own I think it a very fine performance; but I know not how to form a clear idea, either of the design its author had in writing it, or of the principles he would instil by it.

Shep. I am surprised you should find the least difficulty in that. Does he not, in his Preliminary Discourse on Virtue,' insist that the law or religion of nature are innate, and, if attended to, sufficiently clear and cogent? Does he not, in his introduction, tell us, The existence of a Deity is a truth so clear in itself, that a train of argumentations serve only to obscure it; and that the human mind hath as general and as regular an idea of the infinite perfections of God, as it hath of his being?' Does he not also maintain, that the natural law hath been rendered obscure or doubtful only by the passions of men, and the superstitious innovations, introduced from time to time, in all countries?

Temp. If I remember right, he does.

Shep. Nay, he goes farther; for he says, notwithstanding the prevalence of our passions and innovations, all men have right ideas of duty and morality. In order to degrade our Saviour and his apostles from the office of instructing us, he would have us look on ourselves, as sufficiently enlightened by nature, and consequently in no need of religious or moral teachers. After this (who would expect it?) he entertains us with very particular lectures concerning the nature of religion, devotion, and virtue, as if we were wholly ignorant of them all. Do we know our duty to God, ourselves, and mankind, already? Why, then, does he inform us of these things? Is he so self-sufficient as to think nobody ought to preach to us but himself? If the law of nature is obscured or frustrated only by passion and superstition, all he had to do, was to point his wit against those obstructors of truth and goodness. As soon as they are dispersed, the light of nature will shine clearly from within, and render impertinent his, and all other treatises, about manners. This inconsistency and presumption would be the more excusable, were not his moral lectures interspersed here and there with sentiments exceedingly loose, and repugnant to the strictness he every where pretends to, and with such characters and descriptions as tend but the more strongly to soften, to corrupt, and pollute the heart, for their being painted with the utmost delicacy, and enlivened with the finest strokes of imagination. He dedicates his book to

a married lady in a kind of Platonic billet-doux ; and in the work itself expatiates on his passion for her in such terms, as cannot but disquiet the mind of her husband, if he knows his wife by the name of Menoqui. This effect it can hardly fail of, notwithstanding the protestations, with which the author, in that passage, flourishes on his virtue; and the rather, because in many others he takes particular delight in dwelling on the intercourse of the sexes, which would be highly criminal, if not authorized by marriage.

Temp. As for marriage, in our sense of the word, he does not approve of it; but would have a man and woman live together, without any vow or ceremony, if they love each other, and part when they cease to do so.

Shep. The more need hath Menoqui's husband to keep both the author and his book, as far from the goddess as he can; for, allowing that we may judge of the former by the latter, no man is qualified to put her virtue to a severer trial, if his person does not carry in it an antidote sufficient to prevent in her the possibility of a weakness towards him. Never did libertinism appear with an aspect so engaging, with a mien so charming, or in a dress so genteel, as this writer hath given it. His words are steeped in honey; his periods polished off with the greatest exactness; his sentiments covered with the most delicate gilding; his reflec tions, descriptions, characters, seasoned up with wit and elegance, to the most exalted palate; above all, his principles are so sweet and soothing, that they enter into a sensual heart, like an enchantment, and, rising from thence through the imagination, seize the judgment, and captivate the will. He seldom reasons; but his assertions pass on the reader, like those of a beautiful woman on the beholder, for convincing arguments.

Temp. The virtue of Menoqui can't be more endangered by the author, than the principles of other young people by his bewitching book. What a beautiful allegory is that, in which he represents the law of nature as engraved on an island of marble in the heart! The water, he tells us, which surrounds this island, is sometimes so raised by tides and tempests, as to cover the inscription, and prevent its being legible, but never so as to wash it away.

Shep. The similitude is indeed very fine, but more con

sonant to the author's hypothesis, than to fact and nature. The mind of man comes into being without any characters or inscriptions engraved on it. It is a field covered with a rich soil; but hath not in itself the root or seed of a single plant. In this condition it lies for some time, till discipline or correction breaks it up, and mellows it, and till education sows it with seeds of various kinds; from whence immediately springs a crop of plants, some nutritious and wholesome, some useless or baneful. Reason, the lord of the soil, soon after enters, and is employed in rooting out the one, and watering the other; while, in spite of all he can do, a number of beasts, more or less disposed to fear and obey him, entering by another passage, devour the produce, for the most part the better produce of the field. A few of them indeed submit to his yoke, and are employed in drawing water, or in cultivating anew such parts of the ground, as he hath lately cleared from the weeds and brambles.

Temp. THE smaller libertine writers, such as Coward, Asgill, a few pamphleteers, and those who, in handling other subjects, give religion a blow as they pass, are not worth notice. They are fallen into disuse among the deistical party itself; and are generally of too low a character, both in point of sense and entertainment, to merit an animadversion.

