has found means of enjoying, to which we have | must otherwise have been clear and manifest to nothing equal or similar. They now and then catch a mortal proud of his parts, and flattered either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court their head thus prepared for the reception of fa...opias, and the projection of vain designs, they easy fill with idle notions, till in time they make their plaything an author: their first diversion commonly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a political irony, and is at last brought to its height, by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle himself in sophisms, and flounder in absurdity, to talk confidently of the scale of being, and to give solutions which himself confesses impossible to be understood. Sometimes, however, it happens that their pleasure is without much mischief. The author feels no pain, but while they are wondering at the extravagance of his opinion, and pointing him out to one another as a new example of human folly, he is enjoying his own applause, and that of his companions, and perhaps is elevated with the hope of standing at the head of a new sect. Many of the books which now crowd the world, may be justly suspected to be written for the sake of some invisible order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of the world. Of the productions of the last bounteous year, how many can be said to serve any purpose of use or pleasure? The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it: and how will either of those be put more in our power by him who tells us that we are puppets, of which some creature not much wiser than ourselves manages the wires? That sect of beings unseen and unheard, are hovering about us, trying experiments upon our sensibility, putting us in agonies to see our limbs quiver, torturing us to madness, that they may laugh at our vagaries, sometimes obstructing the bile, that they may see how a man looks when he is yellow; sometimes breaking a traveller's bones, to try how he will get home; sometimes wasting a man to a skeleton, and sometimes killing him fat for the greater elegance of his hide. This is an account of natural Evil, which though, like the rest, not quite new, is very entertaining, though I know not how much it may contribute to patience. The only reason why we should contemplate Evil, is that we may bear it better; and I am afraid nothing is much more placidly endured, for the sake of making others sport. The first pages of the fourth Letter are such as incline me both to hope and wish that I shall find nothing to blame in the succeeding part. He offers a criterion of action, on account of virtue and vice, for which I have often contended, and which must be embraced by all who are willing to know why they act, or why they forbear to give any reason of their conduct to themselves or others. "In order to find out the true Origin of moral Evil, it will be necessary, in the first place, to inquire into its nature and essence; or what it is that constitutes one action evil, and another good. Various have been the opinions of various authors on this criterion of virtue; and this variety has rendered that doubtful, which the meanest capacity. Some indeed have denied that there is any such thing, because different ages and nations have entertained different sentiments concerning it: but this is just as reasonable as to assert, that there are neither sun, moon, nor stars, because astronomers have supported different systems of the motions and magnitudes of these celestial bodies. Some have placed it in conformity to truth, some to the fitness of things, and others to the will of God. But all this is merely superficial: they resolve us not why truth, or the fitness of things, are either eligible or obligatory, or why God should require us to act in one manner rather than another. The true reason of which can possibly be no other than this, because some actions produce happiness, and others misery: so that all moral Good and Evil are nothing more than the production of natural. This alone it is that makes truth preferable to falsehood, this that determines the fitness of things, and this that induces God to command some actions, and forbid others. They who extol the truth, beauty, and harmony of virtue, exclusive of its consequences, deal but in pompous nonsense; and they who would persuade us that Good and Evil are things indifferent, depending wholly on the will of God, do but confound the nature of things, as well as all our notions of God himself, by representing him capable of willing contradiction; that is, that we should be, and be happy, and at the same time that we should torment and destroy each other; for injuries cannot be made benefits, pain cannot be made pleasure, and consequently vice cannot be made virtue, by any power whatever. It is the consequences, therefore, of all human actions that must stamp their value. So far as the general practice of any action tends to produce good, and introduce happiness into the world, so far we may pronounce it virtuous; so much Evil as it occasions, such is the degree of vice it contains. I say the general practice, because we must always remember, in judging