itself, which may and ought to limit the exercise of its freedom. That governor is reason.

Bayle. Yes: but reason, like other governors, has a policy more dependent upon uncertain caprice, than upon any fixed laws. And if that reason, which rules my mind or yours has happened to set up a favourite notion it not only submits implicitly to it, but desires that the same respect should be paid to it, by all the rest of mankind. Now I hold that any man may lawfully oppose this desire. in another and that if he is wise, he will use his utmost endeavours to check it in himself.

Locke. Is there not also a weakness of a contrary nature to this you are ridiculing? Do we not often take a pleasure to show our own power, and gratify our own pride by degrading the notions set up by other men, and generally respected?

Bayle I believe we do and by this means it often happens, that, if one man builds and consecrates a temple to folly, another pulls it down.

Locke. Do you think it beneficial to human society, to have all temples pulled down?

Bayle. I cannot say that I do.

Locke. Yet I find not in your writings any mark of distinction, to show us which you mean to save.

Bayle. A true philosopber, like an impartial historian must be of no sect.

Locke. Is there no medium between the blind zeal of sectary, and a total indifference to all religion.

Bayle. With regard to morality, I was not indifferent.

Locke. How could you then be indifferent with regard to the sanctions religion gives to morality? How could you publish what tends so directly and apparently to weaken in mankind a belief of those sanctions? Was not this sacrificing the great interest of virtue to the little motives of vanity?

Bayle. A man may act indiscreetly, but he cannot do wrong, by declaring that, which, on a full discussion of the question, be sincerely thinks to be true.

Locke. An enthusiast, who advances doctrines prejudicial to society, or opposes any that are useful to it, has the strength of opinion, and the heat of a disturbed imagination, to plead in alleviation of his fault. But your coal head and sound judgment, can have no such excuse.

know very well there are passages in all your works, and those not few, where you talk like a rigid moralist. I have also heard that your character was irreproachably good. But when, in the most laboured part of your wrilings, you sap the surest foundations of all moral duties; what avails it in others, or in the conduct of your life, you appeared to respect them? How many, who have stronger passions than you had,and desirous to get rid of the curb that restrains them, will lay hold of your scepticism, to set themselves loose from all obligations of virtue! What a misfortune it is to have made such a use of such talents! It would have been better for you and for man kind, if you had been one of the dullest Dutch theologians, or the most credulous monk in a Portuguese convent. The riches of the mind, like those of fortune, may be employed so perversely, as to become a nuisance and pest, instead of an ornament and support to society.

Bayle. You are very severe upon me.-But do your count it no merit, no service to mankind, to deliver them from the frauds and fetters of priestcraft, from the deliriums of fanaticism, and from the terrors and follies of superstition? Consider how much mischief these have done to the world! Even in the last age, what massacres, what civil wars, what convulsions of government, what confusion in society, did they produce! Nay, in that we both lived in, though much more enlightened than the former, did I not see them occasion a violent persecution in my own country? and can you blame me for triking at the root of these evils?

Locke. The root of these evils you well know, was false religion; but you struck at the true. Heaven and hell are not more different, than the system of faith I defended, and that which produced the horrors of which you speak. Why would you so fallaciously confound them together in some of your writings, that it requires much more judgment, and a more diligent attention, than ordinary readers have, to separate them again, and to make the proper distinction?

This indeed,is the great art of the most celebrated free-. thinkers. They recommend themselves to warm and ingenuous minds, by lively strokes of wit, and by arguments really strong, against superstition, enthusiasm, and priestCraft. But at the same time, they insidiously throw the

colours of these upon the fair face of true religion; and dress her out in their garb, with the malignant intention to render her odions or despicable, to those who have not penetration enough to discern the impious fraud. Some of them may have thus deceived themselves, as well as others. Yet it is certain, no book that ever was written by the most acute of these gentlemen, is so repugnant to priestcraft, to spiritual tyranny, to all absurd superstitions, to all that can tend to disturb or injure society, as that gospel they so much affect to despise.

