, poffeffing little or no phlagiflon; nay, if you throw it into the fire, it will abfolutely ex tinguish it, like water. Expofe it to the air, and you will foon find that it has acquired a fetid cadaverous fmell, and a tafte H2

moft

most pungent and noxious; and, in short, that it now so teems with phlogiston, that it is become inflammable, and will burn."Here" fays he, is a most pointed and wonderful fact.' Some great and important process in nature muft have taken place. Here is a body which, before it was exposed to the air, poffeffed little or no phlogiston; and now, after fuch expofure, it contains, comparatively, nothing elfe. This immenfe quantity of phlogifton, therefore, has been all ftolen from the air; for the mucus fcarce contained an atom of that principle, till it had opportunity and time to rob the air of it; which accordingly has been dephlogisticated by the flinking mucus.-But hear the Author himself exulting towards the end of his demonftration, as be deems it:

Where does all this phlogifton come from? Will any one be fo ridiculously abfurd as to fay it came from the animal mucus ? -If there is any one fo grafsly abfurd, I pity him; being not defirous, nor fhall I offer, to refute him: but, as it is as clear as any demonstration in Euclid it could not come from the mucus, therefore, as there was no third body, it must have come from the air, by decompounding of it, in confequence it is not phlogifticating the air, but dephlogisticating of it.'

Will no lagician ftep forth here for we fcarce feem to want a chemift-who can find out fome other folution of this pointed and wonderful fact? To a perfon almost wholly ignorant of chemistry, it will naturally occur, notwithstanding the Author's pretended demonstration, that it was poffible, at leaft, that this fame mucus, in its found ftate, might contain as much phlogifton (a chemift would fay, more) concealed in it, in confequence of its Atrict union with the other principles; as prefents itself afterwards, when the phlogifton is let loofe in the putrefactive procefs, and is rendered apparent, in confequence of the difunion of the principles that conftitute the mucus.

Sulphur, or flowers of fulphur, for inftance, have nearly as little smell, or tafte, and exhibit as few of the obvious marks of the prefence of phlogiston, as the Author's mucus: but expofe this fulphur fimply to fire, as the Author expofed his mucus to air and prefently there will appear abundance of phlogiston (to Yay nothing of the acid). According to the Author's mode of reasoning, we fhould fay, that as the fulphur, before its expofure, fcarce fhewed any figns of its containing phlogiston, it is demonftrable that it must have ftolen the phlogiston from the fire, which it has accordingly dephlogisticated, a

The reafoning throughout the whole of this work is nearly of the fame kind. Thus the Author will allow little or no phlo-gifton to refide in vegetables that conflitute the food of animals; and gives reafons juft as cogent as those above affigned. On the other hand, he is exceedingly liberal in beftowing this prin

ciple