by this rule, to apply it only to the general species of actions, and not to particular actions: for the infinite wisdom of God, desirous to set bounds to the destructive consequences which must otherwise have followed from the universal depravity of mankind, has so wonderfully contrived the nature of things, that our most vicious actions may sometimes accidentally and collaterally produce good. Thus, for instance, robbery may disperse useless hoards to the benefit of the public; adultery may bring heirs and good humour too into many families, where they would otherwise have been wanting; and murder free the world from tyrants and oppressors. Luxury maintains its thousands, and vanity its ten thousands. Superstition and arbitrary power contribute to the grandeur of many nations, and the liberties of others are preserved by the perpetual contentions of avarice, knavery, selfishness and ambition; and thus the worst of vices, and the worst of men, are often compelled by Providence to serve the most beneficial purposes, contrary to their own malevolent tendencies and inclinations: and thus private vices become public benefits, by the force only of accidental circumstances. But this impeaches not the truth of the criterion of virtue before mentioned, the anty lime and magnificent as was the philosophy of the ancients, all their moral systems were de ficient in these two important articles. They were all built on the sandy foundations of the innate beauty of virtue, or enthusiastic patriotism; and their great point in view was the contemptible reward of human glory; foundations which were by no means able to support the them; for the beauty of virtue, independent of its effects, is unmeaning nonsense; patriotism, which injures mankind in general for the sake of a particular country, is but a more extended selfishness, and really criminal; and all human glory but a mean and ridiculous delusion. The whole affair then of religion and morality, the subject of so many thousand volumes, is, in short, no more than this: the Supreme Being, infinitely good, as well as powerful, desirous to diffuse happiness by all possible means, has created innumerable ranks and orders of beings, all subservient to each other by proper subordination. One of these is occupied by man, a creature endued with such a certain degree of knowledge, reason, and free-will, as is suitable to his situation, and placed for a time on this globe as in a school of probation and education. Here he has an opportunity given him of im proving or debasing his nature, in such a man ner as to render himself fit for a rank of higher perfection and happiness, or to degrade himself to a state of greater imperfection and misery; necessary indeed towards carrying on the business of the universe, but very grievous and burdensome to those individuals who, by their own misconduct, are obliged to submit to it. The test of this his behaviour, is doing good, that is, co-operating with his Creator, as far as his narrow sphere of action will permit, in the production of happiness. And thus the happiness and misery of a future state will be the just reward or punishment of promoting or preventing happiness in this. So artificially by this means is the nature of all human virtue and vice contrived, that their rewards and punishments are woven, as it were, in their very essence; their immediate effects give us a foretaste of their future, and their fruits in the present life are the proper samples of what they must unavoidably produce in another. We have reason given us to distinguish these consequences, and regulate our conduct; and lest that should neglect its post, conscience also is appointed as an instinctive kind of monitor, perpetually to remind us both of our interest and our duty." solid foundation on which any true system of in universal benevolence, or, in their language, ethics can be built, the only plain, simple and charity to all men; the other, in the probation uniform rule by which we can pass any judg-of man, and his obedience to his Creator. Subment on our actions; but by this we may be enabled, not only to determine which are Good, and which are Evil, but almost mathematically to demonstrate the proportion of virtue or vice which belongs to each, by comparing them with the degrees of happiness or misery which they Occasion. But though the production of happiness is the essence of virtue, it is by no means the end; the great end is the probation of man-magnificent structures which they erected upon kind, or the giving them an opportunity of exalting or degrading themselves in another state by their behaviour in the present. And thus indeed it answers two most important purposes; those are the conservation of our happiness, and the test of our obedience; for had not such a test seemed necessary to God's infinite wisdom, and productive of universal good, he would never have permitted the happiness of men, even in this life, to have depended on so precarious a tenure, as their mutual good behaviour to each other. For it is observable, that he who best knows our formation, has trusted no one thing of importance to our reason or virtue; he trusts only to our appetites for the support of the