Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

Dech. But you will allow, that some men, shocked at the miseries of a vicious life, which they have wofully experienced, betake themselves afterward to more regular

courses.

Shep. Yes, that I shall readily allow; but must, at the same time, insist, that the number of those reformades, who are mended merely by their vices, is extremely small; that they are perpetually in danger of forgetting the rod wherewith vice had chastised them, and relapsing into their old habits of sin; and that therefore, in order to a safe and constant course of virtue, some principle is required that can go deeper than the faint remembrance of a few transient sufferings, and tear up their habits by the roots.

Dech. All I contend for is, a liberty of thinking for myself, and not to suffer another, who makes a profit and a trade of thinking for me, to impose his thoughts on me.

Shep. Till error or vice has enslaved you, your freedom of thought, whatever you may be compelled to speak or do, can never be taken from you. If, by thinking for yourself, you mean thinking for your own pleasure and interest, which seems, in a very low sense, to be the true interpretation of those words so often canted by libertines; you cannot think more effectually to that purpose than by thinking as a Christian; because Christianity sets your true pleasure, and greatest interest, before you, and best shews you how to pursue them.

Dech. You will grant, however, that in order to be sincere in my principles, I must think freely for myself; because, in order to examine fairly, and become rationally and sincerely a Christian, a Mahometan, or what you please, it is necessary one should have no bias in favour of this or that modification of religion; that is, it is necessary one should be a true Deist.

Shep. A true Atheist, you mean; for, as Deism is a sort or modification of religion, and as that also ought therefore to be fairly examined, without bias or attachment, you ought to have no religion when you set about such an inquiry. And, as to your sincerity, it is indeed a good attendant upon a fair and candid inquiry; but I am sure it is of little advantage to be sincere in principles hastily espoused, for better for worse, upon the bare recommendation of passion and

corruption, and tending to enslave and undo their unhappy abettors. Have you ever been an Atheist, Mr. Dechaine? Dech. Never.

Shep. Upon your own principles, therefore, it is plain, you have never done justice to Christianity in quitting it, nor to Deism in going over to it, by a fair and unprejudiced examination. How do you know but your former principles of Christianity may have given your mind a bias in favour of Deism, to which, as well as to Christianity, it is a common fundamental to own but one God? Perhaps, had the matter been more candidly considered, you might have found reason for being a Polytheist. How, on the other hand, can you be sure you condemned Christianity on good grounds, since you could not do it till you was a Deist? Or is there not good reason to suspect you have been too hasty in rejecting Mahometism, since, at no time of your life you was wholly unattached to some religion or other that must have prejudiced you against that of the Koran? You could never have fairly weighed any two religions against each other, while you yourself was in one of the scales. Depend upon it, you have the whole work to do over again; and, pardon the appearance of a solecism, must prove all religions to be false before you can prove any one of them to be true. I wonder how this thought, so consequential to your own principles, so near the very scheme you built on, and so necessary to your setting out right, could have escaped a man of your penetration.

Dech. I do not know how it is you talk and refine upon things; but I am sure it is plain from experience, that Christian principles, as the tragedian observes, make cowards of all who hold them; insomuch, that they neither dare act nor think as becomes men: if they durst think, they would soon find reason to renounce them; and a little courage in thinking might go a great way to produce liberty of acting.

Shep. Yes; Christianity makes cowards of its professors, no doubt: witness our martyrs, to whom Alexander and Cæsar were arrant runaways. The same cannot be said of your principles; they make you your own masters, they give you boldness to do any thing, and every principle is as good as a provocative. I am much delighted with your new notion about courage in thinking: a bold heart may put a man 2 c

VOL. IV.

as

upon doing the finest things; but it is necessary to have a stout head, in order to an heroic exploit in thought: such are the heads, I suppose, that produce Atheism; and, when any one stops short at Deism, it is only through a pusillanimity of brain. But what if men, growing bold-headed, should begin to butt at your employment, as well as ours? In respect to yours, as it is practised among us, there is, if I mistake not, some occasion for a little courage, in order to freethinking. Most men, if we may judge by their actions, value their estates and fortunes infinitely more than they do their souls; the law costs them, at least, as much money, and a thousand times more trouble and vexation, than religion. The poor parsons make a secret of nothing, tell all they know, and invite the world to inquiry and debate about religion; but the law, in which every man is concerned, well as in religion, and, I am afraid, a good deal more interested, is a mysterious art, which we laity, in respect to the law, have not courage enough to understand, nor are we allowed to practise it for ourselves if we did. As to physic, we have had a good many freethinkers in the way of that useful science, some of whom, as Montaigne, &c., believed it to be altogether a cheat; others, upon reading a few books wrote by physicians, and borrowing a few ill-digested scraps of knowledge from thence, and more from the writings of pretenders and empirics, have taken upon them to rail at the whole faculty, to set up for practice themselves, and, for lack of other patients, have tampered with their own constitutions. I know a most sufficient gentleman of this stamp, whose hypothesis it was, that taste and nature dictate the most sovereign sort of nostrums for all our bodily disorders. Accordingly, he prescribed to himself and others whatsoever they liked best, in all kinds of distempers, and, you may be sure, to most wonderful effect. The science that prescribes to the body hath its dabblers and opposers, as well as that which prescribes to the soul; but experience and necessity are too strong for them in both cases; and the physician and parson are sent for. An empiric, or mountebank, may kill their thousands, and this may bring physic into disrepute with silly and giddy people; but if a Mead, or a Hulse, should, by the force of skill and medicine, save one patient from misery or death, it would shew

