* *

Esop's Invention to bring his Mistress back again to her Husband after she had left him.

House, and read the Report of the Committee, I began Colloquies, Quevedo's Visions, and the works of our defence most acceptably and smoothly, and con- Josephus. What follows is a chapter of his life of tinued at it without any hesitation or losse, but with Esop, prefixed to the translation of the Fables. full scope, and all my reason free about me, as if it had been at my own table, from that time till past three in the afternoon; and so ended, without any interruption from the Speaker; but we withdrew. And there all my fellow-officers, and all the world that was within 'The wife of Xanthus was well born and wealthy, but hearing, did congratulate me, and cry up my speech as the so proud and domineering withal, as if her fortune and best thing they ever heard. To my wife, whom her extraction had entitled her to the breeches. She W. Hewer had told of my success, and she overjoyed; was horribly bold, meddling and expensive, as that sort and, after talking a while, I betimes to bed, having had of women commonly are, easily put off the hooks, and no quiet rest a good while. monstrous hard to be pleased again; perpetually chatter6.-Up betimes, and with Sir D. Gauden to Sir W.ing at her husband, and upon all occasions of controversy Coventry's chamber; where the first word he said to me threatening him to be gone. It came to this at last, was: 'Good-morrow, Mr Pepys, that must be Speaker that Xanthus's stock of patience being quite spent, he of the Parliament-house:' and did protest I had got took up a resolution of going another way to work with honour for ever in Parliament. He said that his brother, her, and of trying a course of severity, since there was that sat by him, admires me; and another gentleman nothing to be done with her by kindness. But this said that I could not get less than £1000 a year, if I experiment, instead of mending the matter, made it would put on a gown and plead at the Chancery-bar; worse; for, upon harder usage, the woman grew desperbut what pleases me most, he tells me that the Solicitor-ate, and went away from him in earnest. She was as general did protest that he thought I spoke the best of any man in England. After several talks with him alone touching his own businesses, he carried me to Whitehall, and there parted; and I to the Duke of York's lodgings, and find him going to the Park, it being a very fine morning, and I after him; and, as soon as he saw me, he told me, with great satisfaction, that I had converted a great many yesterday, and did, with great praise of me, go on with the discourse with me. And, by and by, overtaking the King, the King and Duke of York came to me both; and he [the King] said: 'Mr Pepys, I am very glad of your success yesterday;' and fell to talk of my well speaking; and many of the Lords there. My Lord Barkeley did cry me up for what they had heard of it; and others, Parliament-men there, about the King, did say that they never heard such a speech in their lives delivered in that manner. Progers, of the Bedchamber, swore to me afterwards before Brouncker, in the afternoon, that he did tell the King that he thought I might match the Solicitor-general. Everybody that saw me almost came to me, as Joseph Williamson and others, with such eulogys as cannot be expressed. From thence I went to Westminster Hall, where I met Mr G. Montagu, who came to me and kissed me, and told me that he had often heretofore kissed my hands, but now he would kiss my lips: protesting that I was another Cicero, and said, all the world said the same of me.

SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE.

SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE (1616-1704) enjoyed, in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., great notoriety as an occasional political writer. During the rebellion, he had fought as a royalist soldier: being captured by the parliamentary army, he was tried and condemned to death, and lay in prison almost four years, constantly expecting to be led forth to execution. He was at length set free, and lived in almost total obscurity till the Restoration, when he was rewarded with the invidious post of licencer of the press. From this time, till a few years before his death, he was constantly occupied in editing newspapers and writing pamphlets, mostly in behalf of the court, from which he at last received the honour of knighthood. He is generally considered to have been the first writer who sold his services in defence of any measure, good or bad. As a controversialist, he was bold, lively, and vigorous, but coarse, impudent, abusive, and by no means a scrupulous regarder of truth. He is known also as a translator, having produced versions of Esop's Fables, Seneca's Morals, Cicero's Offices, Erasmus's