individual, and the continuance of our species; to our vanity or compassion, for our bounty to others; and to our fears, for the preservation of ourselves; often to our vices for the support of government, and sometimes to our follies for the preservation of our religion. But since some test of our obedience was necessary, nothing sure could have been commanded for that end so fit and proper, and at the same time so useful, as the practice of virtue: nothing could have been so justly rewarded with happiness, as the production of happiness in conformity to the will of God. It is this conformity alone which adds merit to virtue, and constitutes the essential difference between morality and religion. Morality obliges men to live honestly and soberly, because such behaviour is most conducive to public happiness, and consequently to their own; religion, to pursue the same course, because conformable to the will of their Creator. Morality induces them to embrace virtue from prudential considerations; religion, from those of gratitude and obedience. Morality, therefore, entirely abstracted from religion, can have nothing meritorious in it; it being but wisdom, prudence, or good economy, which, like health, beauty, or riches, are rather obligations conferred upon us by God, than merits in us towards him; for though we may be justly punished for injuring ourselves, we can claim no reward for self-preservation; as suicide deserves punishment and infamy, but a man deserves no reward or honours for not being guilty of it. This I take to be the meaning of all those passages in our Scriptures, in which works are represented to have no merit without faith; that is, not without believing in historical facts, in creeds, and articles; but without being done in pursuance of our belief in God, and in obedience to his commands. And now, having mentioned Scripture, I cannot omit observing that the christian is the only religious or moral institution in the world that ever set in a right light these two material points, the essence and the cad of virtue, that ever founded the one in poduction of happiness, that is, Si sic omnia dixisset! To this account of the essence of vice and virtue, it is only necessary to add, that the consequences of human actions being sometimes uncertain, and sometimes remote, it is not possible in many cases for most men, nor in all cases for any man, to determine what actions will ultimately produce happiness, and therefore it was proper that revelation should lay down a rule to be followed invariably in opposition to appearances, and in every change of circumstances, by which we may be certain to promote the general felicity, and be set free from the dangerous temptation of doing Evil that Goed may come. to justice that pain should be inflicted on innocence, it was necessary that man should be criminal. Because it may easily happen, and in effect | thinks it necessary that man should be debarred, will happen very frequently, that our own pri- because pain is necessary to the good of the univate happiness may be promoted by an act inju- verse; and the pain of one order of beings exrious to others, when yet no man can be obliged tending its salutary influence to innumerable by nature to prefer ultimately the happiness orders above and below, it was necessary that of others to his own; therefore, to the instruc-man should suffer; but because it is not suitable tions of infinite wisdom it was necessary that infinite power should add penal sanctions. That every man to whom those instructions shall be imparted may know, that he can never ultimately injure himself by benefiting others, or ultimately by injuring others benefit himself; but that however the lot of the good and bad may be huddled together in the seeming confusion of our present state, the time shall undoubtedly come, when the most virtuous will be most happy. I am sorry that the remaining part of this Letter is not equal to the first. The author has indeed engaged in a disquisition in which we need not wonder if he fails, in the solution of questions on which philosophers have employed their abilities from the earliest times, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. He denies that man was created perfect, because the system requires subordination, and because the power of losing his perfection, of "rendering himself wicked and miserable, is the highest imperfection imaginable." Besides, the regular gradations of the scale of being required somewhere "such a creature as man with all his infirmities about him, and the total removal of those would be altering his nature, and when he became perfect he must cease to be man." I have already spent some considerations on the scale of being, of which yet I am obliged to renew the mention whenever a new argument is made to rest upon it; and I must therefore again remark, that consequences cannot have greater certainty than the postulate from which they are drawn, and that no system can be more hypothetical than this, and perhaps no hypothesis more absurd. He again deceives himself with respect to the perfection with which man is held to be originally vested. "That man came perfect, that is, endued with all possible perfection, out of the hands of his Creator, is a false notion, derived from the philosophers.