ing, that ridicule is fuch a teft: but that the taste of ridicule is the teft of what is ridiculous. Who doubts that? It is the very thing complained of. For when our taste for ridicule gives us a fenfible pleasure in a ridiculous reprefentation of any object, we do not ftay to examine whether that representation be a true one, but conclude it to be fo, from the pleasure it affords us. His fecond change of the queftion is a new fubftitution, viz. Whether ridicule be a talent to be used or employed at all? Of which he supposes me to hold the negative. What elfe is the meaning of these words?"To condemn a talent for ridicule, because it may be converted to wrong purposes, is not a little ridiculous. Could one forbear to fmile if a talent for reafoning was condemned, because it alfo may be perverted?" p. 57. He has no reafon to fmile fure, at his own mifreprefentation. I never condemned a talent for ridicule because it may be abused; nor for any other reafon. Though others, perhaps, may be difpofed to Smile at his abfurd inference, that we may as well condemn a talent for reafening. As if reafon and ridicule were of equal importance for the conduct of human life. He may then perhaps afk," If I do not condemn the use of ridicule, on what employment I would put it, when I have excluded it from being a test of truth?" Let him not be uneasy about that. There is no danger that the talent for ridicule should lie idle, for want of proper bufinefs. When reafon, the only teft of truth I know of, has performed its office, and unmasked hypocrify and formal error, then ridicule, I think, may be fairly called in, to quicken the operation. Thus, when Dr. S. Clarke had, by fuperior reafoning, expofed the wretched fophiftry which Mr. Collins had employed to prove the foul to be only a quality of body; Dr. Arbuthnot, who very rarely mifemployed his inimitable talent for ridicule, followed the blow, and gave that foolish and impious opinion up to the contempt and laughter it deserved, in a chapter of the Memoirs of Scriblerus. But to fet ridicule on work before, would be as unfair, indeed as fcandalous, as to bestow the language due to convicted vice, on a character but barely fufpected.' This dedication is followed by a Poftfcript of about 12 pages, wherein his lordship confiders what the Author of the Pleafures of the imagination has advanced concerning the use and abufe of ridicule. The difcerning Reader will be at no lofs to account for this attack upon Dr. Ak―de, when he recollects a late fhort publication of the Doctor's. The first volume concludes with an appendix of 48 pages, wherein his lordship confiders what Lord Bolingbroke has advanced concerning the moral attributes of the Deity; but the whole of this is taken, with little or no variation, from the view of Lord Bolingbroke's Philofophy, Letter 2d. In Book 2d. Sect. 6th. we have the following addition. On this occafion, it may not be improper, once for all, to expose the ignorance and malice of thofe, whom the French call philofophers, and we English, free thinkers; who, with no more knowlege of antiquity, than what the modern fenfe of a few Latin and Greek words could afford them, have his odium humani generis perpetually in their mouths, to difgrace the chosen people of God, or rather the author of their religion. Their favourite author, Tacitus himself, by extending the abuse, discountenances it. He makes this odium humani generis the characteristic both of Jews and Chriftians; and by fo doing, fhews us, in what it confifted. Nor do the ancients in general, by affixing it as the common brand to thefe two inhospitable religions contribute to this calumny, any otherwife than by the incapacity of our philofophers to underftand them. Diodorus Siculus fpeaking of Antiochus's profanation of the Jewish Temple, and his contemptuous destruction of the facred books, applauds the tyrant's exploits, as thore books contained τα μισόξενα νόμιμα, laws which bore bate and enmity to all the rest of mankind. This pretended edium humani generis, we find then, was not any thing in the perfonal temper of the Jews, but in the nature and genius of their law. These laws are extant and lie now before us; and we fee, the only hate they contain is the hate of idols. With regard to the race of mankind, nothing can be more endearing than the Mofaic account of their common original; nothing more benign or falutary than the legal directions to the Jews concerning their treatment of all, out of the covenant. Whatever there might be of this odious temper fairly afcribed to the Jews, by our philofophers, it received no countenance from the law, and