from the highest to the very lowest of men. Vice and debauchery follow, foot for foot; and wherever they are found, libertinism is either already with them, or must be procured at any rate. You have given me a lively picture of the springs and progress of libertinism in one and the same mind. Give me leave to shew how it passes from one mind to another in cases very different from yours, till it arrives at public countenance.

MAN being a social creature, and having many wants which he cannot of himself supply, hath recourse to commerce, and the assistance of others for that purpose. He who was bred up under the influence of religion, and who is still a believer, notwithstanding his having fallen into a vicious course of life, must undoubtedly be in great distress for two sorts of commodities; one is a cure for his religion, and the other a sufficient reason, or a proper principle, to be wicked on. As soon as he finds one who can furnish him, he endeavours to settle a correspondence with him, in which both parties may find their accounts. The person he proposes to deal with, being infinitely conceited, is in as great want of flattery and applause, to sooth his uneasy vanity. These two are fitted to one another, like the male and female screw; the one fills up the vacuities and deficiencies of the other. The one imparts a pleasing self-sufficiency, and is paid with a delicious mess of admiration and flattery. Now this delightful commerce can never fail to be carried on, till infidels cease to be conceited, or bad men find a way to reconcile the rigid principles of religion with an atrocious life. A country drenched in luxury and excess always swarms with these two sorts of men, the conceited infidel and the debauched believer, who are so cut out for each other, that they can hardly subsist asunder; for, if you separate them, the one must be destitute of an opiate for his conscience, and the other, of food for his vanity. No remedy can be found for the festering sting of remorse in a mind determined to be wicked, but infidelity; and no one will applaud or flatter an infidel, as such, but he who hath reduced himself to the infernal necessity of being one himself. How can he, who is distinguished from the vulgar in all things else, bear to be of the same religion? No; here

too it is fit he should be majestically singular. If he is to have any religion, it must be an uncommon one, and selfsufficiency best answers that, as well as all his other purposes. How can he, who is racked with violent passions, and stung with keen appetites, such as avarice, ambition, gluttony, drunkenness, and lust, see the country he lives in, crowded with gratifications for them all, and endure to be withheld by faith, which makes not a single promise to his desires; for he hath none that are refined or spiritual? As things go, a scrupulous Christian cannot rise suddenly to wealth and grandeur; neither can he, consistently with the fashion, have a full enjoyment of the fortune he may have been born to; for, as to the present reigning pleasures, on which the fortunes of the wealthy are expended, Christianity protests against the far greater part of them, and licences only such as disuse among the great, notwithstanding the pure and exquisite delight they impart, hath either almost. wholly antiquated or degraded to the lower ranks of mankind. Hence arises a loud and almost universal demand for infidelity; wealth, luxury, and refinement, being of little value without it, nay, infidelity being itself the grand article of luxury that spices all the rest, the highest point of refinement, that whets the taste, and exalts it into perfection. libertinism had no considerable footing in England before Cromwell's time, when it was covered, down to the very cloven foot of contradictory absurdities, in the long cloak of cant, hypocrisy, and enthusiasm. During this dark and stormy night of troubled dreams, Hobbes set up a standard for Deism, or rather Atheism; to which, in a little time, resorted all such as were willing to think there was nothing more in religion than hypocrisy or fanaticism. These sort of men in the reign of Charles the Second, which was the reign of luxury and debauchery, taking that to be religion, which had worn such a fool's coat in the preceding times of confusion, made a jest of all religion. The Jesuits, those men of all shapes and colours, who had been extremely active in turning religion into a medley of absurdities, were now equally industrious to ascribe this monstrous produce of their own labour to the Reformation, in order to draw back as many as they could to themselves, and to push those forward into libertinism, who were already too far

gone to be reclaimed, by charging all these absurdities on Christianity itself. Contempt for cant and hypocrisy was artfully turned into contempt for Christianity, by the profane wits, who aimed at a total destruction of religion, and by the Papists, who wished to see us Atheists rather than Protestants. Since the late Revolution it hath been all along a favourite and ruling maxim, to push religious and civil liberty to the utmost. The clergy, having been looked on as the greatest obstacle to both, fell into disrepute with one half of the people, of whom such as set up for politicians, transferred a part of their resentments and jealousies to the religion they preached. All this time trade was extending, money increasing, and articles of luxury, which are no other than incentives to debauchery, flowing in upon us from every quarter of the world. The richer clergy were hated, the poorer despised; and religion, as it passes through their hands, became either odious or despicable to that large class of men, who thirsted for an increase of liberty, in proportion as more restraint grew necessary to curb the career of their vices.