-The universal system required subordination, and consequently comparative imperfection." That man was ever endued with all pass ble perf ctim, that is, with all perfection of which the idea is not contradictory, or destructive of itself, is undoubtedly false. But it can hardly be called a false notion, because no man ever thought it, nor can it be derived from the philosophers; for without pretending to guess what philosophers he may mean, it is very safe to affirm, that no philosopher ever said it. Of those who now maintain that man was once perfect, who may very easily be found, let the author inquire whether man was ever omniscient, whether he was ever omnipotent, whether he ever had even the lower power of archangels or angels. Their answers will soon inform him, that the supposed perfection of man was not absolute but respective, that he was perfect in a sense consistent enough with subordination, perfect, not as compared with different beings, but with himself in his present degeneracy; not perfect as an angel, but perfect as man. From this perfection, whatever it was, he This is given as a satisfactory account of the Original of moral Evil, which amounts only to this, that God created beings, whose guilt he foreknew, in order that he might have proper objects of pain, because the pain of part is, no man knows how or why, necessary to the felicity of the whole. Man The perfection which man once had, may be so easily conceived, that without any unusual strain of imagination we can figure its revival. All the duties to God or man that are neglected, we may fancy performed; all the crimes that are committed, we may conceive forborne. will then be restored to his moral perfections: and into what head can it enter, that by this change the universal system would be shaken, or the condition of any order of beings altered for the worse? He comes in the fifth Letter to political, and in the sixth to religious Evils. Of political Evil, if we suppose the Origin of moral Evil discovered, the account is by no means difficult: polity being only the conduct of immoral men in public affairs. The evils of each particular kind of government are very clearly and elegantly displayed, and from their secondary causes very rationally deduced; but the first cause lies still in its ancient obscurity. There is in this Letter nothing new, nor any thing eminently instructive; one of his practical deductions, that "from government Evils cannot be eradicated, and their excess only can be prevented," has been always allowed; the question upon which all dissension arises is, when that excess begins, at what point men shall cease to bear, and attempt to remedy. Another of his precepts, though not new, well deserves to be transcribed, because it cannot be too frequently impressed. "What has here been said of their imperfections and abuses, is by no means intended as a defence of them; every wise man ought to redress them to the utmost of his power; which can be effected by one method only; that is, by a reformation of manners: for as all political Evils derive their original from moral, these can never be removed until those are first amended. He, therefore, who strictly adheres to virtue and sobriety in his conduct, and enforces them by his example, does more real service to a state, than he who displaces a minister, or dethrones a tyrant; this gives but a temporary relief, but that exterminates the cause of the disease. No immoral man then can possibly be a true patriot: and all those who profess outrageous zeal for the liberty and prosperity of their country, and at the same time infringe her laws, affront her religion, and debauch her people, are but despicable quacks, by fraud or ignorance increasing the disorders they pretend to remedy." Of religion he has said nothing but what h has learned, or might have learned from the d vines; that it is not universal, because it must be received upon conviction, and successively re- | admit copiousness than to affect brevity. Many ceived by those whom conviction reached; that informations will be afforded by this book to the its evidences and sanctions are not irresistible, biographer. I know not where else it can be because it was intended to induce, not to compel ; found, but here and in Ward, that Cowley was and that it is obscure, because we want faculties doctor in physic. And whenever any other instito comprehend it. What he means by his asser-tution of the same kind shall be attempted, the tion, that it wants policy, I do not well under-exact relation of the progress of the Royal Sostand; he does not mean to deny that a good ciety may furnish precedents. cnristian will be a good governor, or a good subect; and he has before justly observed, that the good man only is a patriot. Religion has been, he says, corrupted by the wickedness of those to whom it was communicated, and has lost part of its efficacy by its connexion with temporal interest and human passion. He justly observes, that from all this, no conclusion can be drawn against the divine original of christianity, since the objections arise not from the nature of the revelation, but of him