444

bad, 'tis true, as bad might well be, and yet Xanthus
had a kind of hankering for her still; beside that, there
was matter of interest in the case; and a pestilent
tongue she had, that the poor husband dreaded above
all things under the sun. But the man was willing,
however, to make the best of a bad game, and so his
wits and his friends were set at work, in the fairest
manner that might be, to get her home again. But
there was no good to be done in it, it seems; and Xanthus
was so visibly out of humour upon it, that Esop in pure
pity bethought himself immediately how to comfort him.
'Come, master,' says he, 'pluck up a good heart, for I
have a project in my noddle, that shall bring my
mistress to you back again, with as good a will as ever
she went from you.' What does my sop, but away
immediately to the market among the butchers, poul-
terers, fishmongers, confectioners, &c., for the best of
everything that was in season. Nay, he takes private
people in his way too, and chops into the very house of
his mistress's relations, as by mistake. This way of
proceeding set the whole town agog to know the meaning
of all this bustle; and Esop innocently told everybody
that his master's wife was run away from him, and he
had married another; his friends up and down were all
invited to come and make merry with him, and this
was to be the wedding-feast. The news flew like light-
ning, and happy were they that could carry the first
tidings of it to the runaway lady-for everybody knew
Esop to be a servant in that family. It gathered in the
rolling, as all other stories do in the telling, especially
where women's tongues and passions have the spreading
of them. The wife, that was in her nature violent and
unsteady, ordered her chariot to be made ready imme-
diately, and away she posts back to her husband, falls
after the easing of her mind a little-'No, Xanthus,'
upon him with outrages of looks and language; and
says she, 'do not you flatter yourself with the hopes of
enjoying another woman while I am alive.'
looked upon this as one of Esop's master-pieces; and
for that bout all was well again betwixt master and

mistress.

[The Popish Plot.]

Xanthus

At the first opening of this plot, almost all people's hearts took fire at it, and nothing was heard but the bellowing of execrations and revenge against the accursed bloody Papists. It was imputed at first, and in the general, to the principles of the religion; and a Roman Catholic and a regicide were made one and the same thing. Nay, it was a saying frequent in some of our great and holy mouths, that they were confident there was not so much as one soul of the whole party, within his majesty's dominions, that was not either an actor in this plot, or a friend to 't. In this heat, they fell to

CYCLOPEDIA OF

instance, the kings of France, who in practice use their
laws pretty familiarly, yet think their picture is drawn
with most advantage upon their seals when they are
placed in the court of justice; and though the hiero-
glyphic is not there of so much use to the people as
they could wish, yet it shews that no prince is so great
as not to think fit-for his own credit at least-to
give an outward when he refuses a real worship to the
laws.

They are to mankind that which the sun is to plants
whilst it cherishes and preserves them.
have their force, and are not clouded or suppressed,
Where they
everything smiles and flourishes; but where they are
darkened, and not suffered to shine out, it makes every
thing to wither and decay. They secure men not only
against one another, but against themselves too. They
are a sanctuary to which the crown has occasion to
resort as often as the people, so that it is an interest,
as well as a duty, to preserve them.

[Political Agitation not always Hurtful.] Our government is like our climate. winds which are sometimes loud and unquiet, and There are yet with all the trouble they give us, we owe great part of our health unto them. They clear the air, which else would be like a standing pool, and, instead of refreshment, would be a disease unto us. be fresh gales of asserting liberty without turning There may into such storms of hurricane as that the state should run any hazard of being cast away by them. strugglings, which are natural to all mixed governThese ments, while they are kept from growing into convulsions, do, by a natural agitation from the several parts, rather support and strengthen than weaken or maim the constitution; and the whole frame, instead of being torn or disjointed, comes to be the better and closer knit by being thus exercised.

