raigned as intolerant; while he artfully imputes its operations to the bigotry and malignity of the Jews. He views the Hebrew nation only on one fide, to pick out their faults, and make them odious; that when he has brought you to despise their characters, you may despise their laws and religion with them. If the people of God have an enemy, Voltaire always finds in that enemy fomething congenial with himfelf. He therefore takes part with the Egyptians against the Jews, with the Heathens against the Chrif tians, with the Sectaries against the Church, with the Heretics against the Scripture, and with Atheists against God; having exprefsly defended the Atheist Vanini. He is as fond of levelling in learning as in politics. By making unjust associations, and putting things good and bad together, he leaves no value nor fuperiority in any thing. The Bible makes known to us the existence of angels: but what then? Kings had their couriers; fo men thought they could do no less than give them to their deities. Mercury and Iris were the meffengers of Heathenifm; the Perfians had their Peris; the Greeks had their dæmons, &c. In this way he puts truth and error together, till the mind of an unlearned reader, having no touchstone, is confounded and believes nothing. If Heathens fpeak with falfehood and malice, he uses their authority if they fay nothing, but treat Christianity with contemptuous filence, he uses that alfo; and thence infers, that the facts of Christianity are of no credit; for had they been true, the Heathens must have known them, and had they known them they must have confeffed them. But why fo? When Mr. Voltaire himself knew them without confeffing them? See with what contemptu ous indifference Feftus, an Heathen, who was upon the fpot, at the time when the facts of the Gospel were fresh, speaks of "one "Jefus who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive." The penmen of the Scriptures, being above all fears and fufpicions, make no fecret of thefe things; but fhew us without referve how ignorant and foolish people despised and neglected the Gospel then, as they do now. : Mr. Voltaire is as unfound in his metaphyfics as in his divinity. He tells us the belief of the exiftence of the human foul depends only on revelation; and confequently, when revelation is fet afide, man is left without a foul. So far as the foul of man is a fubject of philofophy, men difpute about that as about other things. He collects their fophifms and contradictions, and puts them toge ther, till the whole fubject appears ridiculous; and in this way he rids himself of every thing ferious; as Bayle, his master, did before him. He is very copious and frequent as a commentator on the Bible, on which few writers have beftowed more attention: but his method is this; he takes a paffage of the Scripture which he distorts and perverts by every art of mifrepresentation; and when he thinks the Christian reader is entangled past recovery, he finifhss all with a pious fneer-" but, these are things we must not look into God does not write like us weak mortals-his wifdom is furrounded with clouds, obfcure and refpectable." However, witty as he thinks himself, his wits often forfake him, and he talks like a child or an idiot, when he gives his opinion of the doctrines or inftitutions of Chriftianity. The fall of man, he fays, is the plaister we put upon all the maladies of the foul and the body: as if we'fhould fay, the fall of a man from a ladder, is the plaister we put upon his broken leg. Speaking about baptifin, he tells us, "men who are always governed by their fenfes, eafily imagine, that when the body is wafhed, the foul is wafhed." But this is the very thing, which men who are governed by their fenfes never did imagine, nor ever can; because the washing of the foul is not an object of fenfe but of faith. To make light of this facrament, he feigns abfurd difficulties in regard to the administration of it; as, whether a perfon under neceffity in the deserts of Arabia might be baptized with fand; or, if there were no clear water, whether he might be baptifed with muddy water. Such criticifms. as thefe naturally remind us, that the devil never loved holy water. It is an undeniable fact, that the world is full of wickedness: but if we complain of it, as arifing from the corruption of nature, Mr. Voltaire always finds religion worse than nature. Men are found to eat one another. How favage is the practice! What a difgrace to human nature! But, not at all, fays Mr. Voltaire; it arose from the custom of hunting, and hunting is natural to man. When men have hunted down stags and bears, they eat them; even fo, when they had hunted down their enemies, how natural to eat them too! But if you hold it abfolutely wicked and deteftable for man to eat the flesh of man, he finds an order for it in the Bible. In Ezek. xxxix. he hears God promifing his people, that they fhall eat, not only the horses of their enemies, but their enemies themselves, even their horfemen and foldiers: then he adds, cela eft pofitif. But in the paffage he refers to, thofe words are not addreffed to the people: they are part of a proclamation to every feathered fowl and every beaft of the field, to come and devour the flesh of the flain. The man who does not fee the wifdom of God in the Bible, can never be expected to fee much of his providence in the affairs of this world: he is accordingly very ingenious in his ways of evading it. There is an accurfed malady, unknown to the Heathens of antiquity, with which Chriftians are vifited for their wickednefs; and dreadful havock it makes among the species. He that can impute all this to chance, might as well believe that gibbets grow naturally out of the brakes upon Hounslow-heath. But Mr. Voltaire proves it never could be intended for a judgment, because it first began in fome fmall islands, where men and women lived together in perfect fimplicity and innocence. Where and from whom he learned this piece of hiftory, he does not tell us: but we may suppose, it was where he learned to read the prophet Ezekiel. The religion of Mr. Voltaire, by which I mean his fpeculations about the Deity (for he had no other) was, as nearly as we can discover, the fame with that of the Atheist Vanini. Matter