him as a moment, and he found by experience that pleasure is inconfiftent with the present state of man: it was bestowed upon him in a manner unexpected, fo exquifite was its enchantment, that it feemed to annihilate duration, and the greatness of the good feemed counterbalanced by the fhortness of poffeffion, the bitterness of privation being proportioned to the overflowing of delight. -When Time, whofe flow lapfe, after the death of Antigone, feemed equal to the rapidity of its flight during her life, had at length, by rendering the fenfation more dull, made the poignancy of anguish fubfide, Abdalzar concluded, that felicity was unattainable below, and that a life of labour is the natural fate of man during his refidence in a world where he is furrounded by wants, and exposed to unforeseen reverses of fortune. He therefore formed a refolution to attach himfelf for the future to the pursuits of intereft, and make the accumulation of wealth his chiefeft care. Avarice was by no means predominant in the difpofition of Abdalzar; but he was of opinion that fome occupation was necessary to man, to prevent his mind from being preyed upon by anxiety, laid wafte by indolence, or enfnared by the allurements of vice. Abdalzar having thus determined, formed connections with the chief merchants of Cairo, and, by a fedulous application to commerce, in a fhort time confiderably augmented the wealth he was poffeffed of; but the addition of wealth was not to him the fource of any additional felicity, the idea of Antigone frequently recurred to his mind, and his foul was overcaft with gloom and discontent. He did not, however, negle his affairs, nor fly from the

fatigues of bufinefs to the diffipation of amufement. He continued to traffic with all the nations of the earth, and his coffers were daily filled with gold, which, being devoid of avarice, he could not contemplate with the abfurd fatisfaction of a mifer, and which, being by nature prudent, he could not diffipate with the diffolute spirit of a libertine. At length his treasures encreased to fuch a degree, that avarice began to take poffeffion of his heart; the memory of Antigone was almoft obliterated, and a fordid attachment to gain would have enchained all his faculties, had not reafon come to his aid.

Reafon fuggested that it was a folly for him to amass wealth, when he was already poffeffed of enough to make him live in affluence, even though his life should be protracted beyond the term allotted to human nature. In reafoning thus Abdalzar reasoned right; but he was not yet fufficiently experienced to make a right use of his inference, and reduce his principles to practice. No longer attached by the endearments of love, or engaged by application to bufinefs, he indulged himself in luxurious indolence, and gave a loose to the exceffes of ebriety. The intervals between his banquets, which were sumptuous as thofe of a fultan, were filled up by contemplating the well-formed dance, or listening to the ravishing harmony of mufic. Such was his munificence, that his houfe was inceffantly filled with a multitude of guests, and his life glided away in a dofe of pleasure. But he was at length roufed from his dofe, by finding upon examining the ftate of his finances, that his treafures, which fancy had reprefented as inexhauftible, were reduced to a fum which could not fup

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port him during the remainder of his life without an economy equal his former extravagance. Made wife by experience, he proportioned his expences to his treafure; he difmiffed his domeftics, and in the privacy of retirement, devoted himfelf to contemplation.

His former attachments, though they had made him happy for a time, had ended in grief and disappointment. He concluded, and he concluded justly, that man, to fecure that degree of happiness which his prefent ftate admits of, fhould never strongly attach himself to any thing upon earth, fince all human bifs is tranfient and fading; but that these unfatisfa&ory attachments hew that man was intended by the

Creator to attach himself to fomething. This reflection opened his eyes to the glorious light of religion; he became fenfible that man was made for eternal attachments in a future ftate, and that his only proper blifs in the prefent muft fpring from anticipating, by contemplation, thofe joys which he could only hope to be poffeffed of when the angel of death had freed his foul from the corporeal bondage of matter. This thought funk fo deep into the mind of Abdalzar, that he entered into a fociety of Faquirs, in which he was reverenced for his fuperior wisdom, and, in an advanced age, quitted the fphere of mortality in meditating upon the book of glory.

to wickedness, and from religion to infidelity, the various stages of vice and folly through which they pass, and the difmal catastrophe which generally clofes a life, wasted in the diffipation of debauchery, and influenced by the delufions of vanity.

A gentleman, whofe real name we fhall, through regard for his family, conceal under that of Alciphron, after having received his first education from his father, who, as a tutor, inftructed him in claffical learning, and took particular care to inculcate the precepts of religion on his mind, was fent by him to the univerfity of Oxford, to finish his ftudies, and the indulgence of his father left it to his choice what profeffion he should afterwards attach himself to. At the university, his behaviour was exemplary for a time; he was particularly affiduous in his application to ftudy, and conftant in