Shep. You have already seen, sir, with how much art each deistical writer labours to insinuate his principles, and beat out of his reader's mind the principles of Christianity. If you will believe them, they are under a necessity of using stratagem and cunning for these purposes, to prevent the prosecutions to which an opener conduct might expose them

a In this class is to be ranked a bulky pamphlet, published since this dialogue was wrote, and entitled, Heaven Open to all Men;' in which the stupidity and profaneness of the author are so equally eminent, that one knows not from which of the two to draw its character. It is mentioned here only to confirm what hath been frequently insisted on in these Dialogues, that, of all writings, none are so eagerly catched at in a dissolute age and country, as those which promise the indulgence of God and happiness to profligates. Nothing can so strongly exemplify that observation, as the great demand for this despicable performance, the artifice of which is so gross, that it may be seen through by a child, the matter so wicked, the manner so clumsy, as not to be relished, but by such as have a taste for garbage. Yet all the refinement of the Characteristics, and all the wit of the Independent Whig, could not give them so quick a passage into the world, as its bare title has procured for the senseless pamphlet mentioned.

in this age of bigotry. A suit at law, or a fine, is too severe a martyrdom for any one to run the hazard of, who sets forth, that all men have already sufficient means of knowing what he proposes to teach them: but if their instructions be of no use to the world, every man being able to teach himself, why do they publish, every day, whole volumes of those instructions? Is it only to gratify their vanity, they become authors? If it is, why do they not choose to write novels and plays, which might entertain the very same class of small readers, whose tastes are as tallies to such writers, and acquire them a more solid reputation, than performances that tell us, almost in every page, they themselves are needless? As authors of this stamp write from the heart, rather than the head, there is no propensity, in that magazine of libertinism, that may not be voided to great advantage in a play or a novel. On the other hand, if they esteem their own writings as highly useful to mankind, why do men, so full of benevolence and love to the species, so transported with the beauty of virtue, particularly of sincerity, suffer the trifling terror of a fine to lay an embargo on the important truths they have discovered, and force them to have recourse to a base dissimulation, which miserably maims and distorts those truths in the very birth? Dark dealings, and pitiful arts, fit only for the basest of men to practise, are, surely, very unbecoming ingredients in the conduct of a hero, whose soul is wholly divested, to use the expression of Lord Shaftsbury, of self-passions, warmed with natural and social affections, and sublimed by perfect raptures of benevolence. But what are the dreadful severities that force these writers to lie, in so infamous a manner, for the truth? I can hardly think the tyranny of a jury capable of frightening these souls of the first magnitude; for not one in ten of them hath been ever prosecuted at law for his book; and such as were, made twice as much by the retail of their contraband wares, as they lost by the prosecution. It is not, therefore, in reality, the dread of prosecution, to which the dissimulation of libertine writers is owing, but to a consciousness that their principles would appear shocking, did they expose them to view without disguise. There is no one thing contributes so much to a right examination of principles, as a due attention to the tendency of those prin

ciples; because the best arguments, either for or against their truth, are drawn from a clear foresight of their effects. All this advantage is lost to him, on whom any opinion is imposed, under the mask of another, or a contrary opinion: for as he does not yet think it different, in itself, from that which was formerly in possession of his assent, so he looks on its tendency as the same; neither does he perceive, that his opinion is materially changed, till the axioms, on which it is founded, are riveted in his mind: so that when the change begins to be perceived, he is pleased with it, and to such a degree blinded by prepossession, as either not to see, or be delighted with, its tendency. It is thus that Christians are taught infidelity by writers, and upon maxims, that seem, at first, to be purely Christian.

Temp. You hit exactly the artifice practised on me, to wean my raw and unsuspicious mind from Christianity: and, I must say, it had been infinitely a more gentleman-like injury to have picked my pocket, than my mind. The pilferer of principles is the worst sort of thief; for he not only filches the most valuable of all our possessions, the very seeds of religion and virtue, but, what is still a greater injury, leaves, in the place of them, his own notions, the seeds of infidelity and wickedness. He comes in the night, when we are asleep; and, having stripped the house of all that is useful or ornamental, he sets it on fire over our heads, and then escapes unseen under the additional coverture of the smoke.

Shep. The scandalous artifice of sowing infidelity in the garb of Christians, is, however, but one out of a thousand, practised by the same disingenuous set of men, and for the same detestable purpose. Matters, wholly foreign to the controversy about Christianity, are lugged into it by these pretended enemies to prejudice, in order to blind and bias the minds of silly people, and to make up for the want of solid arguments arising from the nature of the dispute itself. Christianity must be an imposture, because bad men are thrust by worse into the ministry; although, at the same time, the labours and virtues of a good clergyman are not allowed to reflect the least honour on the religion he preaches, nor at all to vouch for its truth and usefulness; neither are the horrible vices of our libertine preachers ascribed, in the least, to their principles, notwithstanding the manifest ten