But whatever faults our government may have, or a discerning critic may find in it, when he looks upon it afone, let any other be set against it, and then it shews its comparative beauty. Let us look upon the most glittering outside of unbounded authority, and upon a nearer inquiry we shall find nothing but poor and miserable deformity within. Let us imagine a prince living in his kingdom as if in a great galley, his subjects tugging at the oar, laden with chains, and reduced to real rags, that they may gain him imaginary laurels. represent him gazing among his flatterers, and receiving Let us their false worship like a child never contradicted, and therefore always cozened, or like a lady complimented only to be abused; condemned never to hear truth, and consequently never to do justice, wallowing in the soft bed of wanton and unbridled greatness; nor less odious to the instruments themselves than to the objects of his tyranny; blown up into an ambitioùs dropsy, never to be satisfied by the conquest of other people, or by the oppression of his own. By aiming to be more than a man, he falls lower than the meanest of them; a mistaken creature, swelled with panegyrics, and flattered out of his senses, and not only an incumbrance but a nuisance to mankind-a hardened and unrelenting soul; and, like some creatures that grow fat with poisons, he grows great by other men's miseries; an ambitious ape of the divine greatness; an unruly giant that would storm even heaven itself, but that his scaling-ladders are not long enough-in short, a wild and devouring creature in rich trappings, and with all his pride, no more than a whip in God Almighty's hand, to be thrown into the fire when the world has been sufficiently scourged with it. would not incite men to wish for such a government, This picture, laid in right colours, but rather to acknowledge the happiness of our own, under which we enjoy all the privileges reasonable men can desire, and avoid all the miseries many others are subject to.

446

[Truth and Moderation.]

TO 1689.

has no influence upon the law of truth, because it has The want of practice, which repeals the other laws, root in heaven and an intrinsic value in itself that can never be impaired. She shews her greatness in this, that her enemies, even when they are successful, are has the prerogative of triumphing, not only after victories, ashamed to own it. Nothing but power full of truth countenance. She may be kept under and suppressed, but in spite of them, and to put conquest herself out of but her dignity still remains with her, even when she is in chains. Falsehood, with all her impudence, has not enough to speak ill of her before her face. Such majesty she carries about her that her most prosperous enemies are fain to whisper their treason. All the power upon the earth can never extinguish her. She has lived in all ages; and, let the mistaken zeal of prevailing authority christen an opposition to it with what name they please, she makes it not only an ugly and unmannerly, but a dangerous thing to persist. She has that only some few of the discerning part of mankind lived very retired indeed-nay, sometimes so buried, could have a glimpse of her. With all that, she has eternity in her; she knows not how to die, and from the darkest clouds that shade and cover her, she breaks terror to her enemies. from time to time with triumph for her friends and

Our Trimmer, therefore, inspired by this divine virtue, climate is a trimmer between that part of the world thinks fit to conclude with these assertions: That our where men are roasted, and the other where they are frozen: that our church is a trimmer, between the frenzy of Platonic visions and the lethargic ignorance of popish dreams: that our laws are trimmers, between the excess of unbounded power and the extravagance of been thought a trimmer, and to have its dwelling liberty not enough restrained: that true virtue has ever between the two extremes: that even God Almighty himself is divided between His two great attributeshis mercy and justice. In such company, our Trimmer is not ashamed of his name, and willingly leaves to the bold champions of either extreme the honour of contending with no less adversaries than nature, religion, liberty, prudence, humanity, and common sense.

[Party Nicknames-The Trimmer.]

none more powerful in all times than the fixing names Amongst all the engines of dissension there has been upon one another of contumely and reproach. And the reason is plain in respect of the people, who, though generally they are incapable of making a syllogism, or forming an argument, yet they can pronounce a word; and that serves their turn to throw it with their dull malice at the head of those they do not like. things ever begin in jest, and end in blood; and the same word which at first makes the company merry, grows in time to a military signal to cut one another's throats.

Such

this, that if men are together in a boat, and one part This innocent word 'Trimmer' signifies no more than of the company would weigh it down on one side, another would make it lean as much to the contrary; it happens there is a third opinion of those who conceive it would do as well if the boat went even without endangering the passengers. Now, 'tis hard to imagine by what figure in language, or by what rule in sense, this comes to be a fault, and it is much more a wonder it should be thought a heresy.

DR RALPH CUDWORTH.