Temp. What a field was here to sow tares in! Never was there so rank a soil for Popery, which makes vice and salvation consistent, nor for libertinism, which gives a man up to himself, to thrive in.

Shep. Accordingly, the propagators of both were far enough from slipping the season. The missionaries of Rome, having found their sophistry an unequal match for the reason of the London divines, and perceiving that no good was to be done by an open appeal to the understandings of a sensible people, began to practise in secret on their various dispositions, in order to draw them backward, and by the wrong end, into Popery.

Temp. And it is said, they found their account in this expedient.

Shep. How could it otherwise choose? There are always vast numbers of people, who retain a high veneration for the name of Christians, and who, nevertheless, are made impatient by their vices of every Christian restraint. To such as these a religion, that brings with it the name of Christianity, and at the same time a cheap market of indulgences and dispensations, must be extremely acceptable. The wis

dom of above eight hundred years hath been labouring to accommodate Popery to the vices of its professors, yet so as still to retain a show of Christianity. This was a sufficient task for the policy of Rome itself; and had been to this day unaccomplished, but for the jesuitical casuistry.

Temp. What the Jesuits have done to make Christianity convenient, may be seen in the Provincial Letters of Mons. Pascal, by which it appears, that one who hath a Jesuit for his casuist and confessor, hath no need to turn libertine.

Shep. Jesuitism, in Popish countries, where people are forced by arbitrary power to profess a sort of Christianity, serves well enough instead of libertinism. But in a free country, like this, there is no need of having recourse to such shifts. Here it is too slavish to have the conscience under direction. Here every man hath his casuistry within himself, and is his own Jesuit, I mean, is self-sufficient. However, before a man can be self-sufficient, even here, means are to be made use of; and instruction, which must be denied to Christianity, is altogether allowable, because necessary to libertinism.

Temp. It is true; and were it not to avoid a contradiction, I should say, that self-sufficiency stands in extreme need of assistance.

Shep. You did not arrive at it without a tutor; neither could he have made you such a proficient without the help of books.

I WAS going to say, that the libertine writers, with which we are furnished, are of three kinds; but in this I should have made a mistake, for they are only of three degrees: those of the first, furnish hints and principles for self-sufficiency; those of the second, serve as preparatives to it, by so mangling and misrepresenting revelation, that it seems expedient to look into ourselves for some other system; and those of the third, although still preserving some appearance of Christianity, lead the reader into the very porch of Deism, where they leave him, what one would think it impossible for any man to be, a sort of Christian Deist." As to the first, they were penned by a few who had a most

• See the Moral Philosopher, title page, and p. 392. Chubb's True Gospel.

sincere attachment to Christianity, and firmly believed all its doctrines, but, however, defended it, or rather refuted its adversaries, on principles foreign to itself, suggested to them merely by their opposition to those on which it was attacked. While these performances drove the present adversary out of the field, it was not perceived that they laid religion open on the opposite side, to other opponents, more to be apprehended; and therefore it was thought they could not be pushed too far. An abstruse treatise, wrote by the learned bishop already mentioned, the great adversary of Hobbes, was the magazine of these principles: from hence the writ-. ings of the second class, which may be called the preparatives to Deism, borrowed a plan of morality, deducible, as it was represented, from the light of nature, and independent of revealed religion: to this was added, by some of those who laboured on it, a new model of Christianity, in which the mysteries were half explained away, and the sanctions, being now less necessary upon the discovery of a sufficient moral obligation, were therefore less insisted on. The Socinians, and all the half-libertines, took sanctuary in this system, as more dependent on themselves, and more manageable, than the old Christianity, which could not be easily bent to their conceits. It was natural for men, who deified their own reason, and wished for a licence to indulge their desires, to rid their minds, as far as they could, of a belief in doctrines above their comprehension, or contrary to their affections.

Temp. Be so good, sir, as to furnish me with an instance

or two.

Shep. The most remarkable writer of this class was Divisus, who, by his great abilities and regular life, reflected no small reputation on his party. He was both a great mathematician and divine; his discourses, which abounded with moral reasonings, and leaned chiefly on the religion and law of nature, were, as to the matter, drawn mostly from within himself, and rather illustrated, than supported, by quotations from Scripture. His principles, which were Semi-Arian, made him almost a Christian; and his conduct, as to promotion, made him almost an honest man; for although, by subscribing to principles he did not like, and endeavoured to overturn in his writings, he held a considerable benefice;