to whom it is communicated. These volumes consist of an exact journal of the Society; of some papers delivered to them, which, though registered and preserved, had been never printed; and of short memoirs of the more eminent members, inserted at the end of the year in which each died. The original of the Society is placed earlier in this history than in that of Dr. Sprat. Theodore Haak, a German of the Palatinate, in 1645, proposed to some inquisitive and learned men a weekly meeting for the cultivation of natural knowledge. The first Associates, whose names ought surely to be preserved, were Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Wallis, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Ent, Dr. Glisson, Dr. Merret, Mr. Foster of Gresham, and Mr. Haak. Sometime afterwards Wilkins, Wallis, and Goddard being removed to Oxford, carried on the same design there by stated meetings, and adopted into their society Dr. Ward, Dr. Bathurst, Dr. Petty, and Dr. Willis. All this is known, and all this is true; but why, we have not yet discovered. Our author, if I understand him right, pursues the argument thus: the religion of man produces evils, because the morality of man is imperfect; his morality is imperfect, that he may be justly a subject of punishment; he is made subject to punishment, because the pain of part is necessary to the hap- The Oxford Society coming to London in 1659, piness of the whole; pain is necessary to happi-joined their friends, and augmented their num aess, no mortal can tell why or how. ber, and for some time met in Gresham-College. After the restoration their number was again increased, and on the 28th of November, 1660, a select party happening to retire for conversation to Mr. Rooke's apartment in GreshamCollege, formed the first plan of a regular society. Here Dr. Sprat's history begins, and therefore from this period the proceedings are well Thus, after having clambered with great labour from one step of argumentation to another, instead of rising into the light of knowledge, we are devolved back into dark ignorance; and all our effort ends in belief, that for the Evils of life there is some good reason, and in confession, that the reason cannot be found. This is all that has been produced by the revival of Chry-known.* sippus's untractableness of matter, and the Arabian scale of existence. A system has been raised, which is so ready to fall to pieces of itself, that no great praise can be derived from its destruction. To object is always easy, and it has been well observed by a late writer, that the IN FIVE BOOKS, TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK, hand which cannot build a hovel, may demolish a temple.* REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL FOR IMPROVING OF NATURAL KNOWLEDGE, FROM ITS HAVE HITHERTO NOT BEEN PUBLISHED, ARE INSERTED IN THEIR PROPER ORDER, AS A SUPPLEMENT TO THE D.D. SECRETARY TO THE SOCIETY. 2 VOLS. TO. THIS book might more properly have been entitled by the author a diary than a history, as it proceeds regularly from day to day so minutely as to number over the members present at each committee, and so slowly, that two large volumes contain only the transactions of the eleven first years from the institution of the Society. REVIEW OF THE GENERAL HISTORY OF BY MR. HAMPTON. THIS appears to be one of the books which will long do honour to the present age. It has been by some remarker observed, that no man ever grew immortal by a translation: and undoubtedly translations into the prose of a living language must be laid aside whenever the lan guage changes, because the matter being always to be found in the original, contributes nothing to the preservation of the form superinduced by the translator. But such versions may last long, though they can scarcely last always; and there is reason to believe that this will grow in reputation while the English tongue continues in its present state. The great difficulty of a translator is to preserve the native form of his language, and the unconstrained manner of an original writer, This Mr. Hampton seems to have attained in a degree of which there are few examples. His book has the dignity of antiquity, and the easy flow of a modern composition. I am yet far from intending to represent this work as useless. Many particularities are of It were, perhaps, to be desired that he had importance to one man, though they appear tri-illustrated with notes an author which must have fling to another, and it is always more safe to many difficulties to an English reader, and par * New Practice of Physic. * From the Literary Magazine, 1756. ticularly that he had explained the ancient art of war; but these omissions may be easily supplied by an inferior hand, from the antiquaries and commentators. To note omissions where there is so much performed, would be invidious, and to commend is unnecessary where the excellence of the work may be more easily and effectually shown by exhibiting a specimen.