Bayle. Mankind are so made, that, when they have been over-heated, they cannot be brought to a proper temper again till they have been over-cooled. My scep

ticism might be necessary, to abate the fever and phrenzy of false religion.

Locke. A wise prescription, indeed, to bring on a paralytical state of the mind,(for such scepticism as yours is a palsy, which deprives the mind of all vigour, and deadens its natural powers,) in order to take off a fever, which temperance, and the milk of the evangelical doctrines, would probably cure.

Bayle. I acknowledge that those medicines have a great power. But few doctors apply them untainted with the mixture of some harsher drugs, or some unsafe and ridiculous nostrums of their own.

Locke. What you now say is too true-God has given us a most excellent physic for the soul, and all its diseases; but bad and interested physicians, or ignorant and conceited quacks, administer it so all to the rest of mankind, that much of the benefit of it is unhappily lost.

Lord Littletori.

CHAPTER VIH.

PUBLIC SPEECHES,

SECTION I.

Cicero against Verres.

1. The time is come, Fathers, when that which haa long been wished for, towards allaying the envy your or der has been subject to, and removing the imputations against trials, is effectually put in your power. An opinion has long prevailed, not only here at home, but likewise in foreign countries, both dangerous to you, and pernicious to the state--that in prosecutions, men of wealth are always safe, however clearly convicted.

2. There is now to be brought upon his trial before you, to the confusion, I hope, of the propagators of this slanderous imputation, one whose life and actions condemn him in the opinion of all impartial persons; but who, according to his own reckoning and declared dependance upon his riches, is already acquitted; I mean Caius Ver

res.

I demand justice of you, Fathers, upon the robber of the public treasury, the oppressor of Asia Minor and Pamphylia, the invader of the rights and privileges of Romans, the scourge and curse of Sicily.

3. If that sentence is passed upon him which his crimes deserve, your authority, Fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public; but it his great riches should bias you to his favour, I still gain one point--to make it apparent in all the world, that what was wanting in this case, was not a criminal nor a prosecutor, but justice and adequate punishment.

4 To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth what does his quætorship, the first public employment that he held what does it exhibit, but one continued scend villanies? Cneius Carbo plundered of the public money by his own treasurer, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people violat ed.

5. The employment he held in Asin Minor and Pamphylia, what did it produce but the ruin of those countries in which houses, cities and temples, were robbed by him. What was his conduct in his prætorship here at home? Let the plundered temples, and public works neglected, that he might embezzle the money intended for carrying them on, bear witness. How did he discharge the office of a judge? Let those who suffered by his injustice answer. But his prætorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and finishes a lasting monument to his infamy.

6. The mischiefs done by him in that unhappy country, during the three years of his iniquitous adminis ration, are such, that many years, under the wisest and best of prætors, will not be sufficient to restore things to the condition in which he tound them; for it is notorious, that during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neituer enjoyed the protection of their own original laws; of the regulations made for their benefit the Roman Senate, upon their coming under the protection of the commonwealth; nor of the natural unalienable rights of men.

7. His nod has decided all causes in dicily for these three years. And his decisions have broken all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has, by arbitrary taxes and unheard of impositions, extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful alties of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies,

8. Roman Citizens have like slaves, been put to death with tortures. The most attrocious criminals for money, have been exempted from the deserved punishments; and meu of the most unexceptionable characters, condemned and banished unheard. The harbours though sufficiently fortified,and the gates of strong towns, have been opened to pirates and ravagers.

9. The soldiery and sailors, belonging to a province under the protection of the commonwealth, have been starved to death; whole fleets, to the great detriment of the province, suffered to perish. The ancient monuments

of either Sicilian or Roman greatness, the statues of heroes and princes, have been carried off; and the temples stripped of the images.

10. Having by his iniquitous sentences, filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserving of the peo