DR RALPH CUDWORTH (1617-1688) is celebrated as a very learned divine and philosopher of this age.

tear up by the roots all the principles, both physical and metaphysical, of the Epicurean philosophy. It is a work, certainly, which reflects much honour on the talents of the author, and still more on the boundless extent of his learning; but it is so ill suited to the taste of the present age, that, since the time of Mr Harris and Dr Price, I scarcely recollect the slightest reference to it in the writings of our British metaphysicians. Of its faults-beside the general disposition of the author to discuss questions placed altogether beyond the reach of our faculties the most prominent is the wild hypothesis of a plastic nature; or, in other words, "of a vital and spiritual, but unintelligent and necessary agent, created by the Deity for the execution of his purposes." Notwithstanding, however, these and many other abatements of its merits, the Intellectual System will for ever remain a precious mine of information to those whose curiosity may lead them to study the spirit of the ancient theories.'* A Latin translation of this work was published by Mosheim at Jena in 1733. A few specimens of the original are subjoined:

He studied at the University of Cambridge, where, during the thirty years succeeding 1645, he held the office of regius professor of Hebrew. His principal work, which is entitled The True Intellectual System of the Universe, was published in 1678, and is designed as a refutation of the atheistical tenets which at that time were extensively held in England. It executes only a portion of his design; namely, the establishment of the following three propositions, which he regarded as the fundamentals or essentials of true religion: First, that all things in the world do not float without a head and governor; but that there is a God, an omnipotent understanding Being, presiding over all. Secondly, that this God being essentially good and just, there is something in its own nature immutably and eternally just and unjust; and not by arbitrary will, law, and command only. And, lastly, that we are so far forth principals or masters of our own actions, as to be accountable to justice for them, or to make us guilty and blameworthy for what we do amiss, and to deserve punishment accordingly.' From this statement by Cudworth in his preface, the reader will observe that he maintained (in opposition to two of the leading doctrines of Hobbes), first, the existence of a natural and everlasting distinction between justice and injustice; and, secondly, the freedom of the human will. On the former point he differs from most subsequent opponents of Hobbism, in ascribing our consciousness of the natural difference of right and wrong entirely to the reasoning faculties, and in no degree to sentiment or emotion. As, however, he confines his attention in the Intellectual System to the first essential of true religion enumerated in the passage just quoted, ethical questions are in that work but incidentally and occasionally touched upon. In combating the atheists, he displays a prodigious amount of erudition, and that rare degree of candour which prompts a controversialist to give a full statement of the opinions and arguments which he means to refute. This fairness brought upon him the reproach of insincerity; and by a contemporary Protestant theologian the epithets of Arian, Socinian, Deist, and even Atheist, were freely applied to him. 'He has raised,' says Dryden, 'such strong objections against the being of a God and Providence, that many think he has not answered them the common fate,' as Lord Shaftesbury remarks on this occasion, of those who dare to appear fair authors.' This clamour seems to have disheartened the philosopher, who refrained from publishing the other portions of his scheme. He left, however, several manuscript works, one of which, entitled A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, but only introductory in its character, was published in 1781 by Dr Chandler, bishop of Durham. to maintain, that as the elect cannot fall from grace, nor His unprinted writings are now in the British forfeit the divine favour, so it follows that the wicked actions Museum, and include treatises on Moral Good and they commit, and the violations of the divine law with which Evil, Liberty and Necessity, the Creation of the they are chargeable, are not really sinful, nor are to be conWorld and the Immortality of the Soul, the Learn-sidered as instances of their departing from the law of God; ing of the Hebrews, and Hobbes's Notions concerning the Nature of God and the Extension of Spirits. Mr Dugald Stewart, speaking of the two published works, observes, that The Intellectual System of Cudworth embraces a field much wider than his treatise of Immutable Morality. The latter is particularly directed against the doctrines of Hobbes, and of the Antinomians ;* but the former aspires to

The Antinomians were a sect of Presbyterians which sprang up during the confusion of the Civil War in England. Their designation is a Greek compound, signifying enemies of the law,' it being their opinion that exhortations to morality were unnecessary, at once to the elect, whom the divine grace

