LETTTER II. OUR Apologist observes, dear sir, p. 11, "Whatever might be the force of Mr. Hume's faith, no one, it is conjectured, will charge him with having neglected good works. I do not pretend," adds he, "to say how far those are, or are not sufficient." Indeed, I believe there will be no absolute necessity, upon this occasion, of going deep into the controversy concerning faith and works. The character in which Mr. Hume principally appeared, and on which he chiefly valued himself, was that of an author. He passed his life in writing; the effects of his writings are visible in his worthy apologist, and many others; they are likely to go down to posterity. An unwearied endeavor to propagate the principles contained in those writings, is what we can never consent to dignify with the appellation of a good work. To worship, to love, and to serve God, oneself, is the first of good works; to teach and incite others to do the same, is the second. To renounce every thing of this kind, oneself, is the first of evil works; and the second is like unto it, to tempt and seduce others, that they may fall after the same example of unbelief. This is the employment of that person, whom the apologist mentions, as having joined with the dancing-master, and the perfumer, in compounding a system of manners, recommended by the late Earl of Chesterfield. He might possibly divert himself in that way, at his leisure hours; but when he set to business in good earnest, the issue was, an inquiry concerning human understanding. * The apologist is fond of citing two lines, which have been often cited by others with a similar view. world, it has now stood its ground above seventeen hundred years. The apologist hardly expects it should at length fall before a couplet of Mr. Pope. Poets, he knows, are not upon oath; and one for sense, and one for rhyme, is often a fair composition. The verses rhyme well; but as to sense, that is another question. Their author somewhere. tells us, that in reading religious controversy, he still found himself to agree with the last author he perused. One cannot therefore well take him for a guide in these matters. The bright son of the morning fell from his exalted station in the heavens; and he, who penned Messiah, was afterwards unfortunately duped by the sophistry of Bolingbroke. "Evil communications corrupt good manners." As to the verses in hand, I know not that they were designed to extend by any means so far, as, by the present application, the apologist means to extend them. If they were, the proposition contained in them will be this: that, provided a man discharge the relative and social offices, it matters not what deity he acknowledges and worships; or whether he acknowledge and worship any. I am sorry I should be obliged to go back to a thing so vulgar and antiquated as my catechism. But so it happens. I cannot forget that, when a boy, I learned two things: my duty towards God, and my duty towards my neighbor. And, from that day to this, it never entered into my head, that the performance of the latter would atone for the neglect of the former. Surely one might as well say, the performance of the former would atone for the breach of the latter. But the apologist will never allow one; and we cannot submit to allow the other. What! Shall we make a conscience of discharging our duty to men like ourselves, and none of discharging that to our Maker, our Redeemer, our God? Is it reckoned praiseworthy, generous, noble, great, and good, to love and celebrate an earthly parent or benefactor; and can it be deemed a point of indifference, whether we believe or deny, whether we bless or blaspheme our heavenly and eternal Father and Friend, who gives us life, and breath, and all things, in this world, and invites us to a far more happy and glorious and shed out his bowels to the ground."* In state of existence in another? May we adore short, if faith in God be not the effect of Jehovah, or Baal; the Creator of the uni- superstition and imposture, which no man verse, or a monkey, or matter, or chance, or has yet proved it to be, we are bound to renothing, as the whim takes us, and be blame-gard it as our most valuable possession, and less fell it not to believers; publish it not among the Christians! to esteem those who would rob the world of it as the worst of thieves; however towards each other they may practice what the apologist styles the duties, the decencies, and the charities.† Page 12. "Perhaps it is one of the very worst circumstances against Christianity, that very few of its professors were either so moral, so humane, or could so philosophically govern their passions, as the sceptical David Hume." The matter of fact is: that life cannot be in the right, which is spent in doing wrong. And if to question all the doctrines of religion, even to the providence and existence of a God, and to put morality on no other foot than that of utility-if to do this be not to do wrong-then farewell all distinction between right and wrong for evermore. To maintain and diffuse the truth of God is to do his will; to deny, corrupt, or hinder it, is to And yet, we do not every day hear of a work iniquity; and a life so employed is a Christian running round a counter with his wicked life-perhaps the most wicked that drawn sword after a reviewer; or quitting a can be imagined. For what comparison is room on the entrance of his antagonist. It there between one who