is exprefly condemned by the Almighty author of it, when it betrayed itself amongst certain corrupt and apoftate members of that nation. Thefe, indeed, the Prophet Ifaiah defcribes, as faying to all others,-Stand by thyfelf, come not near me; for I am holier than thout. And left this fhould be mistaken for the fruits of the unhofpitable genius of the law, he takes care to inform us these men were the rankeft and most abandoned apoftates. A rebellious people who facrifice in gardens, and burn incense upon altars of brickwho remain amongst the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which eat fevine's flesh, &c ‡. that is, a people thoroughly paganized. In Section 4th. Book 3d. we find the following addition.Against all this force of evidence, weak, indeed, as it is againft the force of prejudice, the learned Chancellor of Gottingen has oppofed his authority, which is great, and his talents of reafon ing and eloquence, which are still greater. "Magnam non ita. pridem (fays he) ut antiquiores mittam, ingenii vim et doctrinæ copiam impendit, ut in hanc nos fententiam induceret Gulielmus Warburtonus, vir alioquin egregius et inprimis acutus, in celeberrimo et eruditiffimo libro, quem, The Divine Legation of Mofes demonftrated, infcripfit Lib. iii. Sect. 4. Jubet ille nos exiftimare omnes philofophos, qui animorum immortalitatem docuerunt, eamdem clam negaffe, naturam rerum revera Dei loco habuiffe atque mentes hominum particulas cenfuiffe ex mundi anima decerptas, et ad eam poft corporum obitum reverfuras. Verum, ut taceam, Græcorum tantum philofophos eum teftari, quum aliis tamen populis fui etiam philofophi fuerint, a Græcorum fententiis multis modis femoti, ut hoc, inquam, feponam, non apertis & planis teftimoniis caufam fuam agit vir præclarus, quod in tanti momenti accufatione neceffarium videtur, fed conjecturis tantum, exemplis nonnullis, denique confectariis ex inftitutis quibufdam et dogmatibus philofophorum, quorumdam ductis-" De rebus Chrifl. ante Conftantinum Magnum, p. 18. Here the learned critic fuppofing the queftion to be, -What the philofophers of the antient world in general thought concerning a future ftate? charges the author of the Divine Legation with falling fhort in his proof, which reaches, fays he, only the Greek philofophers, though there were many other in the world befides, who dogmatized on very different principles. Now I had again and again declared, that I confined my inquiry to the Greek philofophers. We shall see presently, for what reafon. What then could have betrayed this great man into fo wrong a reprefentation? It was not, I am perfuaded, a want of candour, but of attention to the author, he criticized. For, feeing fo much written by me against the principles of those ancients who propagated the doctrine of a future ftate, he unwarily concluded that it was in my purpose to difcredit the doctrine, as difcoverable by the light of nature; and, on that ground, rightly inferred that my bufinefs was with the whole tribe of antient philofophers: and that to ftop at the Greeks was miftaking the extent of my courfe. But a little attention to my general argument would have fhewn him, that this inquiry into the real fentiments of a race of fages, then moft eminent in all political and moral wifdom, concerning this point, was made folely to fhew the vaft importance of the doctrine of a future ftate of reward and punishment to fociety, when it was feen that these men, who publicly and fedulously taught it, did not indeed believe it. For this end the Greek philofophers ferved my purpofe to the full. Had my end been not the importance, but the difcredit of the doctrine (as this learned man unluckily conceived it) I had then, indeed, occafion for much more than their fuffrage to carry my point. In what follows of this learned criticifm I am much further to feek for that candour which fo eminently adorns the writings of this worthy perfon. He pretends I have not proved my charge against the Greek philofophers. Be it fo. But when he fays, I have not attempted it by any clear and evident teftimonies; but only by conjectures; by inflances in feme particulars; by confequences deduced from the doctrines and inftitutes of certain of the philofophers; this, I cannot reconcile to his ingenuous spirit of criticifm. For what are all thofe paffages given above, from Timæus the Locrian, from Diogenes Laertius, from Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, Plato, Chryfippus, Strabo, Ariftotle, Epictetus, M. Antoninus, Seneca and others, but teftimonies, clear and evident, either of the parties concerned, or of fome of their