[God, though Incomprehensible, not Inconceivable.] hensible to our finite and narrow understandings, that It doth not at all follow, because God is incomprehe is utterly inconceivable by them, so that they cannot frame any idea of him at all, and he may therefore be concluded to be a non-entity. For it is certain that we cannot comprehend ourselves, and that we have not such an adequate and comprehensive knowledge of the essence of any substantial thing as that we can perfectly master and conquer it. It was a truth, though abused by the sceptics, akatalepton ti, something incomprehensible in the essence of the lowest substances. For even body itself, which the atheists think themselves so well acquainted with, because they can feel it with their fingers, and which is the only substance that they acknowledge either in themselves or in the universe, hath such puzzling difficulties and entanglements in the speculation of it, that they can never be able to extricate themselves from. We might instance, also, in some accidental things, as time and motion. Truth is bigger than our minds, and we are not the same with it, but have a lower participation only of the intellectual nature, and are rather apprehenders than comprehenders thereof. This is indeed one badge of our creaturely state, that we have not a perfectly comprehensive knowledge, or such as is adequate and commensurate to the essences

would of itself lead to the practice of piety and virtue, and to the non-elect, whose salvation and virtuous conduct were, by the very circumstance of non-election, rendered impossible.

Some of the Antinomian doctors carried their views so far as

and that, consequently, they have no occasion either to confess their sins or to break them off by repentance.' Baxter and Tillotson were among the distinguished opponents of the tenets of this sect.-(See Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, cent. xvii. chap. ii. sect. 23.) Cudworth, in his Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, classes with the atheists of antiquity some of his contemporaries, who thought that God may command what is contrary to moral rules; that he has no inclination to the good of his creatures; that he may justly doom an innocent being to eternal torments; and that whatever God does will, for that reason is just, because he wills it.' But according to Sir James Mackintosh, Cudworth names only one book published at Franeker in which this monstrous opinion is supported.

• First Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia Britannica, 7th edition, p. 44.

CYCLOPEDIA OF

of things; from whence we ought to be led to this acknowledgment, that there is another Perfect Mind or Understanding Being above us in the universe, from which our imperfect minds were derived, and upon which they do depend. Wherefore, if we can have no idea or conception of anything, whereof we have not a full and perfect comprehension, then can we not have an idea or conception of the nature of any substance. But though we do not comprehend all truth, as if our mind were above it, or master of it, and cannot penetrate into, and look quite through the nature of everything, yet may rational souls frame certain ideas and conceptions, of whatsoever is in the orb of being proportionate to their own nature, and sufficient for their purpose. And though we cannot fully comprehend the Deity, nor exhaust the infiniteness of its perfection, yet may we have an idea of a Being absolutely perfect; such a one as is nostro modulo conformis, agreeable and proportionate to our measure and scantling; as we may approach near to a mountain, and touch it with our hands, though we cannot encompass it all round, and enclasp it within our arms. nature absolutely unconceivable, is nothing; but not Whatsoever is in its own whatsoever is not fully comprehensible by our imperfect understandings.

It is true, indeed, that the Deity is more incomprehensible to us than anything else whatsoever, which proceeds from the fulness of its being and perfection, and from the transcendency of its brightness; but for the very same reason may it be said also in some sense that it is more knowable and conceivable than anything. As the sun, though by reason of its excessive splendour it dazzle our weak sight, yet is it, notwithstanding, far more visible also than any of the nebulose stella-the small misty stars. Where there is more of light there is more visibility; so, where there is more of entity, reality, and perfection, there is more of conceptibility and cognoscibility; such a thing filling up the mind more, and acting more strongly upon it. Nevertheless, because our weak and imperfect minds are lost in the vast immensity and redundancy of the Deity, and overcome with its transcendent light and dazzling brightness, therefore hath it to us an appearance of darkness and incomprehensibility; as the unbounded expansion of light, in the clear transparent ether, hath to us the apparition of an azure obscurity; which yet is not an absolute thing in itself, but only relative to our sense, and a mere fancy in us.

