that our whole species should be irresistibly possessed with the same useless and hurtful delusion: nor that he would have universally impressed their minds with a false notion of an account to be hereafter given of all their thoughts, words, and actions. Had he wanted them to conform themselves to his general scheme in the government of the world, he could have brought that about, and certainly would, by any other means, rather than by suffering them to be misled into a series of groundless imaginations and delusions. Nor would the infinitely-wise Creator have given us these vast and insatiate desires after endless improvement in knowledge, this reach of thought, which expatiates through creation, and extends itself beyond the limits of the universe; nor would he have fired our souls with the prospect of an endless existence for carrying on those improvements, only to curse us with a cruel disappointment. Nor would he have made the human soul for himself; fixed its desires and wishes upon the enjoyment of his own perfections; drawn and engaged it to love, admire, and breathe after the fruition of him; raised it to this lofty height of ambition only to throw it down, baffled and disappointed, into a state of insensibility and annihilation. Nor would he have formed the mind with a capacity for continual advances in goodness, and nearer approaches to himself, only to give us an opportunity of fitting ourselves for a future state of perfection and happiness, to which, according as we approached nearer and nearer, we should approach nearer and nearer to the total disappointment of all our labours and all our hopes, and find the whole at last to have been no other than a golden dream.

The only reason why any one has recourse to artifice and deceit, is, that he has not sagacity enough to gain his ends by proceeding in a fair and open manner. Whoever is master of his scheme, has no need of tricks and arts to compass his designs. And who will dare to affirm, that Infinite Wisdom had no way of bringing about his important designs for the good of his universe, but by deluding his reasonable creatures, or suffering them to be universally deluded, which is the same, into the belief of a future Utopia? We know of nothing in nature analogous to this. Whatever our species, or any other, are liable to be

mistaken in, is owing to the mere imperfection of sense and understanding, unavoidably in beings of inferior rank: but we have no idea of a whole species irresistibly led into a positive error, especially of such consequences as that of the expectation of a future state, if it were an error. And here it is highly worthy of remark, that it is not the weak, the short-sighted, and the ignorant part of the human kind, that are most inclinable to the persuasion of the immortality of the soul, as might have been expected were it an error; but quite otherwise. While the most sordid, degenerate, and barbarous of the species have overlooked, or not been sufficiently persuaded of it; the wisest and greatest of mankind have been believers and teachers of this important doctrine; which shows it in a light wholly unaccountable, if it be supposed an error.

The irregular distribution of happiness and misery in the present state renders it highly probable, that this is only a part, not the whole of the Divine economy with respect to our species.

Do we not find, that in the present state, the highest de. gree of goodness is, in some cases, attended with the greatest unhappiness? For though virtue must, in general, be owned to be the likeliest means for procuring happiness in the present, as well as future state; yet there are numerous exceptions to this rule. I appeal to the experience of every man, who from a course of thoughtlessness and libertinism, has had the happiness to be brought to some concern about the interests of futurity, whether he does not now suffer a thousand times more of the anguish of remorse from a reflexion of the least failure, than he did formerly for the grossest enormities. If so, it is evident, that improvement in virtue brings with it such a delicacy of sentiment, as must often break in upon the tranquility of the mind, and produce an uneasiness, to which the hardened sinner is wholly a stranger. So that in this instance we see, that virtue is not in the present life its own reward, which infers the necessity of a future reward in a life to come.

Nor is the permission of persecution or tyranny, by which the best of mankind always suffer the most severely, while wickedness reigns triumphant, at all reconcilable with the goodness of the universal Governor, upon any footing but

that of a future state, wherein the sufferings, to which the mere incapacity of resisting, or the strict adherence to truth, has exposed multitudes of the species, of the best of the species, shall be suitably made up for. When an Alexander, or a Cæsar, is let loose upon his fellow creatures, when he pours desolation, like a deluge, over one side of the globe, and plunges half the human species in a sea of their own blood, what must be the whole amount of the calamity suffered by millions, involved in the various woes of war, of which great numbers must be of the tender sex, and helpless age! What must be the terror of those who dread the hour when the merciless savage, habituated to scenes of cruelty, will give orders to his hellhounds to be gin the general massacre? What the carnage when it is begun? Men slaughtered in heaps in the streets and fields; women ravished and murdered before their husband's faces; children dashed against the walls in sight of their parents; cities wrapt in flames; the shouts of the conquerors; the groans of the dying; the ghastly visages of the dead; universal horror, misery, and desolation. All to gain a spot of ground, an useless addition of revenue, or even the visionary satisfaction of a sounding name, to swell the pride of a wretched worm, who will himself quickly sink among the heaps his fury has made, himself a prey to the universal leveller of mankind. And what is all history full of, but such horrid scenes as these? Has not ambition or superstition set mankind, in all ages and nations, in arms against one another; turned this world into a general shambles, and fattened every soil with slaughtered thous

ands?