being animated with immaterial qualities, this animation of the world is the Deity; and man is a part of the animated mass, with nothing withinfide of him diftinct from the animation of his body. Life is but as the active force of any other piece of machinery: which, as it was nothing before we were born, will be nothing after we are dead. Which doctrine he thus illuftrates: Vulcan, as Homer relates, made certain tripods, which had a motion of their own upon their wheels, and came and went of themselves as occafion required. But, fays he, Vulcan would have been reckoned a mean artist, if he had been obliged to put a little black fmith withinside to move his tripods. In like manner, man being but a perfect piece of machinery, there is no need of a foul, like the petite perfonne within the tripod, to give him motion; and it is a reflection upon the Deity to fuppofe it. As to the learning of Voltaire, it was nothing extraordinary: he had the way of making a great figure with a little. He affected univerfality; but it does not appear that he was deep in any one science: and though he was a ready poet, his mind was either too vitiated, or too narrow, to comprehend the fublimities of our Shakespeare, whom he held in utter contempt; and was therefore himself no true genius. He had a great and quick flow of words; he could put a high varnish upon fhallow fenfe; by which the eyes of his readers are dazzled, as by a picture purposely placed in a falfe light: he had the dexterity of a juggler in confounding the distinctions of good and evil; and giving to truth the appearance of falfehood. Before he died, he had a foretafte of the fuccefs of his writings; and, with the affurance of a prophet, foretold that Age of Reafon and illumination, which is now come. As Simon the Sorcerer is faid to have bewitched the people of Samaria, and deceived them into a high opinion of his own power and wifdom; fo have the works of Voltaire unchriftianed the French nation, and produced all the horrors of their revolution. Try his principles by the effects of them. His tender love of toleration has ended in a worfe than Decian perfecution his liberty has generated a tyranny more abfolute and cruel than that of Turkey or Algiers; his declamations against kings, as the enemies of peace, have produced fuch tumults and wars as never were known, and have nearly put the whole world into arms. This is the man, of whom the prefent philofophers of France now boat, that his writings have prevailed to the extirpation of Chriftianity. Twelve Apostles, they say, were neceffary to propagate it, but one Voltaire was fufficient to overthrow it. But how little do they fee into the merits of the caufe! The Gofpel is a system of faith; contrary to the wifdom of man, which is without faith; and its principles are fo fubverfive of his paffions and prejudices, that his nature will not yield to arguments; and it was therefore found neceffary to overpower, and take his reafon captive, by the force of miracles, before he could be prevailed upon to receive it: and the belief of its doctrines has been fupported in the world from that day to this by the belief of its miracles. Let but this belief be removed, and man falls back naturally into his old corruption. Chriftianity had drawn him forcibly up hill; but his own gravity carries him down again; or, if the hand of man is wanting to fet him agoing, a very weak hand will be fufficient. When a candle burns, and gives light to a houfe, many wonderful things contribute to the phænomenon. The fat of an animal is the work of the Creator; or, the wax of the bee, is made by his teaching; the wick is from the vegetable wool of a fingular exotic tree; much labour of man is concerned in the composition; and the elements that inflame it are thofe by which the world is governed. But after all this apparatus, a child or a fool may put it out; and then boaft that the family are left in darknefs, and are running against one another. Such is the mighty achievement of Mr. Voltaire; but with this difference, that what is real darkness is called illumination: and there is no other between the two cafes. HINTS TO THE LEARNED, ON EVIL-SPEAKING, RAILING, AND REPROACHING, IN THEIR WRITINGS. THIS HIS practice is unreasonable upon all accounts. It is needlefs, because mild words will exprefs the fame thing full as well, and to better purpofe. It is commonly unjust, loading men with more blame than it can be proved that they deserve; for every man who thinks wrong, is not a fool, nor is every man who acts wrong a rogue. It is uncharitable, as making the worst of every thing, and fhewing no mercy. It is mischievous, as exciting the most pernicious of paffions, and fo becoming answerable for their effects. Upon the bench, it turns justice into abuse; in the pulpit, it turns zeal into animofity; in the mouth of a friend, it turns reproof into malignity. In difputation, it is prejudicial to the speaker, inflaming his own paflions, fo that he cannot make the best of his arguments. It is prejudicial to the hearer, because arguments, even when made the best of, yet so proposed, will never be admitted by him, unless he be a prodigy indeed of candour and meeknefs. It is prejudicial to truth, becaufe ftrength of paffion is generally thought to indicate in an advocate a distruft of his caufe, and a fcarcity of proof. It is a practice given into fometimes through fudden anger; fometimes through inveterate hatred; fometime through revenge for an injury received; fometimes through self-conceit and contempt of others; fometimes through envy; fometimes through ambition and intereft; fometimes through mere malignity, to cherish a cacoëthes of this kind, either inbred or acquired by cuftom; fometimes out of wantonness, and sometimes through negligence and inadvertency. It is directly oppofite to the very nature and tenour of our religion; it is exprefsly condemned and prohibited by it as evil. No practice hath feverer punishments denounced against it; it is in itself the symptom of a weak, diftempered, and difordered mind; a stream flowing from a bitter spring; a black smoke iffing from a volcano; it is the fure fign of a mean spirit, and low breeding; all wife, honeft, and ingenuous perfons deteft and fly from him that |