search of truth, common sense may deceive us, metaphysical speculation may lead us astray. Thus, as often as two or more metaphysical propositions, incompatible with each other, are, nevertheless, when dispassionately weighed and examined, found to be each supported by reasons of equal force, we must have recourse for a final decision to common sense. Berkley proved, by a chain of ingenious metaphysical reasoning, that we have no evidence for the existence of material beings without the mind. But, does not such subtilty wound common sense? Therefore, when the metaphysician finds his investigation terminating in results, that shock the universal and invariable dictates of common sense, he ought to renounce his undertaking. But the preference, notwithstanding, is not in all cases to be given to common sense. A philosopher may be led, by a well-connected series of abstract reasonings, to conclusions so singular, that he cannot adopt them, without shocking the common apprehension of mankind. Common sense is the rapid application of the general principles of knowledge, collected by induction, strongly felt, but indistinctly perceived; whereas speculative philosophy, or metaphysics, unfolds and demonstrates these general principles. The presumption is, therefore, in favour of metaphysics.

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physics. The conclusion is, we ought to adopt in metaphysics, every proposition to which we are conducted by a well connected series of argument, however paradoxical it may appear to common sense, provided it be not really repugnant to it; and on the other hand, reject every one which cannot be reconciled with common sense, though we should be incapable of demonstrating its falsehood.

Unbelievers are of two kinds the sober deists, who rejecting revelation, acknowledge, however, the obligations of morality, believe a providence, and expect a future retribution: and the atheists, who have neither hope nor fear, beyond the present life, deny the providence of God, and doubt, not to say worse, of his existence. The former think reverently of the moral attributes of God; and upon their notion of his attributes, build an expectation of their future existence, and look for a lot of misery or happiness in a future life, according to their deserts in this. But, the latter disclaim every thing. The atheist allows, indeed, the indispensable advantage of religion to society, and cannot deny a wholesome necessity in believing a future state, in order to our subsisting in this yet he monstrously contends, that

if there be a Deity, he has so constituted us, as to make the belief of a lie necessary to our living together here as rational creatures; that he hath planted in our breasts an ardent desire of an hereafter, and yet hath ordained that idea to be an illusion.

How destructive is the course of these annihilators! They go forth on all sides, armed with fatal paradoxes, to sap the foundations of all comfort, and to eradicate the principles of virtue. How contemptuously do they deride the antiquated names of religion, and of immortal hopes; consecrating their talents to the debasement and abolition of every thing that is held sacred by mankind! I will not bear so hard upon them as to say, they have any real hatred to religion, or to virtue; on the contrary, I can readily conceive, that were they banished to a country of atheists, they would, from the mere love of singularity, become believers.

In what I have said, I would not be understood to comprehend, under one common cen sure, the atheist and the deist. If their hypothesis be compared, it will be found that the hypothesis of the deist reaches through the intellectual and material world, with a clear and distinct

light

light every where; is genuine, comprehensive, and satisfactory; hath nothing forced, nothing confused, nothing precarious: whereas that of the atheist is strained and broken; dark and uneasy to the mind; commonly precarious; often incongruous and irrational; and sometimes plainly ridiculous. Hence I affirm, that no man can have a system of thoughts reaching through nature, coherent and consistent in every part, without a Deity for its basis; and that if the system of the theist be attended with difficulties, that of the atheist abounds with absurdity.

LETTER LXVI.

FULLY convinced as I am of the existence of a Supreme, all-perfect Being, seriously as I adore his majesty, bless his goodness, and resign myself chearfully to his providence; I should yet be sorry to rest my conviction on the authority of any man, or of all mankind; since authority cannot be, and evidence is, the sole proper proof on such an occasion. And yet, he who shall traverse this habitable earth, with all those remote corners of it reserved for the discovery of these later ages, may find some nations without cities, others without schools, houses, clothing, coin, but none without their God. They may, and do vastly differ in their manners, institutions, customs; but all of them agree, in having some deity to worship. It may, indeed, be said, some few tribes have been found without a notion of God. Granted. But, can this be urged any more against the common and usual order of ideas, than certain anomalous phænomena may to prove, that these are irregularities in the laws of nature? Is it reasonable to judge of the nature

of