commits a crime of appears, from a variety of instances, that Mr. which he may repent, or, at worst, it may Hume, when his literary character was condie with him; and one who, though he do cerned, could by no means "govern his pasnot himself commit it, teaches and encourages sions so philosophically" as his apologist all the world to commit it, by removing out wishes to have it believed. But it is not my of the way the strongest sanctions and obliga- desire to depreciate anything that might be tions to the contrary, in writings which may really commendable in him. Thus much carry on the blessed work from generation to only I will venture to assert, that, whatever generation? Let not these errors be called it was, the merit of it is not due to his philoerrors of speculation only. Action flows sophical principles. Action flows sophical principles. These afford no motives from speculation. No man ventures upon to restrain men, who have once embraced sin, till he has, for the time at least, adopted them, from any vices, to which their constisome false principle. And when men begin to look about for arguments in vindication of impiety and immorality, such speculations as those of Mr. Hume become interesting, and can hardly fail of a powerful and numerous patronage. The corrupt judge; the prostituted courtier; the statesman, who enriches himself by the plunder and blood of his country; the pettifogger, who fattens on the spoils of the fatherless and widow, the oppressor, who, to pamper his own beastly appetite, abandons the deserving peasant to beggary and despair; the hypocrite, the debauchee, the gamester, the blasphemer-all prick up their ears, when they are told, that a celebrated author has written Essays, containing such doctrines, and leading to such consequences." Weighed against a conduct like this, the moralities of social life (a system of which, by the way, according to Mr. Hume, every man is left to compound for himself) are dust upon the balance; they are like the salutation of Joab, when he smote Amasa to the heart: "And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in health, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with the right hand, to kiss him. But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab's hand; so he smote him therewith in the fifth rib, tutions may happen to incline. It is too much for the same person to excel in every branch. It is enough if he point the way. All evil beings are not immoral. Lord Chesterfield's friend, himself, mentioned above, offends not in the articles of eating, wine, or women; he is differently employed. He is employed in tempting others to offend. The apologist tells us, "Mr. Hume's most abstract researches were in favor of a behavior perfectly irreproachable. Whoever is acquainted with Mr. Hume's writings will bear witness, that he was a lover of decency, order, and decorum. It would be the drudgery of a day to detect a single light sentence in Hume." + I shall transcribe two or three sentences, which lie pretty near together in a Dialogue subjoined to his Inquiry into the Principles of Morals. "There is almost as great difficulty, I acknowledge, to justify French as Greek gallantry; except only, that the former is much more natural and agreeable than the latter. But our neighbors, it seems, have resolved to sacrifice some of the domestic to the sociable pleasures; and to prefer ease, freedom, and * 2 Sam. xx. 9. † Page 13. Ibid. 106, 110. but a small matter; if one knows it not, it is nothing." * Verily, as Lord Foppington says to his brother in the stage-play, A NICE MARALITY, TAM, STAP MY VITALS! When we consider these sentences as proceeding from the pen of "the first philosopher of the age," in his palmary and capital work, designed to settle the principles of morality on their only proper foundation, an open commerce, to a strict fidelity and constancy. These ends are both good, and are sometimes difficult to reconcile; nor need we be surprised, if the customs of nations incline too much sometimes to the one side, and sometimes to the other.* It is needless to dissemble the consequence of a very free commerce between the sexes, and of their living much together, will often terminate in intrigues and gallantry. We must sacrifice" it would be the drudgery of a month" to somewhat of the useful, if we be very anxious to obtain all the agreeable qualities; and cannot pretend to reach alike every kind of advantage. Instances of licence, daily multiplying, will weaken the scandal with the one sex, and teach the other by degrees to adopt the famous maxim of la Fontaine with regard to female infidelity, that, if one knows it, it is * Essays, vol. ii. p. 397. edit. 1772. find anything in the system of Chesterfield and his three associates, "the dancing-master, the perfumer, and the devil," better calculated to multiply new connections, and dissolve old ones; anything that so much deserves the profoundest acknowledgements from-the gentlemen of DOCTORS' COMMONS. Essays, vol. ii. p. 402. LETTER III. Ir may still perhaps be asked, dear sir, | Especially if the writer help forward the how it should happen, that, when Mr. Hume's vices of the times, by relaxing morals, as principles were so bad, his practices should well as destroying principle. Such a writer be no worse? Let me offer the solution can have little else to do, but to new model given of such a phenomenon in the intellec- the paradoxes