ticular happiness, we can no longer worship him as our all-bounteous parent: there is no meaning in the term. The idea of his

malevolence (an impiety I tremble to write) must succeed. We have nothing left but our fears, and those too, vain; for whither can they lead but to despair and the sad desire of annihilation? "If then, justice and goodness be not the same in God as in our ideas, we mean nothing when we say that God is necessarily just and good; and for the same reason, it may as well be said that we know not what we mean when, according to Dr. Clarke, (Evid. 26th) we affirm that he is necessarily a wise and intelligent Being." What then can lord Bolingbroke mean, when he says every thing shows the wisdom of God; and yet adds, every thing does not show in like manner the goodness of God conformably to our ideas of this attribute in either?-By wisdom he must only mean, that God knows and employs the fittest means to a certain end, no matter what that end may be: this indeed is a proof of knowledge and intelligence; but these alone do not constitute wisdom; the word implies the application of these fittest means to the best and kindest end; or who will call it true wisdom? Even amongst ourselves, it is not

held as such. All the attributes, then, that he seems to think apparent in the constitution of things, are his unity, infinity, eternity, and intelligence; from no one of which, I boldly affirm, can result any duty of gratitude or adoration incumbent on mankind, more than if He and all things round him were produced, as some have dared to think, by the necessary working of eternal matter in an infinite vacuum: for what does it avail to add intelligence to those other physical attributes, unless that intelligence be directed, not only to the good of the whole, but also to the good of every individual of which that whole is composed.

It is therefore no impiety, but the direct contrary, to say that human justice, and the other virtues, which are indeed only various applications of human benevolence, bear some resemblance to the moral attributes of the supreme Being: it is only by means of that resemblance, we conceive them in him, or their effects in his works: it is by the same means ouly, that we comprehend those physical attributes which his lordship allows to be demonstrable: how can we form any notion of his unity, but from that unity of which we ourselves are conscious? How of his existence, but from our own conscious

wess of existing? How of his power, but of that power which we experience in ourselves? yet neither lord Bolingbroke nor any other man, that thought on these subjects, ever believed that these our ideas were real and full representations of these attributes in the divinity. They say, He knows; they do not mean that he compares ideas which he acquired from sensation, and draws conclusions from them. They say, He acts; they do not mean by impulse, nor as the soul acts on an organized body. They say, He is omnipotent and eternal; yet on what are their ideas founded, but on our own narrow conceptions of space and duration, prolonged beyond the bounds of place and time? Either therefore there is a resemblance and analogy (however imperfect and distant) between the attributes of the divinity and our conceptions of them, or we cannot have any conceptions of them at all. He allows we ought to reason from earth, that we do know, to heaven, which we do not know: how can we do so, but by that affinity, which appears between one and the other?

In vain then does my lord attempt to ridicule the warm but melancholy imagination of Mr. Wollaston, in that fine soliloquy: "Must

I then bid my last farewell to these walks when I close these lids, and yonder blue regions, and all this scene darken upon me and go out? Must I then only serve to furnish dust to be mingled with the ashes of these herds and plants, or with this dirt under my feet? Have I been set so far above them in life, only to be levelled with them in death?"* No thinking head, no heart, that has the least sensibility, but must have made the same reflection; or at least must feel, not the beauty alone, but the truth of it, when he hears it from the mouth of another. Now what reply will lord Bolingbroke make to these questions which are put to him, not only by Wollaston, but by all mankind? He will tell you, that we, that is, the animals, vegetables, stones, and other clods of earth, are all connected in one immense design, that we are all dramatis personæ, in different characters, and that we were not made for ourselves, but for the action: that it is foolish, presumptuous, impious, and profane to murmur against the Almighty Author of this drama, when we feel ourselves unavoidably unhappy. On the contrary, we ought to rest our head on the soft pillow of resignation, on the

Religion of Nature delineated, sect. ix. p. 209, quarto.

immoveable rock of tranquillity; secure, that if our pains and afflictions grow violent indeed, an immediate end will be put to our miserable being, and we shall be mingled with the dirt under our feet, a thing common to all the animal kind; and of which he who complains does not seem to have been set by his reason so far above them in life, as to deserve not to be mingled with them in death. Such is the consolation his philosophy gives us, and such the hope on which his tranquillity was founded."*

CIII.

TO DR. WHARTON.

Sunday, April 9, 1758.

I AM equally sensible of your affliction,† and of your kindness, that made you think of me. at such a moment; would to God I could lessen the one, or requite the other with

The reader, who would choose to see the argument, as lord Bolingbroke puts it, will find it in the 4th volume of his philosophical works, sect. x. 41. His ridicule on Wollaston is in the 50th section of the same volume.

+ Occasioned by the death of his eldest (and at the time his only)

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