fchool, or of those who give us hiftorical accounts of the doctripes of those schools, that none of the theiftical fects of Greek philofophy did believe any thing of a future ftate of rewards and punishments. So much for that kind of evidence which the learned perfon fays I have not given. Let us confider the nature of that kind, which he owns I have given, but owns it in terms of difcredit. —In tanti momenti accufatione-conjecturis tantum, exemplis nonnullis denique confectariis ex inftitutis, &c. 1. As to the conjectures he speaks of-Were thefe offered for the purpose he reprefents them; that is to fay, directly to inforce the main queftion, I fhould readily agree with him, that in an accufation of fuch moment they were very impertinently urged. But they are imployed only occafionally to give credit to fome of thofe particular teftimonies, which I efteem clear and evident, but which he denies to exift at all, in my inquiry. 2. By what he fays of the inftances or examples in fome particulars, he would infinuate that what a fingle philofopher fays, hold only against himself, not against the fect to which he belongs: though he infinuates it in defiance of the very genius of the Greek philofophy, and of the extent of that temper (by none better understood than by this learned man himself) which difpofed the members of a fchool jurare in verba magiftri. C 3. With regard to the inferences deduced from the doctrines and inflitutes of certain of the philofophers; by which he principally means thofe deduced from their ideas of God and the foul, we muit distinguish. If the inference, which is charged on an opinion be difavowed by the opinionist, the charge is unjuft. If it be neither avowed or difavowed, the charge is inconclufive. 4 • But But if the confequence be acknowledged and even contended for, the charge is juft: and the evidence refulting from it has all the force of the most direct proof. Now the confequence I draw from the doctrines of the philofophers concerning God and the foul, in fupport of my charge against them, is fully and largely acknowledged by them. The learned perfon proceeds, and affures his reader that, by the fame way of reafoning, he would undertake to prove that none of the Christian divines believed any thing of that future ftate which they preached up to the people. "Ego quidem mediocris ingenii homo et tanto viro quantus eft Warburtonus longe inferior, omnes Chriftianorum theologos nihil eorum, quæ publice tradunt, credere, et callide hominum mentibus impietatis venenum afflare velle, convincam, fi mihi eadem eos via invadendi poteftas concedatur, qua philofophos vir doctiffimus aggreffus eft." This is civil. But what he gives me on the fide of ingenuity, he repays himself on the fide of judgment. For if it be, as he says, that by the fame kind of reafoning which I employ to convict the philofophers of impiety, the fathers themselves might be found guilty of it, the fmall talent of ingenuity, which nature gave me, was very ill bestowed. Now if the learned perfon can fhew that Chriftian divines, like the Greek philofophers, made ufe of a double doctrine — that they held it lawful to deceive, and fay one thing when they thought another that they fometimes owned and fometimes denied a future ftate of reward and punishment that they held God could not be angry nor hurt any one-that the foul was part of the fubflance of God and avowed that the confequence of thefe ideas of God and the foul was, no future ftate of rewards and punishments -When, I fay, he has fhewn all this, I fhall be ready to give up the divines, as I have given up the philofophers. -- But if, inftead of this, he will first of all mifrepresent the force of my reasoning against the philofophers, and then apply it, thus mifreprefented, against the divines; bringing vague conjectures in fupport of the main queftion; making the cafe of particulars (Synefius for inftance) to include the whole body; or urging confequences not feen, or abhorred when feen, (fuch as Polytheism from the Trinity:) If, I fay, with fuch kind of proof (which his ingenuity and erudition may find in abundance) he will maintain that be has proved the charge in queftion as ftrongly against Chriftian divines as I have done against the Greek philofophers; why then I will agree with the firft fceptic I meet, that all enquiries concerning the opinions either of the one set of men or of the other, is an idler employment than picking straws for when logic and criticifm will ferve no longer to discover truth, but may be made to ferve the wild vagaries, the blind prejudices and the oblique interefts of the dif puters |