conduct ourselves as he would have us. And to whom are we to give it up? Why every fect and every enthusiast lays claim to this compliment, and they severally affert, with the highest confidence, that they alone are deputed by him to receive it and they tell us, that we are in the greatest danger indeed, if we yield it up to any other but themselves. But I think a man very ill deserves the character of a rational creature, if he gives it up to any of them at all. God hath given it to every man for his own ufe. But these designing people would make their own use both of him and it.

'AND now I think we may determine what Mental Reason is, and wherein the use and abuse of it confifts. It is that faculty of the mind, by which it perceives natural and moral objects, compares them with each other, and thence forms a judgment concerning them. The ufe of it is to receive thefe objects fairly before it, and to judge

of

of them honeftly as they appear. The abuse of it is to renounce and difclaim it altogether, or fuffer it to be perverted and byaffed either in receiving these objects or in forming a judgment concerning them: and this abufe may be committed by prejudice, by obftinacy, by worldly interest, by attachment to a party, or by an abfurd pride which will not fuffer a man to acknowledge that he was ever in the wrong. These are, every one of them, great occafions of the abuse of reason, and therefore every man who values himself upon being a rational creature, fhould take all the care he can to keep himself clear of them.

up

I Do not know whether I fhould take my own or the reader's time in mentioning two other acceptations of the word reason, because they evidently carry fo much of infult and abfurdity in them; and these are reafons of state and reasons of great guns. Perfons who have the government of states intrusted to them, when they commit acts

of

of perfidy, injuftice and violence against their own fubjects or against any foreign power, whatever may have been their real motive, they screen themselves, as they think, from reproach, by alledging, it was done for certain reasons of state. Which expreffion therefore is always taken in a bad, but never in a good, sense, and signifies that fomething hath been perpetrated very unreasonable and contrary to the common rules of juftice. And as for the reafon of great guns, I must acknowledge it is very forcible, and often fucceeds when other reafons fail. It was quite agreeable to the character of Lewis XIV. to inscribe on his canon RATIO ULTIMA REGUM, the last reafon of kings: and I have heard that another prince of the same turn used to call his guns, Suprema Lex. Thus many of thefe mortals who are vefted with fovereign power, and fet up at the head of nations to govern the world by Reafon and Law, employ this very power to overturn and deftroy what it was defigned to defend, and impudently

impudently and profanely call their brutal tyranny and violence by these divine names. And I suppose the gentleman took the hint from the aforefaid pious King of France, who wrote upon the gate of the Inquifition at Lisbon, RATIO ULTIMA CLERICORUM,

Of SUBSTANCE and PERSON.

THESE are words which to a common English reader may seem to carry fuch different meanings that he may perhaps wonder to see them joined in the explanation of each other. But before he hath read out this effay, I believe he will be. convinced of the neceffity of considering them together. They are originally Latin, and have been both fubftituted one after another as tranflations of the fame Greek word Υπότασις Tóraris Hypoftafis. Therefore we will first consider them as Latin words, and then

how

define it as a

how they came, as occafion required, to be both used inftead of the fame Greek word. The word SUBSTANCE, according to it's Etymology, fignifies (exactly as the Greek word Hypoftafis) fomewhat which stands under or fupports fomething: and therefore the philofophers Being fubfifting of itself. But as I propofed to explain the feveral meanings of the words in my title, I beg leave here just to observe that the word Substance is fometimes taken in a metaphorical fenfe, and then fignifies clofeness, compactness, folidity; as when we handle a well made piece of Stuff, we fay, it has good Subftance in it. Sometimes it is taken in an analogical fenfe, and then it fignifies a man's revenue, income, or property; as we fay of a wealthy perfon, That he is a man of Substance. For as Substance supports all the various modes of beings, fo property and estate supports all the various modifications of his expences. But let us return to it's original and philo

a man's