ART. VIII. An Abridgment of the Light of Nature purjued,

WE

&c.

(Concluded from p. 516.)

E have employed fo much time and fpace on the three firft books of this volume, that we must pafs over the remaining two with great rapidity. There is indeed no occafion to dwell on them long; for they contain little more than practical inferences, which as they are fairly deduced from the principles that we have already examined, muft ftand or fall with thofe principles.

The fourth book, in which the author treats of doctrines established by law, is divided into feven chapters, of which the first is merely introductory to thofe which follow. After fhowing the importance of religious principles, and that notwithstanding the harmony and perfection of the laws of nature, revelations may occafionally be expedient, the author proves with great force of argument that the world has actually derived much benefit from the Chriflian revelation; and that even Mahometanism, though at beft but a grofs corruption of Chriftianity and Judaifm, has been the means of introducing or keeping alive among her votaries, a purer morality than was generally prevalent among the idolatrous nations of antiquity. As revelation, however, cannot fuperfede the use of reafon, it is of importance to afcertain her province in the ftudy of Chriftianity, and to diftinguish real freedom of thought and inquiry, fuch as St. Paul encouraged, from that licentioufnefs which arrogates to itself the exclufive right to be called Free-thinking. This fubject is ably difcuffed in the fecond chapter, in which the bigot and infidel free-thinker are thus compared together.

"However diftant these two branches may feem, there is a nearer resemblance between them than one would at first imagine. For the bigot is a free-thinker with refpect to the doctors of his. church, delighting to cenfure their expofitions and practices as deviations from the primitive purity; and the free-thinker is a bigot to certain favourite principles of his own, the infallibility of reason, the abfurdity of divine interpofition, &c. Both are alike prefumptuous, arrogant, felf-fufficient, indiffolubly wedded to their own peculiar opinions, and confident in their fagacity to difcern certain truths intuitively; impatient of contradiction, fcorning to learn, as implying imperfection, but aiming to draw all others after them; ambitious of fhining every where, fo as to appear perfons of confequence. Both agree to place the whole fum and fubftance of religion in forms and creeds; which the one therefore regards as the fole thing effential in contempt of prac

tical fentiments and the common duties of life; while the other, finding no effential value in them, concludes unfavourably of religion itself, as containing nothing elfe." P. 357

In the third chapter the author treats of miracles, which, when they are pretended to have been wrought for any but the moft important purposes, he very juftly concludes, ought to be rejected without examination. He allows, however, that there are purposes worthy of a miraculous interpofition of divine power; and then inquires whether the evidence of teftimony be fufficient, in oppofition to what is commonly called experience, to gain the affent of mankind to the reality of fuch miracles. In conducting this inquiry, he feems to have had in his eye the reafoning of Hume's effay, which, without mentioning it, he confutes by arguments as conclufive as any which have been employed by the profeffed opponents of that fubtle fophift.

"It is faid, there are fome principles fo confirmed by conftant experience, that though they have not mathematical certainty, they carry fo full a degree of affurance, as no weight of teftimony or other fubfequent evidence can overbalance, without the aid of violent prejudice, or fome great perverfity of understanding. Yet we know, for once this rule failed, when the Indian king difcredited all (that) the Dutchman had told him before, upon hearing him affert that in Holland the cold was fo intense as to make the water hard enough to walk upon; for we can scarce be better affured of any thing than he was, that if a greater degree of cold make water quite hard, a lefs degree must harden it proportionally, which was contrary to conftant experience." P. 365.

On the fourth chapter of this work we can beflow very little praife. It profefles to be a view of the Christian fcheme, which, it must be obvious to every Divine, that Tucker had never ftudied, where alone it is to be found, in the facred volume, uncorrupted by the theories of ́a false philofophy. He begins with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which he explains nearly in the fame manner in which it was explained by Sabellius in the third century. From the Trinity he proceeds to the redemption of the world, of which it is needlefs to fay that he could have no correct notion, after having fhown that he denied the refur rection of the dead and the general judgment; but of the co-operation of the Holy Spirit with man, to enable him to work out his own falvation, he writes occafionally in terms more nearly approaching to the language of fcripture; and the following extract, with which he concludes the chapter, is excellent.

" But

"But the rationalift can keep his ideas pure and his conduct exact, without any foreign aids. Be it fo: yet his vanity will allow me to fay, (that) there are very few of fuch a happy temperature. Will he then forget that the object held in view was the improvement of mankind in general, that the Gospel was preached to the poor? Let him fuppofe Chriftianity banished from the world; I do not ask what he would lofe himfelf, but what the world in general would be the better? But the wifeft of us have a perfonal intereft in the general turn of thought prevailing around us; therefore as foon as he fhall please to compofe a form of rudiments better fuited to the capacities of the young and the vulgar than thofe in ufe at prefent, and fatisfy me of its excellence, I will confent to its adoption; provided that, till then, he will give me leave to use the catechifms already put into my hands, and willingly received by other people." P. 394.

Thefe are the fentiments of a philofopher who, though he had erroneous notions of the great scheme of Chriftianity, feems to have been ftrongly attached to the religion of Chrift, on account of its moral influence on human conduct. Viewed in that light, they are, as we have obferved, excellent; and fo is the whole of the fifth chapter, in which the author treats of religious fervices. In that chapter, the good effects of private and public devotion, and even of fafting, are fet in a point of view which muft flafh conviction on every unprejudiced mind, whilft abundant care is taken to guard against the extremes of fuperftition and enthufiafm. Of this admirable chapter we will not leffen the effect by extracts, which would lofe much of their force by being torn from the context.