The incomprehensibility of the Deity is so far from being an argument against the reality of its existence, as that it is most certain, on the contrary, that were there nothing incomprehensible to us, who are but contemptible pieces, and small atoms of the universe; were there no other being in the world but what our finite understandings could span or fathom, and encompass round about, look through and through, have a commanding view of, and perfectly conquer and subdue under them, then could there be nothing absolutely and infinitely perfect, that is, no God.

-* *

Το 1689.

after some other strange and more mysterious mannernamely, by their being plunged into it, and swallowed up or lost in it. To conclude, the Deity is indeed incomprehensible to our finite and imperfect understandings, but not inconceivable; and therefore there is no ground at all for this atheistic pretence to make it a non-entity.

confutation of all the atheistic grounds, yet we do [Difficulty of Convincing Interested Unbelievers.] therein also demonstrate the absolute impossibility of As for the last chapter, though it promise only a all atheism, and the actual existence of a God. We say demonstrate, not a priori, which is impossible and contradictious, but, by necessary inference, from pringrant to the atheists that there is more than a probable persuasion or opinion to be had of the existence of a ciples altogether undeniable. For we can by no means God, without any certain knowledge or science. Nevertheless, it will not follow from hence that whosoever shall read these demonstrations of ours, and understand presently convinced, whether he will or no, and put out all the words of them, must therefore of necessity be of all manner of doubt and hesitancy concerning the which some have affirmed, that were there any interest of life, any concernment of appetite and passion, against existence of a God. For we believe that to be true the truth of geometrical theorems themselves, as of a triangle having three angles equal to two right, whereby men's judgments may be clouded and bribed, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of them, many would remain at least sceptical about them.

[Creation.]

But

and all imperfect beings, that none of these can create Because it is undeniably certain, concerning ourselves any new substance, men are apt to measure all things by their own scantling, and to suppose it universally impossible for any power whatever thus to create. since it is certain that imperfect beings can themselves produce some things out of nothing pre-existing, as new cogitations, new local motion, and new modifications of things corporeal, it is surely reasonable to think that an absolutely perfect Being can do something more; that is, And it may well be thought as easy for God, or an create new substances, or give them their whole being. all, as it is for us to create a thought or to move a finger, Omnipotent Being, to make a whole world, matter and or for the sun to send out rays, or a candle, light; or, lastly, for an opaque body to produce an image of itself in a glass or water, or to project a shadow; all these imperfect things being but the energies, rays, images, or shadows of the Deity. For a substance to be made out of nothing by God, or a Being infinitely perfect, is not for it to be made out of nothing in the impossible sense, because it comes from Him who is all. Nor can it be said to be impossible for anything infinitely greater perfection, but also infinite active whatever to be made by that which hath not only power. cannot do things in their own nature impossible; and, It is indeed true, that infinite power itself therefore, those who deny creation, ought to prove, that it is absolutely impossible for a substance, though not for an accident or modification, to be brought from non-existence into being. itself impossible which does not imply contradiction; and though it be a contradiction to be and not to be But nothing is in at the same time, there is surely no contradiction in conceiving an imperfect being, which before was not, afterwards to be.

And nature itself plainly intimates to us that there is some such absolutely perfect Being, which, though not inconceivable, yet is incomprehensible to our finite understandings, by certain passions, which it hath implanted in us, that otherwise would want an object to display themselves upon; namely, those of devout veneration, adoration, and admiration, together with a kind of ecstasy and pleasing horror; which, in the silent language of nature, seem to speak thus much to us, that there is some object in the world so much bigger and vaster than our mind and thoughts, that it is the very same to them that the ocean is to narrow vessels; so that, when they have taken into themselves as much as they can thereof by contemplation, and filled up all their capacity, there is still an immensity of it left without, which cannot enter in for want of room to receive it, and therefore must be apprehended learned and amiable divine of the Church of England,

443

DR RICHARD CUMBERLAND.

DR RICHARD CUMBERLAND (1632-1718), another