insignificant and vague, there can be no harm. in disposing of it as we please: that there can be no more crime in turning a few ounces of blood out of their course (that is, in cutting one's throat) than in turning the waters of a river out of their channel. What is murder? It is nothing more than turning a little blood out of its way. And so the Irishman said, by the same figure of rhetoric, that perjury was nothing more than kissing a book, or, as he worded it, smacking the calveskin. This is the sage Mr. Hume! whom Dr. Adam Smith delivers to the world, after his death, as a perfect character; while a man of plain sense, who takes things as they are, would think it impossible that any person, who is not out of his mind, should argue at this rate. Mr. Hume seems to me to have borrowed from the school of the old Pyrrhonists much of that system which he is supposed to have invented. They made all things indifferent, and doubted of every thing, that there might be nothing true or real left to disturb them. The chief good they aimed at in every thing, was what they called lapai, a state of undisturbance or tranquillity, in which the mind cares for nothing: and it was the ambition of Mr. Hume to be

thought

thought to have lived and died in this state; but by all accounts his alagaa was not quite perfect*. His object was undoubtedly the same with that of the Pyrrhonists, and he pursues it by a like way of reasoning. The speculations of these men were so copious, that there is matter enough left for another Mr. Hume to set himself up with, and pass for an original. Of all the sects of antiquity this was the most unreasonable; though pretending to more wisdom than all the rest. That, which was but folly under Heathenism, turns into desperation and madness under the light and truth of Christianity. Where all was blind tradition, or wild conjecture, there might be some excuse for fixing to nothing; but to affect undisturbance, after what is now revealed, concerning death and judgment, and heaven and hell, is to try how far a

Pliny the Natural Historian has rightly observed, that Philosophers, through the affectation of apathy, divested themselves of all human affections; that this was the case with Diogenes the Cynic, Pyrrho, Heraclitus, and Timon of Athens; the last of whom actually sunk into a professed hatred of all mankind. "Exit hic animi tenor aliquando " in rigorem quemdam, torvitatemque naturæ duram et in"flexibilem; adfectusque humanos adimit, quales apathes "Græci vocant, multos ejus generis experti." Nat. Hist.

lib. vii. c. 19.

6

man can argue himself out of his senses. What angels may think of such a person, I do not inquire but how must evil spirits look upon that man, who sleeps or laughs over the things at which they tremble; and then calls himself a Philosopher!

Of the Letters on Infidelity, the first half is employed on Mr. David Hume; the latter half on a more modern adventurer; who, to be revenged on the Bishops of this Church, put together a miscellany of objections against the Scripture and the Christian religion. The Right Reverend Bench had procured an act of Parliament against the Sunday-Clubs, which met together on the evening of the Sabbath-day, to indulge themselves, and corrupt an audience, with blasphemous disquisitions and disputations. For thus cruelly disturbing the amusements of infidelity, the Bishops are represented as the vilest of persecutors: whips, tortures, racks, and all the implements of the Holy Office, are introduced to confirm the accusation; from all which a stranger to the case might suppose it a common thing with the Prelates of this country, to break the bones of Infidels, or roast them alive and all this is for nothing else, but that they had seasonably and wisely provided, that

the

the Christian religion, in a Christian country, should not be trampled under foot, upon the Sabbath-day.

The objections this man hath brought together are very well taken off: but if Christians are bound to answer, so long as infidels will object, who never wish to be satisfied, and are probably incapable of being so, their lot would be rather hard, and much of their time unprofitably spent. The Gentlemen of the Long Robe attend the court, not to answer the scruples which felons may entertain about the principles of justice, but to administer the law otherwise their work would never be done and it is the business of the clergy to preach the Gospel to the people: it was the part of God, who gave the word, to prove it to the world by prophecies and miracles. The prophecies are as strong as ever; some of them more so than formerly and miracles are not to be repeated for proof, after the world hath once been persuaded. All is then left to testimony and education. Before Moses gave the law, he showed signs and wonders: but, when the law was once received, parents were to tell their children, and confirm the truth by the memorials that were left of it. It therefore lies upon our adversaries

to show, how it came to pass, on any of their principles, that men like themselves, as much disposed to make objections, should receive the Scripture as the word of God in the several nations of the world, and receive it at the peril of their lives a fact which they cannot deny, Let them also try to account for it, on their own principles, how the Jews have been strolling about the world for seventeen hundred years, as witnesses to the Scripture, and to the sentence therein passed upon themselves. Till they can do these things, it is nothing but an evasion to cavil about words and passages; a certain mark of prejudice and perverseness. They know they cannot deny the whole; but, as they must appear to be doing something, they flatter their own pride by keeping up a skirmish, and perplex weak people, by raising difficulties about the parts. This was the expedient on which Mr. Voltaire bestowed so much labour. It does not appear to me that he really thought the facts of Christianity to be false; but that his vanity and perverseness tempted him to ridicule the Bible, without denying in his mind that God was the author of it in fact, that he was a Theomachist, who hated the truth, knowing it to be such, and and braved the authority of Heaven itself: