Mr. David Hume's Essay on the Natural History of Religion, in which Dr. Hurd has so successfully employed the weapons, with which his friend Warburton had just before transfixed the brother-infidel Bolingbroke,

Yet such writers as these, such writers as Hume and Bolingbroke, (at least until their ignorance, falsehood, and absurdities had become sufficiently notorious to expose their followers to the like imputations,) it had been the fashion to extol and admire. How such writers could ever have obtained followers, may at first sight indeed appear difficult to explain. The difficulty however admits a satisfactory solution; and one which has been so justly given by a late respected writer, that I shall content myself with the mere repetition of what he has said upon the subject. Having remarked, that, in his Treatise of Human Nature, Mr. Hume's vain love of

things, he would refer him at once to Mr. Hume's Natural History of Religion. (Nares's Bampton Lectures, p. 485.) And Dr. Maclaine says of the same work, in his Letters to Mr. Soame Jenyns, that perhaps no book is more adapted to shew the unspeakable advantages of a divine Revelation,

* This work has been here, agreeably to the hitherto com. monly viewed opinion, ascribed to Bishop Hurd. But, from the Letters of Bishop Warburton lately published, it now appears, that it was the production of his own pen, and received only some additional colouring from his literary friend. -See a curious account of this transaction in the Letters of a jate Eminent Prelate, pp. 239, 240.

singularity had led him to endeavour to involve even the fundamental principles of geometry in confusion; but that finding it impossible by his paradoxes on such a subject to rouse the attention of the public, he turned himself to moral paradoxes; this writer goes on to shew, that Mr. Hume in doing so had calculated rightly, for that these," when men begin to look about for arguments in vindication of impiety, debauchery and injustice, become wonderfully interesting, and can hardly fail of a powerful and numerous patronage. The corrupt judge; the prostituted courtier; the statesman, who enriches himself by the plunder and blood of his country; the pettifogger, who fattens on the spoils of the fatherless and widow; the oppressor, who, to pamper his beastly appetite, abandons the deserving peasant to beggary and despair; the hypocrite; the debauchee; the gamester; the blasphemer;-prick up their ears when they are told, that a celebrated author has written a book full of such comfortable doctrines as the following: That justice is not a natural but an artificial virtue, depending wholly on the arbitrary institutions of men, and previous to the establishment of civil society not at all incumbent:That moral, intellectual, and corporeal virtue, are all of the same kind; in other words, that to want honesty, to want understanding, and to want a leg, are equally the objects of moral dis

approbation, and that it is no more a man's duty to be grateful or pious, than to have the genius of Homer, or the strength and beauty of Achilles: -that every human action is necessary, and could not have been different from what it is:that when we speak of power as an attribute of any being, God himself not excepted, we use words without meaning:-that we can form no idea of power, nor of any being endued with any power, much less of one endued with infinite power: and that we can never have reason to be lieve that any object or quality of an object exists, of which we cannot form an idea :-that it is unreasonable to believe God to be infinitely wise and good, while there is any evil or disorder in the universe; and that we have no good reason to think that the universe proceeds from a cause :-that the external material world does not exist; and that if the external world be once called in doubt as to its existence, we shall be at a loss to find arguments by which we may prove the being of God, or any of his attributes:-that those who believe any thing certainly are fools:-that adultery must be practised, if men would obtain all the advantages of life; that, if generally practised, it would soon cease to be scandalous; and that, if practised secretly and frequently, it would by degrees come to be thought no crime at all:*

"My inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals is of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, income

that the question concerning the substance of the soul is unintelligible:-that matter and motion may often be regarded as the cause of

parably the best." Hume's Life, p. vii.-The passage, re. ferred to above, affords an excellent specimen of the writer's qualifications as a moral instructor. And yet it is of such a man as this, that such a man as Adam Smith has delivered the following testimony:-" I have always considered Mr. Hume, both in his life time and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a PERFECTLY WISE AND VIRTUOUS MAN, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit."Letter from Adam Smith, L.L. D. to W. Strahan, Esq. annexed to Hume's Life, and prefixed to the late edition of Hume's History of England.-For the reception, which such a declaration as this so amply merited, I refer the reader to Bishop Horne's Letter to Dr. Adam Smith: in which, as well as in the Letters on Infidelity at large, he will find the ablest and most incontestable confutation of Hume and his infidel associates.

In truth, the extract from Hume on the subject of adultery appeared to me so monstrous, that, with some doubts of Dr. Beattie's accuracy, I turned to the original to ascertain its fairness, and there found the following justification of the reporter:-"It is needless to dissemble. The consequence of a very free commerce between the sexes, and of their living much together, will often terminate in intrigues and gallantry. We must sacrifice somewhat of the useful, if we be very anxious to obtain all the agreeable qualities; and cannot pretend to reap alike every advantage. Instances of licence daily multiplying will weaken the scandal with the one sex, and teach the other by degrees to adopt the famous maxim of La Fontaine, with regard to female infidelity; that if one knows it, it is but a small matter; if one knows it not, it is nothing.” (Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 394.) Again (p. 255) he con

thought-that the soul of man becomes every different moment a different being, so that the actions I performed last year, or yesterday, of this morning, whether virtuous or vicious, are no

tends, that the necessary "combination of the parents for the subsistence of their young is that alone which requires the virtue of chastity or fidelity to the married bed. Without such a utility, it will readily be owned (he asserts) that such a virtue would never be thought of." And, this being a favourite subject with this writer, whose Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, is boasted of by himself as his best work, he proceeds to enlarge upon it in an additional note, (p. 490) in which he calls in the aid of Greek to sustain him in his philosophic profligacy, and referring all notions of virtue and vice to public utility, asks with an air of final triumph,- "And indeed to what other purpose than that of utility do all the ideas of chastity and modesty serve ?”— This is the PERFECTLY WISE AND VIRTUOUS MAN of Adam Smith.

Dr. Aikin's remarks (in the General Biography,) on this extraordinary language of Dr. Smith, although not pressing upon the parts of Hume's writings here adverted to, deserve to be noticed. "We may (he says) reasonably demur to Dr. Smith's moral estimate, in attributing the perfection of virtue to a man, whose leading principle was, by his own confession, SELFISH, (the acquisition of literary fame,) and who never seems to have made any of those sacrifices of inte rest and inclination to public good, in which virtuous action chiefly consists. Further, whatever degree of freedom of dis cussion may be justifiable, with the benefit of mankind in view; it may be doubted, whether a mere fondness for speculation, or a love of philosophic applause, will morally excuse a writer, for sporting with opinions, which are commonly held of the highest importance to human welfare."