ftrated by the gift of languages to the Apostles, which consist of words only.

The best way to confute and expofe unbelievers, would be, not to answer their cavils, (which are without end) but to carry the war into the enemy's quarters; to fhew plainly what infidelity is, whence it comes, how it maintains itself, &c. See Maffillon Carême III. 277. The Hiftory of Infidelity would be a valuable work [beginning with the Heathens, and coming down to apostą. tifing Christians.]

NOTE.

IF Bishop Horne had drawn out these reflections, he would have given us a compleat character of Voltaire, as an enemy to Christianity; which, from fuch a hand, would have been a choice work, both edifying and entertaining. But as no fuch thing is found among his manufcripts, the Editor of these Extracts has attempted a sketch, from his own knowledge of that author's writings..

The reafon of Voltaire was to right reafon what a monkey is to a man. The gefticulations of that animal provoke even a wife man to laughter; while his head at the fame time is filled with mischief, and his heart is incapable of any one good affection. He had an imagination which inclined him to the writing of plays: his mind is therefore always upon a stage, and his object is to catch the attention of an audience rather by mimickry than by sense and argument. With a strong difpofition to evil, he was no friend to restraint of any kind: fo he abhorred all law but the law of liberty, which is no law; and all governinent but the government of equality, which is no government and as religion is the fupport both of law and government, he hated that worst of all. He affected a great abhorrence of perfecution, and recommended univerfal toleration; only with defign to let evil loose among mankind; of which it required not half his wit to fee the confequence, Give equal liberty to a tyger and twenty sheep: the sheep will all perish by degrees, and the tyger will thrive and fatten upon their blood. But he had a farther end in his affected clemency. He trained his readers to a paffion for toleration, that they might take the fame diflike with himself to the justice of God in the holy Scripture; which justice he has frequently ar

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 defpife their characters, you may defpife their laws and religion with them. If the people of God have an enemy, Voltaire always finds in that enemy fomething congenial with himself. 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 lefs 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 touchftone, is confounded and believes nothing. If Heathens fpeak with falfehood and malice, he uses their authority: if they fay nothing, but treat Chriftianity 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 muft have confeffed them. But why fo? When Mr. Voltaire himself knew them without confeffing them? See with what,contemptuous indifference Feftus, an Heathen, who was upon the fpot, at the time when the facts of the Gofpel were fresh, fpeaks 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 these things; but fhew us without referve how ignorant and foolish people defpifed and neglected the Gofpel 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 subject of philofophy, men difpute about that as about other things. He collects their fophifms and contradictions, and puts them toge'ther, till the whole subject appears ridiculous; and in this way

he rids himself of every thing serious; as Bayle, his master, did before him.

He is very copious and frequent as a commentator on the Bible, on which few writers have bestowed more attention: bút his method is this; he takes a paffage of the Scripture which he distorts and perverts by every art of mifreprefentation; and when he thinks the Chriflian reader is entangled patt recovery, he finifhss all with a pious freer" but, there are things we must not look into-God deces not write like us weak mortals-his wifdom is furrounded with clouds, obfcure and refpe&table." However, witty as he thinks himfelf, 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 plaifter 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 baptifm, he tells us, "men who are always governed by their fenfes, eafily imagine, that when the body is wafhed, the foul is wathed." But this is the very thing, which men who are governed by their fenfes never did imagine, nor ever can; becaufe the walhing 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 adminiftration. of it; as, whether a perfon under neceffity in the deferts 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 these 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 arofe from the custom of hunting, and hunting is natural to man. When men have hunted down ftags 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 horfes 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, those 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 fpecies. He that can impute all this to chance, might as well believe that gibbets grow naturally out of the brakes upon Hounflow-heath. But Mr. Voltaire proves it never could be intended for a judgment, becaufe it first began in fome small 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 fuppofe, 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 mafs, 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 themfelves as occafion required. But, fays he, Vulcan would have been reckoned a mean artift, if he had been obliged to put a little blackfmith withinfide 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 sense; 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 con founding the diftinctions 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 pro phet, 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 boast, that his writings have prevailed to the extirpation of Christianity. Twelve Apoitles, they fay, 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 fyftem of faith; contrary to the wisdom 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 neceflary 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 those by which the world is governed. But after all this apparatus, a child or a fool may put it out; and then boast that the family are left in darkness, 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.