A

FRAGMENT, &c.

I

MUST confefs myself to be one of those who brought with me to the perufal of the late publifhed volumes of Lord Bolingbroke, a very high prejudice to the doctrines faid to have been eftablished in them; but at the fame time, can as truly affert, that I had the higheft, and strongest prepoffeffion, in favour of the abilities of the author. Such, indeed, was this prepoffeffion, that it might, I think, be a fufficient warrant of a man's candour against any prejudice whatever: and it is in the true fpirit of this candour that I declare, upon the perufal, I have found my prepoffeffions greatly abated, and my prejudices not in the leaft removed.

COULD it therefore be fuppofed, that all mankind were alike able to try the cause of truth, and to form their judgment on the weight of argument and evidence only, I think there could be no danger in leaving the decifion of this matter upon his lordship's own reasoning, without any attempt to answer him. But when we confider how very weak the abilities of mankind in general are, in difquifitions of this nature; how much weaker they are rendered for this purpose by want of due attention; and, laftly, how apt they are to carry any little partiality which they have pre-conceived before the examination of a caufe, up to the final decifion of it in their minds, it may poffibly be very dangerous to the fociety to fuffer fuch pernicious doctrines to stand unobjected to with fa great a name at their head. Many, I am convinced, will think the authority of this name alone fufficient to eftablish their own belief upon, without any farther inquiry at all. Many others will imagine very little inquiry necessary, and, tho' they did not intirely acquiefce in taking his word, will be eafily cajoled with his reasons, which, however little they may have of fubstance, have much of the fpecious or

naments

naments of wit and language, with all the allurements of novelty both of style and manner; and, finally, with an appearance, at leaft, of reading very fingular and extenfive.

FROM which laft particular may arise a third fort very worthy of receiving fome affiftance on this occafion; fuch, I mean, as have not the leaft inclination to his lordship's doctrines, nor would, indeed, affent to them on the authority of any man breathing, who may yet have wanted leifure or opportunity fufficient to provide themselves with a proper fund of knowledge, to give a ready anfwer to various affertions which will occur in the works now under confideration, and which, tho' they have the worst of tendencies, have in reality themselves no better fupport (and not always fo good a one) than fome very weak and flender hypothefes, and are at other times built on the revival of old chimerical principles. which have been confuted and exploded long ago.

Now, to all these indifferent conftitutions, we shall endeavour to apply our feveral antidotes. And here, luckily for

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us,

us, we are provided with an argument which muft moft effectually filence thofe who are the moft difficult of all others to be ufually dealt with in the way of reafoning fuch are the perfons I mentioned in the first clafs, who believe from authority only, and who have not yet, with the schools, given up the irrefiftible argu-. ment of, he Himself faid it.

THE force of this argument, however, even in the days when it flourifhed moft, drew all its ftrength from a fuppofition that, if he himself faid it, he himself believed it for, if it could have been proved of Ariftotle that he had afferted pro and can, and had with the fame clearnefsaffirmed in one part of his works the fame thing to be, and in another the fame thing not to be, none of his scholars would have known which he believed, and all others would, perhaps, have thought that he had no belief at all in, nor indeed any knowledge of, the matter.

IF, therefore, his lordship fhall appear to have made ufe of this duplicity of affertion, and that not in one or two, but in many inftances, may we not draw the like conclufions? Luckily, perhaps, for his lordship,

fordfhip, we may not be driven to the fame abfolute degree of uncertainty as must have refulted from the cafe of Ariftotle, as I have put it above; fince our noble author himfelf feems to have left us a kind of clue, which will fufficiently lead to the difcovery of his meaning, and will fhew us, as often as he is pleased to affert both fides of a contradiction, on which fide we are to believe him.

AND here I fhall premise two cautions; one of which I fhall borrow from the rules eftablished among writers; the reafonableness of the other I fhall endeavour to evince, from a rule given us by one of the greatest lawyers whom this kingdom ever bred.

THE firft is, that of interpreting the fenfe of an author with the utmost can dour, so as not to charge him with any grofs and invidious meaning, when his words are fufceptible of a much more benign and favourable fenfe.

THE fecond is, the obfervation formed upon the works of judge Littleton by lord chief juftice Coke: this is, that whenever that great lawyer is pleased to L 6

put