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anity are sufficient to prove its truth to minds not bewildered by fables and superstition.

Not to mention the freedom from all religious belief, which a profane and vicious life often bestows, and which is not peculiar to any mode of worship, or to any age of the world; infidelity during the dark ages, sprung up from the corruptions of Popery on the one hand, and from the learning of the Saracens on the other. It was easy to see that Popery was mere priestcraft, and as many knew of no religion but Popery, they concluded by an easy error that religion was a mere invention of the priesthood. Those who went to study in Spain, imbibed more or less the tenets of their Arab teachers, who had thrown off the yoke of their own impostor, in order to submit more entirely to the authority of Aristotle, but who infused a portion of mystical devotion, without being themselves aware of the mixture, into the genuine Peripatetic doctrines. A tendency to infidelity arose also from some enthusiastic followers of mysticism, who reasoned from their peculiar principles with more regard to strict logic, than to the authority of revelation. Aristotle and the Church seemed firmly united by the dexterity of the schoolmen, but this league was broken by the devotion of several of his pupils, who gave more weight to the dictates of their master, than to the interpretations of his com

mentators. Astrology also contributed its share of unbelievers, who attributed the origin of all religions to the influence and position of the stars. But at the revival of letters, so great was the idolatrous respect for the ancients, as to lead men to worship their most absurd errors. Paganism, in departing from the south of Europe, had left behind an exact copy of itself in Popery; but this seemed not enough to content the lovers of antiquity, who regretted the loss of the original idols of Rome, and who would gladly have exchanged the modern saints for the ancient heroes. Plato again was possessed of ardent disciples, who would cheerfully have put themselves to death to obtain a place in his philosophic elysium. As each system of ancient philosophy was revived by men too servile to invent, yet ambitious to distinguish themselves by a separate badge, the old errors respecting the Deity revived with the false systems respecting nature. Above all, Pantheism again struck its roots in Italy, supported by men of great genius, such as Cardan and Bruno, but whose credulity was almost unbounded, and whose dark fanaticism in favour of the errors they had adopted, oftenreached the verge of insanity. England afterwards was the country where infidels flourished most in respect of numbers, but nothing can be more weak and miserable than many of their writings. Had they chosen any other subject than that of oppos

ing Christianity, such writers as Blount, Morgan, and Tindal, would never have received the slightest notice, and there are many others not much superior to them, who yet contrived to spread the utmost dismay among many well intentioned people, though now that the panic has subsided, it is no easy task to read their writings with any degree of attention. More lately, France has produced the greatest number of sceptical writers, and at one time they bore down all opposition before them. Every man who doubted that Christianity was an imposture was considered as a fool; and a solitary exception was made in favour of Priestley, who was considered as the only person of sense who continued to retain some slender belief in revelation.

IV. Though infidel writers be numerous, those who are eminent amongst them are but few. The multitude borrow and repeat with sufficient credulity what their leaders have asserted. Sceptical authors, though a very miscellaneous collection of persons, may be nearly comprehended under the following classes; Pantheists and Anti-supernaturalists, whose guide from the truth is Spinoza ; Academic sceptics, whose chief authority is Bayle ; absolute sceptics, amongst whom Hume is without comparison the first; those who employ ridicule as the test of truth, amongst whom Voltaire stands unrivalled; those who make history subservient to infidelity, and here the authority of Gibbon has the

most weight; and, lastly, those who reject Christianity, as contrary to their internal sentiments of natural religion, to the support of which class the eloquence of Rousseau has chiefly contributed.

Spinoza, the leader of the first class, assumes the highest pretensions, he talks of nothing less than demonstration, and of being infallibly led to each conclusion, by arguments which admit of no reply; and, therefore, he judges it unnecessary to attend to the arguments of his opponents. Using, he says, a geometrical method of demonstration, it was not his custom to take the trouble of detecting the errors of other men. Of Bacon, he had but a poor opinion, because he did not demonstrate every thing, like Spinoza himself, from the notion of absolute existence; "confuse loquitur et fere nihil probat; sed tantum narrat." Spinoza himself was utterly unconscious of the absurdities of Pantheism. He went on proving with perfect satisfaction that all things must be infinite, since from an infinite cause, acting according to the infinity of its nature, infinite effects must necessarily flow. It seemed never to occur to him that the existence of Baruch, or Benedict Spinoza, utterly overthrew his fine-spun theory. According to his system, every thing ought to have been infinite and necessary, instead of every thing we behold being finite and arbitrary. Even according to his own demonstration, there could have been no room for demonstration, for since all ex

istence was infinite and eternal, there could only have been one infinite mind, and one infinite thought, the unbounded consciousness of unbounded existence, which, being the intuition of all truth, must have superseded every process or train of reasoning; and amongst others, the pretended demonstrations of Spinoza.

Spinoza has not the gift of expressing his own tenets without being clumsy or confused. His affectation of mathematical accuracy, joined with a phraseology little superior to that of the schoolmen, though here and there he has a fine passage, leave to his writings little zest, except what they derive from their impiety. Hume, however, in his Treatise upon Human Nature, has given a very good summary, in a short compass, of Spinoza's philosophy, which is here subjoined. "A fundamental principle of the atheism of Spinoza, is the doctrine of the simplicity of the universe, and the unity of that substance in which he supposes both thought and matter to inhere, There is only one substance, says he, in the world; and that substance is perfectly simple and indivisible, and exists every where without any local presence. Whatever we discover externally by sensation, whatever we feel internally by reflection, all these are nothing but modifications of that one simple and necessarily existing being, and are not possessed of any separate or distinct existence. Every passion of the soul, every

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