of ancient scepticism, in order tual world, by a very ingenious and sagacious to figure it in the world, and be regarded, by writer, who had not only studied mankind in general, but, as it should seem, had bestowed some pains upon the very case now before us. the smatterers in literature, and adepts in folly, as a prodigy of parts and learning. Thus his vanity becomes deeply criminal, and is execrated by the wise and good; because it is gratified at the expense of his country's welfare. But the consolation which degenerate manners receive from his fatal tenets, is repaid by eager praise: and vice impatiently drinks in and applauds his hoarse and boding voice, while, like a raven, he sits croaking universal death, despair, and annihilation to the humankind." "This fact has been regarded as unaccountable that sober men, of morals apparently unblameable, should madly unhinge the great principles of religion and society, without any visible motive or advantage. But by looking a little farther into human nature, we shall easily resolve this seeming paradox. These writers are generally men of speculation and industry; and therefore, though But taking the account of Mr. Hume's they give themselves up to the dictates of manners as his friends have given it: to say, their ruling passion, yet that ruling passion "that few of the professors of Christianity commonly leads to the tract of abstemious ever equalled him in morality, humanity, manners. That desire of distinction and and the government of their passions," is superiority, so natural to man, breaks out into certainly going a great deal too far. Thoua thousand various and fantastic shapes; and sands, in the first ages of the Gospel, gave in each of these, according as it is directed, all their goods to feed the poor; renounced, becomes a virtue or a vice. In times of in deed as well as word, the world and the luxury and dissipation therefore, when every flesh, and joyfully met death in its most hortenet of irreligion is greedily embraced, what rid forms, for the love of their Redeemer. road to present applause can lie so open and On the same principle, unnumbered multisecure, as that of disgracing religious belief? | tudes, in every succeeding age, have man fully sustained the heaviest calamities of human life, and with faith unfeigned, and hope that maketh not ashamed, yielded up their souls into the hands of their Creator. Scenes of this kind are daily and hourly passing in the chambers of the sick and dying, as they, whose office it is to visit those chambers, well know. To others they must remain unknown, for want of biographers to record them. Every Christian, who lives in piety and charity, does not favor the public with his own life. Every Christian, who expires in peace and hope, has not the happiness of a Dr. Smith to pen the story of his death: "Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear; Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness in the desert air. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, They kept the noiseless tenor of their way." "Christianity," says a learned writer, "has in every age produced good effects on thousands and ten thousands, whose lives are not recorded in history; which is, for the most part, a register of the vices, the follies, and the quarrels of those who made a figure and a noise in the world; insomuch that Socrates, at the close of his work, observes, that if men were honest and peaceable, historians would be undone for want of materials." But, whether the professors of a religion be many, or few; whether they be influenced by the spirit of it, or not; whether they be sincere, or hypocrites; whether they be detected, or undetected; the religion is still the same: it does not change with the changing tempers, dispositions, and interests of mankind, in different times and places; nor is it to be charged with the guilt of practices, against which it protests in every page. No demonstration in Euclid can be clearer than this. holidays. Not a single thought occurs of the necessity there is for its being brought into the daily and hourly concerns of common life. It is a speculative belief, deposited in the understanding, to which its owner recurs, when he has nothing else to do; he finds it where he has left it, and is fully satisfied with its being there, instead of bearing it always about him, in his heart and affections, as an active principle, ready for use, to operate at all seasons, and on all occasions. He will even spend his days in discoursing and disputing upon the sublimest doctrines, and most holy precepts of religion, his own life still continuing unreformed. Nay, what is yet more strange, he will preach seriously, earnestly, affectionately, and repeatedly, against a failing, to which he himself is notoriously subject, and every one who hears him knows him to be so. It follows not necessarily, that he is designedly playing the hypocrite and acting a part. He has some method of concealing himself from himself, or of excusing himself to himself. He does not see that he is the person, against whom all his own arguments are pointed. He does not think of it. He stands in need of a friend, or an enemy, to tell him, thou art the man. This may seem to be a species of madness; but this is human nature. Let me conclude with a story. A friend of mine was much afflicted with a dangerous disorder, part hereditary, and part the fruit of his own