sanctions are not irresistible, because it was intended to induce, not to compel; and that it is obscure, because we want faculties to comprehend it. What he means by his assertion, that it wants policy, I do not well understand; he does not mean to deny that a good christian will be a good governour, or a good subject; and he has before justly observed, that the good man only is a patriot. Religion has been, he says, corrupted by the wickedness of those to whom it was communicated, and has lost part of its efficacy by its connexion with temporal interest and human passion. He justly observes, that from all this, no conclusion can be drawn against the divine original of Christianity, since the objections arise not from the nature of the revelation, but of him to whom it is communicated. All this is known, and all this is true; but why, we have not yet discovered. Our author, if I understand him right, pursues the argument thus: the religion of man produces evils, because the morality of man is imperfect; his morality is imperfect, that he may be justly a subject of punishment: he is made subject to punishment because the pain of part is necessary to the happiness of the whole; pain is necessary to happiness no mortal can tell why or how. Thus, after having clambered with great labour from one step of argumentation to another, instead of rising into the light of knowledge, we are de volved back into dark ignorance; and all our effort ends in belief, that for the Evils of life there is some good good reason, and in confession, that the reason cannot been found. This is all that has been produced by the revival of Chrysippus's untractableness of matter, and the Arabian scale of existence. A system has been raised, which is so ready to fall to pieces of itself, that no great praise can be derived from its destruction. To object is always easy, and it has been well observed by a late writer, that the hand which cannot build a hovel, may demolish a temple *. * New Practice of Physick. POLITICAL TRACT S.. Fallitur, egregio quisquis sub principe credit CLAUDIANUS. [64] Mr. Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, remarks, that " seve"ral answers came out," in reply to this pamphlet. The numerous pamphlets written at that time on the subject of the Middlesex Election, may all be considered as belonging to the popular side of the dispute, but there were only three direct answers to the FALSE ALARM. These were, "The Crisis;" "A Letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson;" and "The Constitution "Defender and Pensioner exposed, in Remarks on the False "Alarm." None of them were deficient in a show of argument, but what they seem to rely upon chiefly, was personal abuse of our author as a pensioner; and this, it must be owned, suited the taste of that turbulent period wonderfully. C. |