demonstrably, that physic is not a mere imposition; and the mortality that attends the quacks, instead of raising in sensible people a distrust of medicine, shews demonstrably, that those pretenders only kill because they know nothing of the art of cure.

Dech. A fine allusion, truly! and so the parsons are the only true and genuine physicians for the soul, and all others, who speak or write for the religious information of mankind, are pretenders and quacks.

Shep. In my opinion, every one who hath sufficient ability and piety for the purpose, hath also a right to speak and publish his knowledge for the good of mankind; but it is not a man's own conceit that can prove him thus qualified. Upon the whole, liberty of thinking is necessary to right reasoning; but when it is pleaded for, only in order to an unbounded licentiousness of action, when we set up for thinking freely for ourselves, in order to act as freely for ourselves, to the great prejudice of others, and even of ourselves, in the end; this is either such a false kind, or such an excess, of liberty, as cannot fail to terminate in real slavery and misery. Montaigne shewed what sort of a latitude it is that libertines would be at, when he said, 'I am such a lover of liberty, that if the king of Spain should make a law to hinder Montaigne from setting his foot on a certain square yard of ground at the straits of Magellan, I should begin to think my liberty abridged, and myself confined.' And is it a liberty without bounds, in respect to religion and morality, that man, little, narrow, subordinate man, would assume? Is it a liberty to think and do what he lists, that an ignorant, corrupt, and wicked wretch would pretend to? Yes; the thief would escape from his gaol, and the murderer from his fetters, if he could. And what use would he make of his liberty? Why, he would steal or cut throats again.

Temp. Human liberty, both of thought and action, certainly hath its bounds, which are a real defence, and by no means a confinement to it: all the laws of men are founded on this supposition, that no man can be free or safe, unless all men are, in some measure, bound, and some men wholly confined; and the laws of God only add higher and stronger boundaries, inasmuch as they bind the consciences, whereas those of civil society only tie up the hands of men. Pray,

Mr. Dechaine, have you any other objections to the usefulness of the Christian religion?

Dech. How can a religion be useful to those who never had the least opportunity of knowing it? Christianity was not introduced into the world till four thousand years after its creation, and hath not yet extended to the greater part of mankind. They who make it highly useful, nay, even necessary, are not well aware, that, if it were so, a good God could not have denied it to any of his creatures, nor a just God have given it to a few, and refused it to the rest.

Shep. In order to prove it inconsistent with the goodness of God to defer the introduction of a necessary religion for four thousand years, and then to extend it only to a part of mankind, it lies upon you, sir, to prove, that God is, by his goodness, necessarily determined to do all manner of good to all his creatures, at all times; and then to shew, that Christianity, supposing it highly useful or necessary to the whole world, had been more extensively and effectually useful, if it had been delivered to our first parents, and not in a later age. These points have a necessary connexion with that which you have objected to Christianity from the goodness of God; and cannot, I believe, be proved: for, as to the first, the infinite nature of God is free, and limited by no necessities of this, or any other kind; creation and being, with all the good things annexed to them, or made to result from them, are free gifts from God; he could have withheld them; and therefore his goodness is manifested in granting them, and our gratitude due upon receiving them. Were it not so, God would be but an instrument in the hand of necessity; and though what he did would be always good in effect, yet it would argue no goodness in the cause, no other goodness in God, than what we see in necessary and inanimate beings such as the dispensation of light and warmth from the sun, which it cannot withhold, and which we can return it no thanks for, without gross absurdity and idolatry. We adore the goodness of God, because, when he could have withheld us for ever in the womb of nothing, he freely bestowed a comfortable and happy being on us; and, when he could have destroyed us for ever on account of our defection from him, he mercifully preserved our race, and provided, as well as the nature of

« FöregåendeFortsätt »