* of thought, and liberty of press. Our clamor ous praises of liberty sufficiently prove that we enjoy it; and if by liberty nothing else be meant, than security from the persecutions of power, it is so fully possessed by us, that little more is to be desired, except that one should talk of it less, and use it better. But a social being can scarcely rise to complete independence; he that has any wants, which others can supply, must study the gratification of them whose assistance he expects; this REVIEW OF MISCELLANIES ON MORAL AND is equally true, whether his wants be wants of RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS, IN PROSE AND VERSE, BY ELIZABETH HARRISON. THIS volume, though only one name appears upon the first page, has been produced by the contribution of many hands, and printed by the encouragement of a numerous subscription, both which favours seem to be deserved by the modesty and piety of her on whom they were bestowed. nature or of vanity. The writers of the present time are not always candidates for preferment, nor often the hirelings of a patron. They profess to serve no interest, and speak with loud contempt of sycophants and slaves. There is, however, a power, from whose influence neither they nor their predecessors have ever been free. Those who have set greatness at defiance, have yet been the slaves of fashion. When an opinion has once become popular, very few are willing to oppose it. Idleness is more willing to credit than inquire; cowardice is afraid of controversy, and vanity of answer; and he that writes merely for sale, is tempted to court purchasers by flattering the prejudices of the public. It has now been fashionable for near half a The authors of the essays in prose seem generally to have imitated, or tried to imitate, the copiousness and luxuriance of Mrs. Rowe; this however is not all their praise: they have laboured to add to her brightness of imagery her purity of sentiments. The poets have had Dr. Watts before their eyes, a writer, who, if he stood not in the first class of genius, compensated that defect by a ready application of his century, to defame and vilify the house of Stuart, powers to the promotion of piety. The attempt and to exalt and magnify the reign of Elizabeth. to employ the ornaments of romance in the deco-The Stuarts have found few apoligists, for the ration of religion was, I think, first made by Mr. dead cannot pay for praise; and who will, withBoyle's Martyrdom of Theodora, but Boyle's out reward, oppose the tide of popularity? Yet philosophical studies did not allow him time for there remains still among us, not wholly extinthe cultivation of style, and the completion of the guished, a zeal for truth, a desire of establishing great design was reserved for Mrs. Rowe. Dr.right, in opposition to fashion. The author, Watts was one of the first who taught the dis-whose work is now before us, has attempted a senters to write and speak like other men, by vindication of Mary of Scotland, whose name showing them that elegance might consist with piety. They would have both done honour to a better society, for they had that charity, which might well make their failings forgotten, and with which the whole Christian world might wish for communion. They were pure from all the heresies of an age, to which every opinion is become a favourite that the universal church has hitherto detested. has for some years been generally resigned te infamy, and who has been considered as the murderer of her husband, and condemned by her own letters. Of these letters, the author of this vindication confesses the importance to be such, that if they be genuine, the queen was guilty; and if they be spurious, she was innocent. He has, therefore, undertaken to prove them spurious, and divided his treatise into six parts. This praise the general interest of mankind requires to be given to writers who please and In the first is contained the history of the letdo not corrupt, who instruct and do not weary.ters, from their discovery by the earl of Morton, But to them all human eulogies are vain, whom their being produced against queen Mary, and I believe applauded by angels, and numbered their several appearances in England, before with the just.f queen Elizabeth and her commissioners, until they were finally delivered back again to the earl of Morton. ACCOUNT OF A BOOK ENTITLED, AN HISTO. EVIDENCE PRODUCED BY THE EARLS OF MORAY AND MORTON AGAINST MARY WITH AN EXAMINATION OF THE REV. DR. ROBERTSON'S We live in an age in which there is much talk The second contains a short abstract of Mr. Goodall's arguments for proving the letters to be spurious and forged; and of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume's objections by way of answer to Mr. Goodall, with critical observations on these authors. The third contains an examination of the ar of independence, of private judgment, of libertyguments of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume, in From the Literary Magazine, 1756. From the Literary Magazine, 1756.-There are other Reviews of Books by Dr Johnson in this Maga- support of the authenticity of the letters. The fourth contains an examination of the confession of Nicholas Hubert, commonly called French Paris, with observations showing the same to be a forgery. The fifth contains a short recapitulation or summary of the arguments on both sides of the Printed in the Gentlemen's Magazine, October, 1760. question. And, |