cation that his mind had been greatly hurt; and nobody will think it was without reason, if he will read the Essay on Truth, by Dr. Beattie; which is not only a confutation of Hume's philosophy: it is much more; it is an extirpation of his principles, and delivers them to be scattered like stubble by the winds.

The Letter to Dr. Adam Smith, like the Essay of Dr. Beattie, has a great deal of truth, recommended by a great deal of wit; and if the reader has not seen it, he has some pleasure in store. We allow to the memory of Dr. Adam Smith, that he was a person of quick understanding and diligent research, in things relating merely to this world; of which, his Inquiry into the Causes of the Wealth of Nations will be a lasting monument; and it is a work of great use to those who would obtain a comprehensive view of business and commerce: but when he set up Mr. Hume as a pattern of perfection, and judged of all religion by the principles of that philosopher, he was very much out of his line.

The Letter was followed in course of time by Letters on Infidelity; which are very instructive and entertaining, and highly proper for the preventing or lessening that respect which young people may conceive unawares for unbelieving philosophers. It

has been objected by some readers of a more severe temper, that these Letters are occasionally too light*: and I must confess I should have been as well pleased if the story of Dr. Radcliffe and his man had been omitted but there is this to be said, that these are not sermons, but familiar letters; that Dr. Horne considered the profession of infidelity as a thing more ridiculous and insignificant in itself than some of his learned readers might do; that, as it appeared in some persons, it was really too absurd to be treated with seriousness; and, as Voltaire had treated religion with ridicule instead of argument, and had done infinite mischief by it, justice required that he and his friends should be treated a little in their own war'. Besides, as infidels have nothing to support them but their vanity, let them once appear as

* In his preface to these Letters, the author has endeavoured to obviate this objection; and we think he has done it very sufficiently.

y One of the severest reflections that ever came from the pen of Dr. Horne, was aimed, as I suppose, at this Mr. David Hume; yet it is all very fair. This philosopher had observed, that all the devout persons he had ever met with were melancholy; which is thus answered: "This might very probably be; "for, in the first place, it is most likely, that he saw very few, "his friends and acquaintance being of another sort; and, secondly, the sight of him would make a devout person melan<< choly at any time." These Letters are a demonstration that all devout persons are not melancholy.

ridiculous as they are impious, and they cannot live. They can never approve themselves, but so far only as they are upheld and approved by other people. To treat them with seriousness (as Watson has treated Gibbon) is to make them important; which is all they want. The opinions of Mr. Hume, as they are displayed in these Letters, are many of them ridiculous from their palpable absurdity: but, it must be owned, they are sometimes horrible and shocking; such as, that man is not an accountable but a necessary agent; consequently, that there is no such thing as sin, or that God is the author of it: that the life of a man and the life of an oyster are of equal value: that it may be as criminal to act for the

z It is a fundamental doctrine in the creed of materialism, that nature consists of matter and a living substance of which all living creatures equally partake; and which, when it dies in a carcase, is continued in the reptiles that feed upon it. The origin of individual life, in every form, is from the general animation of the world; on which the philosophers of antiquity speculated: and some inconsiderate Christians have taken it up on their authority. You have it in Virgil:

Principio cœlum, ac terras, camposque liquentes,
Lucentemque globum Lunæ, Titaniaque astra
SPIRITUS intus alit: totamque infusa per artus
MENS agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.

INDE hominum pecudumque genus, VITÆQUE volantum.

And in Mr. Pope's Essay on Man :

preservation of life, as for its destruction: that as life is so insignificant and vague, there can be no harm in disposing of it as we please: that there can be no more crime in turning a few ounces of blood out of their course (that is, in cutting one's throat), than in turning the waters of a river out of their channel. What is murder? It is nothing more than turning a little blood out of its way. And so the Irishman said, by the same figure of rhetoric, that perjury was nothing more than kissing a book, or, as he worded it, smacking the calveskin. This is the sage Mr. Hume! whom Dr. Adam Smith delivers to the world, after his death, as a perfect character; while a man of plain sense, who takes things as they are, would think it impossible that any person, who is not out of his mind, should argue at this rate. Mr. Hume seems to me to have borrowed from the school of the old Pyrrhonists much of that system which he is supposed to have invented. They made all things indifferent, and doubted of every thing, that there might be nothing true or real left to disturb them. The chief good they aimed at in every thing, was what

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the soul, &c.

1

Ep. i. 267, &c.

What follows is in exact conformity with the principle of Virgil, and of our philosophical deists.

they called araçagia, a state of undisturbance or tranquillity, in which the mind cares for nothing: and it was the ambition of Mr. Hume to be thought to have lived and died in this state; but by all accounts his aragažia was not quite perfect". His object was undoubtedly the same with that of the Pyrrhonists, and he pursues it by a like way of reasoning. The speculations of these men were so copious, that there is matter enough left for another Mr. Hume to set himself up with, and pass for an original. Of all the sects of antiquity this was the most unreasonable; though pretending to more wisdom than all the rest. That which was but folly under Heathenism, turns into desperation and madness under the light and truth of Christianity. Where all was blind tradition or wild conjecture, there might be some excuse for fixing to nothing; but to affect undisturbance, after what is now revealed, concerning death and judgement, and heaven and hell, is to try how far a man

a

Pliny the natural historian has rightly observed, that philosophers, through the affectation of apathy, divested themselves of all human affections; that this was the case with Diogenes the cynic, Pyrrho, Heraclitus, and Timon of Athens; the last of whom actually sunk into a professed hatred of all mankind. "Exit hic "animi tenor aliquando in rigorem quemdam, torvitatemque na"turæ duram et inflexibilem; adfectusque humanos adimit, "quales apathes Græci vocant, multos ejus generis experti.” Nat. Hist. lib. vii. c. 19.