SECT. I.

AND here, as a proof that we are as liable to be corrupted by our books as by our companions, I am in danger of setting out with a contradiction. Nay I must yet venture to do this in some degree with my eyes open, and must lay my defence on a distinction rather too nice, and which relies too much on the candour of my reader.

The truth is, our noble author's chief strength lies in that very circumstance which I have before asserted to be of itself alone a sufficient argument of his weakness; whereas on the contrary his manner affords such a protection to his matter, that if he had designed to reserve to himself the sole privilege of answering his own doctrine, he could not have invented a more ingenious or effectual contrivance. It hath been alledged as a good reason for not answering certain books, that one must be obliged first to read them; but surely we shall find few men so very charitable, or so much our friends, to give them order and method with a

view only of complimenting them with

an answer.

This, however, I attempted, tho' I own with no great success; and that not so much, I apprehend, from want of sufficient matter to make out such colourable systems as may be expected in such a writer, as from a certain dark, cautious, and loose manner of expressing his sentiments, which must arise either from a writer's desire of not being very easily explained, or from an incapacity of making himself very clearly understood. The difficulties arising to the commentator on these fragments, will appear to be assignable only to the former cause: for a very indifferent reader will be seldom at a loss in comprehending his lordship in his own works; but to transfer his doctrines with their authority (i.e. the ipse dixit of the author) into another work, is often very difficult, and without long quotations, too apt to tire the reader, impossible. In this light a very fine thought of Mr. Pope's occurs to my memory.

"Tho' index-learning turns no student pale, It holds the eel of science by the tail." The best way then of proceeding with so slippery a reasoner; the only way,

Q

indeed, in which I see any possibility of proceeding with him, is first to lay down some general rules, all of which will hereafter be proved out of his writings, and then pursuing him chapter by chapter, to extract the several proofs, however scattered and dispersed, which tend to establish both parts of the contradictions, which I shall now set down.

Our noble author sets out in his first section, with a sly insinuation, that it is possible for the gravest of philosophers on the gravest of subjects, to advance propositions in jest. "It is more probable," says Lord B-, " and it is more candid to believe, that this philosopher (Descartes) was in earnest, than that he was in jest, when he advanced this proposition,"1 concerning the immutability and eternity of certain mathematical truths. I will add, that I believe that an idea of such jesting had never any footing in a human head, till it first found admission into that of this noble lord.

In the same section, his lordship proceeds thus: "The antients thought matter eternal, and assumed that the Demiurgus, or divine Architect, composed the frame 1 "Essays," page 4.

of the world with materials which were ready prepared, and independently on him, in a confused chaos. Much in the same manner such metaphysicians as the learned Cudworth have imagined a sort of intellectual chaos, a chaos of eternal ideas, of incorporeal essences, independent on God, self-existent, and therefore co-eval with the supreme Being, and therefore anterior to all other natures. In this intellectual chaos God sees, and man must endeavour to see, the natures, the real essences of things: and thus the foundations of morality are laid higher than the existence of any moral agents, before there was any system of being from which the obligations to it could result, or to which they could be applied : just as the same philosophers suppose the incorporeal essences of white and black to have existed when there was no such thing as colour, and those of a square and circle, when there was neither form nor figure." 1

Here I am afraid the learned peer hath gone no farther for his erudition than the first or second pages of Ovid's Metamorphosis: for could he be recalled 1 "Essays," page 6.

from the dead, contrary to his own doctrine, as he hath recalled Descartes, and were asked whom he meant by the antients, he could not certainly answer in general, the antient philosophers, for then the whole tribe of atheists would be ready to testify against him. If he should answer, that he meant the antient atheists only, and less he cannot be supposed to mean by those who are wellbred enough to suppose he meant any thing, he will be far from finding even among these an universal concurrence with his opinion. Thales, the chief of the Grecian sages, and who is said to have first turned his thoughts to physiological enquiries, affirmed the independent pre-existence of God from all eternity. The words of Laertius are remarkable, and I will render them with the most literal exactness in my power. He asserted, says Laertius, "That God was the oldest of all beings, for he existed without a previous cause EVEN IN THE WAY OF GENERATION; that the world was the most beautiful of all things; for it was CREATED BY God, &c." 1 This notion of the creation Aris

"1

1 Diog. Laert., lib. i., sect. 35, where I submit