The blood thirsty inquisitor, who has grown grey in the service of the mother of abominations, who has long made it his boast, that none of her priests has brought se many hundreds of victims to her horrid altars as himself; the venerable butcher sits on his bench. The helpless innocent is brought bound from his dungeon, where no voice of comfort is heard, no friendly eye glances compassion; where damp and stench, perpetual darkness and horrid silence reign, except when broken by the echo of his groans; where months and years have been languished out in want of all that nature requires; an outcast from family, from friends, from ease and affluence,

and a pleasant habitation, from the blessed light of the world. He kneels; he weeps; he begs for pity. He sues for mercy by the love of God, and by the bowels of humanity. Already cruelly exercised by torture, nature shudders at the thought of repeating the dreadful suffer. ings, under which she had almost sunk before. He protest his innocence. He calls heaven to witness for him; and implores the Divine power to touch the flinty heart, which all his cries and tears cannot move. The unfeeling monster talks of heresy, and profanation of his cursed superstition. His furious zeal for priestly power and a worldly church, stops his ear against the melting voice of a fellow creature prostrate at his feet. And the terror necessary to be kept up among the blinded votaries, renders cruelty a proper instrument of religious slavery. The dumb executioners strip him of his rags. The rack is prepared. The ropes are extended. The wheels are driven round. The bloody whip and hissing pincers tear the quivering flesh from the bones. The pullies raise him to the roof. The sinews crack. The joints are torn asunder. The pavement swims in blood. The hardened minister of infernal cruelty sits unmoved. His heart has

long been steeled against compassion. He listens to the groans, he views the strong convulsive pangs, when nature shrinks, and struggles, and agonising pain rages in every pore. He counts the heart-rending shrieks of a fellow creature in torment, and enjoys his anguish with the calmness of one who views a philosophical experiment! The wretched victim expires before him. He feels no movement, but of vexation at being deprived of his prey, before he had sufficiently glutted his hellish fury. He rises. No thunder roars. No lightning blasts him. He goes on to fill up the measure of his wickedness. He lives out his days in ease and luxury. He goes down to the grave gorged with the blood of the innocent; nor does the earth cast up again his cursed carcase.

Can any one think such scenes would be suffered to be acted in a world, at the head of which sits enthroned in supreme majesty a Being of infinite goodness and perfect justice, who has only to give his word, and such monsters would be in an instant driven by his thunder to the centre; can any one think that such proceedings would be suffered

to pass unpunished, if there was not a life to come, a day appointed for rewarding every man according to his works?

Some have thought, that part of the arguments for the immortality of the human soul, being applicable to inferior natures, might be said to prove too much and therefore to prove nothing. For that the unequal allotment of happiness and misery among the brute creatures seems to require, that those who have suffered unjustly in this state, should have such sufferings compensated to them in some future existence.

This difficulty is easily got over, if we consider, first, that the sufferings of the inferior creatures are, so to speak, only momentary; whereas foreboding fears and cutting reflections increase human miseries a thousand fold; which greatly abates the necessity of a future existence to make up for what they may have suffered here. Besides, justice does not require, that any species of creatures be wholly exempted from suffering; but only, that, upon the whole, all creatures have it in their power to be gainers by their existence, that is, that they have in their power a greater share of happiness than misery. If any one thinks it most probable, that all creatures, once introduced into existence, are to be continued in being, till they deserve, by perverse wickedness, to be annihilated; and that, as material substances, which seem to us to perish, are only dissipated into small invisible parts, so the spirits of all living creatures, at death, are only removed into another state; if any one, I say, thinks he sees reason to believe the immortality, in a succession of states, of all living creatures, I do not see that my subject obliges me to confute such an opinion.

Though the distinguishing character of man is reason, it is evident, that reason does not in general prevail in the present state; but on the contrary, vice, and folly, and madness, seem to be most of what this world was made for, if it be the whole of man. And surely, such an ecoomy is not worthy to be ascribed to an infinitely wise C ator. Is it a design worthy of infinite Goodness to p oduce into being a species to be continued for several thousand years, to harrass and massacre one another, and then to sink again into the earth, and fatten it with their carcases? The Creator can never be supposed to have produced be,