his attendance upon the public devotions of the place; but at length, becoming intimate with fome of the students who conftantly repaired, in the fummer season, to London, he from them imbibed the principles of infidelity; for as he had a high opinion of his understanding, he thought their objections to chriftianity unanfwerable, because he could not immediately refute them. A total change was hereby made in his character, he became zealous for infidelity, and was fo defirous of propagating the tenets of the Free-thinkers, that he determined to leave the univerfity, and repair to London, where he did not doubt that his principles would meet with a favourable reception. He frequented all the clubs and focieties of Free-Thinkers in that metropolis, and his doubts of the chriftian religion, for he at firft only doubted, were corroborat ed and even riveted by the irreligious difcourfe of others, who were, like him, animated with the abfurd ambition of propagating opinions from which no advantage could refult either to themfelves or to thofe to whom they communicated them. Alciphron's progrefs in libertinifm kept pace with the advances made by him in infidelity. He refided at the Temple, and his father, who fupplied him liberally, thought that his whole time was devoted to the study of the law; but he had loft his former turn to application, and study had no longer any charms for him. His evenings were paffed in riotous pleasures at a tavern, amidst his bottle companions, who, with all the approbation of an attentive auditory, heard him declaim upon the advantages of intemperance, the neceffity of enjoying the prefent moment, and the wisdom of giving a

plenary indulgence to all the impulfes of paffion; or else they were paffed in a manner still more dangerous and abfurd in the company of proftitutes, whofe converfation was nothing but obscenity, and whose endearments were counterfeit like their beauty. His days he often dofed away, and often spent as unprofitably in coffee-houfes and at ordinaries, in maintaining his opinions, which he did with all the virulence natural to a man who is in the wrong, and all the ardour of a man who thinks himself in the right.

Vice and irreligion have their rudiments and beginnings as well as virtue; he did not immediately proceed to the laft excefs of impiety, and blafphemously deny the existence of a Deity; but he afferted the doctrines of chriftianity to be abfurd, and maintained that moral virtue could have no existence, man being a neceffary agent, whose actions are in every refpect limited by, and fprung from the state and condition of his mental and corporeal faculties. But there was no doctrine which he preached up with a greater appearance of zeal than that extravagant one that private vices are public benefits, and that the encouraging every fpecies of vice and debauchery contributes to aggrandize a state, and make it flourishing. This ftrange paradox he enlarged upon, and illuftrated with all the florid eloquence of a declaimer, and ali the artful fophiftry of a logician; and his prepofterous zeal was rendered ftill more ridiculous by the zeal with which he feemed to be animated. In a word, he was an enthusiast for vice; and, as he endeavoured to excite others to it by his exhortations, he fhewed by his example, that the practice of it was highly fuited to

the

the corrupt bent of our natures. Often, after having held forth for an hour or more, before the fociety for free enquiry and debate, at the King's arms in Newgate-street, or that equally venerable one which formerly held its weekly meetings at the Robin-hood ale-houfe in Butcher-row, he has paffed the remainder of the night in debauchery and taverns, or the most infamous houses in the purlieus of Covent-garden. The confequence of this was, that he was often fent to the roundhoufe, and fometimes imprifoned in the Poultry compter; and being once tried for an affault at Guildhall, was caft in a very confiderable fine.

Yet these diftreffes and untoward accidents were fo far from reclaiming him, that they had the fame effect upon his perverfe understanding that perfecution has upon a misguided bigot, the more he suffered by his riotous courfes, the fttonger was his attachment to vice, and the miffortunes which fhould have been a warning to him to return to the paths of virtue, was a motive which excited him to continue his irregularities, and which filled him with new zeal to promulgate the theory of vice. His favourite authors were those who, under the name of moral philofophers, have fapped the foundation of all morality, and thofe who, under the name of inquirers, have derided and denied the mysteries of religion. Hobbs, Spinofa, Mandeville, Chub, Collins, Toland, and other writers of that class, were always in his hands. Notwithstand'ing his reiterated declamations against bigotry, he read their works with all the partiality of a difciple, and all the deference of an admirer, whilft he read the works of authors February, 1764.

who wrote for the caufe of religion or virtue, merely with an intention to detect error, or confute fophystical reafoning. In the midst of this prepofterous courfe of life, an abject slave to vice, and a frantic bigot to impiety, he one night returning late from a tavern, found a letter upon his table, which informed him that his father was dead. This information he received like a clap of thunder; for though his father fupplied him liberally during his life, his living was too fmall for him to make any provifion for his family, and when he died his fortune died with him. Our Free-Thinker, thus finding himfelf deftitute, for fome time lived in a state of perplexity; his head was conftantly filled with expedients to procure a fubfiftence: but the various fchemes that offered themselves to his imagination were, upon reflection, rejected as impracticable, or declined as arduous and unpromifing. Finding himself reduced to his laft guinea, memory came to the aid of judgement, and he recollected that he had by him the manufcript of a tract against the refurrection, which he had compiled from the common-place cavils of deiftical authors, that he might never be at a lofs for objections, or tardy in making replies at the difputing-clubs which he frequented. This manufcript he fold to a bookfeller, who was equally ready to publifh fermons or impiety, moral treatifes or obfcene pamphlets, for gain, to which he was as much devoted, as the Free-Thinker was to his fyftem.

Finding himself mafter of a small fum, he applied with great alliduity to write another treatife against the immortality of the foul; but, before he had half finished it, the publisher of his first performance

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being