industry. He sent for one of the best physicians in the kingdom, who, having discoursed, greatly to his satisfaction, on the excellency of medicine in general, and of a medicine proper for that disorder in particular, wrote his prescription, and took his leave. My friend, who was a scholar, had a learned gentleman with him at the time; and the doctor was hardly out of the door, before a very warm controversy began between them, concerning the style of the prescription, whether it were classical or not. This and the virtues of the medicine were now the constant subject of my friend's conver To account for the opposition often so visible between the lives and opinions of Christians, one must enumerate all the vari-sation, and he inveighed with great zeal ous methods, by which, in matters of moral and spiritual concern, men are wont to impose upon themselves. Appetite and passion, sloth and interest, will work wonders in this way-wonders, of which he has no idea, who has not been accustomed, with this view, to contemplate the conduct of those around him, and impartially to scrutinize his own. The religion of many a person professing Christianity, is, by these means, laid by, like a best coat, for Sundays and and indignation, against the folly of those, who would languish under disease, when there was such a remedy to be had. The distemper, mean while, increased upon himself, and began to seize the vitals. The doctor was again sent for; and knowing his patient to be a remarkably absent man, Pray, sir, said he, give me leave to ask you one question: Have you taken the medicine? A summons to the bar of judgment could hardly have astonished my friend more than this question. He awoke as one out of a dream, and very honestly owned, he had been so occupied in talking and writing about it, and recommending it to others, that he had really quite forgotten that part of the prescription. He did indeed recollect to have once tasted the draught, but finding it rather bitter, a flavor always disagreeable to him, he had set it by again, trusting, it seems, for his cure, to the virtues which might escape the cork, as it stood upon the mantle-piece. You see how easy it is for him who possesses the medicine, to be like him who possesses it not; the medicine itself continuing all the while perfectly irreproachable. And now, if you please, dear sir, we will take our leave of the Apology; for I have no design to meddle with the farrago of ex traneous matter which it contains, respecting gallantry, flattery, dedications, &c. &c. &c. and as to the crude and angry remarks at the end of it, on the Letter to Dr. Smith, valeant quantum valere possunt! I will trust any man with them, if, during the perusal, he will only hold in his hand the pamphlet to which they relate. The Apology is indeed, both for matter and manner, sentiment and language, so wretched a performance, that one cannot sufficiently wonder, how any person, accustomed to write, could permit such a piece to come abroad with all its imperfections on its head. I have selected those parts which afforded room for enlarging on topics useful to be discussed, and have now done with it for ever. mean and LETTER IV. on Philosophical Scepticism. art going this morning? TIM. Whither away so fast, man? Where I AM truly concerned, dear sir, to hear | A Dialogue between Thomas and Timothy that your old constitutional complaint, a depression of spirits, has of late been more than usually troublesome, and wish I may succeed in the medicine I am going to administer, if not for the removal, at least for a temporary alleviation of it. The famous Dr. Radcliffe was once called TOM. I am going to be made a Christian. TIM. The very last thing I should have dreamed of. But pray, who is to make you one? Tом. David Hume. TIM. David Hume! Why, I thought he was an Atheist. in to a person almost suffocated by an imposthumated swelling in the throat. The case required immediate relief, and the doctor sent his servant into the kitchen, to order and bring up a large hasty-pudding. taken about any one man, than about David TOм. The world never was more misUpon its arrival, falling into a violent pas- Hume. He was deemed a sworn foe to sion because it was not made to his mind, Christianity, whereas his whole life was he flung a handful of it in the fellow's face, who returned the compliment, and an enspent in its service. His works compose gagement ensued between them till the amica. They lead men gently, and gradually, altogether a complete Præparatio Evangelmunition was all spent. The sick man, who had been raised in his bed to see the battle, was forced into a violent fit of laughter; the imposthume broke, and the patient recovered. In the present case, the philosophy contained in Mr. Hume's posthumous work, styled Dialogues on Natural Religion, shall be our hasty-pudding; and I will introduce a couple of gentlemen of my acquaintance to toss a little of it backwards and forwards, for your entertainment. May the effecti prove equally salutary! as it were, to the Gospel. TIM. As how, Tom? Be pleased to take me along with you. TOм. Why, look you, here is chapter Natural Religion, p. 263. To be a philoand verse for you. Dialogues concerning sophical sceptic, is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound believing Christian." heard the wits there should say he was a TIM. When David was at Paris, I have very worthy gentleman, but had his relig |