politics." And Lysicles immediately subjoins, "How many long-headed men do I know, both in the court-end and the city, with five times Plato's sense, who care not one straw, what notions their sons have of God or virtue.”—Berkeley's Works, vol. i. pp. 369, 370. The versatility, also, with which this noble writer can, at one time, affect grave and learned research, and at another, as it may suit his purpose, profess to hold all such pedantic argumentation in contempt, is most happily illustrated, in the same admirable treatise, by the picture which is there drawn, of the Proteus shiftings and modifications of the free-thinking tribe." When one of these has got a ring of disciples around him, his method is, to exclaim against prejudice, and recommend thinking and reasoning; giving to understand that himself is a man of deep researches and close argument, one who examines impartially and concludes warily. The same man, in other company, if he chance to be pressed with reason, shall laugh at logic, and assume the lazy supine airs of a fine gentleman, a wit, a railleur, to avoid the dryness of a regular and exact enquiry. This double face of the Minute Philosopher is of no small use to propagate and maintain his notions. Though to me it seems a plain case, that if a fine gentleman will shake off all authority, and appeal from religion to reason, unto reason he must go." (pp. 460, 461.) But the truth is, as the same writer again

remarks, (p. 639.) " that in the present age thinking is more talked of but less practised than in ancient times; and that since the revival of learning men have read much and wrote much, but thought (comparatively) little: insomuch that, with us, to think closely and justly is the least part of a learned man, and none at all of a polite man. The free-thinkers indeed make great pretensions to thinking, and yet they shew but little exactness in it. A lively man, and what the world calls a man of sense, are often destitute of this talent, which is not a mere gift of nature, but must be improved and perfected, by much attention and exercise on very different subjects; a thing of more pains and time than the hasty men of parts in our age care to take.”

What time our man of parts employed for this purpose, may easily be inferred from the circumstance, of his having commenced his philosophical investigations at the age of forty, after a youth revelled in the most voluptuous and dissipating enjoyments, and a manhood distracted by the most tumultuous political agitations. But it is full time to have done with him; I shall therefore only add to what I have said upon so unworthy a subject, by referring the reader, who can have any curiosity to know more of such a man, to the characters that have been given of him, by Chesterfield and by Blair. The latter concludes a very qualified commendation of his style, by observing,

that in his matter there is. " hardly any thing to commend; that in his reasonings, for the most part, he is flimsy and false; in his political writings factious; in what he calls his philosophical ones, irreligious and sophistical in the highest degree." "-Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric, vol. i. Lect. xix. p. 282. See also the observations in Lect. xv. p. 211. of the same volume. The former gives such an account of him, upon the whole, as must be edifying, to the young reader particularly; who will thereby be completely let into the secret of such men, by one of themselves; and will have the benefit of observing, how much even a libertine, when in cold blood, can be shocked by libertinism. One or two passages I cannot avoid transcribing, as proving how greatly, even from the testimony of his warmest admirer, Lord Bolingbroke is found deficient in every thing that is truly valuable, either in a philosopher or in a man. His noble panegyrist, in recommending to his son to study the manner, that would best enable him "to seduce and to impose," proposes to him Lord Bolingbroke's style and mode of writing, for his imitation, in direct opposition to works of learning and sound reasoning, which he particularly decries: and after pressing upon him, again and again, the repeated perusal of Lord Bolingbroke's writings, he assigns as his reason for so doing, that he wishes him "to lay aside all thoughts of all that dull fellows call solid,

and exert his utmost care to acquire what people of fashion call shining."-Chest. Letters, vol. iii. p. 151. And in another place, where he speaks of the whole of that unhappy Lord's character, he is obliged, though with much softening, to describe him as "a most mortifying instance of the violence of human passions, and of the weakness of" (what he chuses to call) "the most exalted human reason." "His youth (he says) was distinguished by all the tumult and storm of pleasures, in which he most licentiously triumphed, disdaining all decorum. His fine imagination has often been heated and exhausted with his body, in celebrating and deifying the prostitute of the night; and his convivial joys were pushed to all the extravagancy of frantic Bacchanals. Those passions were interrupted but by a stronger, ambition. The former impaired both his constitution and his character, but the latter destroyed both his fortune and his reputation." Vol. ii. p. 328.

Such was the Pythagorean institution of this great philosopher, who was to be qualified by these intense lucubrations, to communicate new lights to mankind, and to improve the world by a juster set of notions in morals and philosophy.. The noble characterizer, after glossing over these; hideous enormities, and contrasting with them what he is pleased to represent as splendid qualities, is compelled, after all, to conclude, in words no less applicable to the insincere and unprinci

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pled writer, than to his subject: Upon the whole, of this extraordinary man, what can we say, but, alas, poor human nature!"-Poor indeed, when it presumptuously rejects those aids which heaven designed to minister to its weakness, and to rectify its corruption.

In a course of observations, in which I have insensibly been drawn to enlarge at so much length, upon the subjects of free-thinking and scepticism, it is impossible to forget David Hume. The ideas suggested in the progress of it, bring into view, by necessary association, this chief of modern sophists: who, whether the precedence be determined by the boldness of impiety, the contempt of truth, the perplexities of disputation, or the inconsistencies and contradictions in reasoning, is undoubtedly entitled to the first place in the list of British infidels. The leading subject also of the discussion, in which we are at present engaged, naturally summons him to our tribunal. For, as his philosophic forerunner, Bolingbroke, has bestowed much unprofitable labour on the questions of polytheism and the divine unity, the same questions solicit the minutest investigations of this author, especially in his treatise upon the * Natural History of Religion; a title,

* On this treatise Warburton makes the following observations, in a letter to his friend Hurd. "The Essay is to establish an atheistic naturalism, like Bolingbroke: and he goes upon one of Bolingbroke's capital arguments, that idolatry