The next chapter, on facraments, difcipline, and articles, is likewife good, when confidered as flowing from the pen of a mere philofopher; but the real Chriftian, who knows for what purpose the Son of God came into the world, and died on a crofs, will perceive, without furprife, its various defects. That he who thought fo erroneously as Tucker of the redemption of mankind, fhould have no correct notion of the import of the two facraments, particularly of the Lord's fupper, is nothing more than was to be expected. It is, indeed, impoflible that the man who funk into a kind of figure, the great facrifice, fhould have had adequate notions of the benefits derived from religioufly partaking of the feaft founded on that facrifice.

The author's defence of the dignities and revenues of the church is, politically confidered, very able, and fuch as ought to carry conviction to the mind of every man, who does not confider Christianity as a useless inftitution which ought to be abolished. It feems not, however, to have oc

curred to him (for if it had, he was too candid to conceal it), that every bishop and dignitary has the very fame right to his revenues, and every rector to his tithes, that an English Duke, or Earl, or Squire, has to the rents of his eftate. The ecclefiaftical proprietors are freeholders as well as the laymen, and hold by a tenure derived from the fame fource. It is not uncommon, we believe, especially in the northern counties, to hear an empty fciolift, who has derived his notion of property from the chemifts and metaphyficians of Edinburgh, call the revenues of the See of Durham the falary of the bishop, and reprefent it as a falary too great for all that his Lordfhip has to do! But it is a falary in no other fenfe, than the rents of the Northumberland estate are the falary of the duke; and when the difference of these falaries is fairly eftimated, it may be worthy of confideration, whether the falary of the bifhop be not as laboriously earned, and by means as ufeful to the ftate, as the falary of his Grace. Both are certainly freeholds as inviolable as any other freehold in the empire. Even the rector of the couptry parish may be as ufeful a member of fociety, as the Lord of the manor; and we are prepared, when called upon, to maintain against all the metaphyfics of Scotland 'and our own diffenters, that he draws his tithes by at least as good and ancient right as the fquire draws his rents.

In the feventh chapter we have a philofophical history of man, in which the author traces the progrefs of the human mind from the ignorance of the loweft favages, who are fuppofed to have no notion whatever of fuperior powers, through all the ftages of polytheifm, up to the knowledge of one first cause. His reafoning is occafionally plaufible, but not folid; and his hypothefis that man was originally a favage, is contrary to feet. Indeed it might be proved, and it has been proved as completely as fuch things are capable of being proved, that in no nation have mankind gradually emerged from barbarity and ignorance to a state of civilization; that where they have once been favage and afterwards civilized, they have derived the benefits of knowledge and the bleffings of religion from fome more enlightened coun try; that there always has been fome fuch country, in the progrefs of civilization from eaft to weft; and that had the whole race been at any period lavages, they must have continued fo for ever, unlels they had been civilized by the miraculous interpofition of heaven.

The concluding book of this volume is mifcellaneous, treating, in fix chapters, of the employment of time; contentment; vanity; fashion; education; and death. In the two firft chapters, there is much that is good, though nothing furely

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which has not often occurred to every serious and reflecting mind. In the third chapter vanity is made a genus, of which pride and ambition are species. This is furely erroneous; for genuine pride is a filent paffion, and vanity the fource of loquacious boafting. Vanity is likewife confounded with emulation, and even with envy; and this confufion, whether of thought or of language, is productive of reafoning that leads to conclufions which cannot be inferred from vanity, as that word is commonly underflood. It is but justice, however, to observe, that the abridger alone is answerable for much of this confufion, and that Tucker has no fuch Genus as vanity, comprehending under it pride, ambition, and emulation. The chapters entitled Fafbion and Education, are unexceptionable; but the fame thing cannot be faid of the chapter on Death.

It is the object of that chapter to fortify the mind against the fear of death; and the arguments employed for the purpofe, are fully fufficient to arm us against the dread of that pain which is apprehended as neceffarily preceding the feparation of the foul and the body; but the profpect which the author holds forth of a future ftate, is such as can afford confolation to no man capable of reflexion. "If," as he says, “on quitting our animal machine, we are to quit therewith our habits, our propenfities, our ideas and remembrance;" if we are to have as little recollection of what we did or fuf. fered or thought in this world, as we now have of what befel us in the womb before we were born; if "our fecurity lie in having the whole flock of our knowledge expunged," it is obvious that we can have as little perfonal intereft in the future ftate of our minds, as we have in the prefent state of the inhabitants of Jupiter and Saturn; and that there can be no fuch thing as a future ftate of retribution.

This is indeed the natural confequence of the doctrine of abforption in the mundane foul, which never can be reconciled with the Chriftian doctrines of a resurrection from the dead, and of a future ftate, in which every man "fhall re ceive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." It was this unphilofophical dream of a re-union of all human fouls with the anima mundi, that made fome of the Stoics of Athens mock when they heard froin St. Paul of the refurrection of the dead; and others of them imagine, as Chryfoftom affures us, that by the word 'Avalas he meant fome unknown goddess. 'Incoūs and 'Avάolaois, being the new gods, of which he was a fetter forth. The fame dream feems to have been a fruitful fource of herefy within the church, as well as of objections urged from without by the philofophers, to the fundamental articles of the faith, down even to the beginning of the fifth century,