farther enabled to distinguish soul or spirit from matter, wherein, after its utmost rarification, we never discover any one of these effects, nor any thing like them. It is true, there may be properties in matter, or impressed on matter per se, whereof we know nothing, nor can know. But from that which is unknown, and utterly unknowable, it is most idle to infer any thing. Men, in regard to property, character, health, or life, that is, in regard to any thing they value, admit not of arguments, founded on mere reveries and suppositions, and those too the most improbable in the nature of things. From all we know of matter, there is no one proposition more absolutely certain to human understanding, than this, that matter, per se, cannot think, will, nor choose. But why, saith a great philosopher, may not God endow matter with a power of thinking, &c.? That he hath not so endowed it, is as clearly evident, as any other negative concerning the nature of things. He hath made matter indifferent, as to rest or motion. Therefore it cannot choose whether it shall do either; indeed can do neither, but as it is influenced by some cause or power extrinsical to itself. It can never act of itself, and therefore its grand advocate, the presbyterian minister, hath judiciously denied the possibility of moral, or any other sort of freedom in mankind, whom he considers as nothing better than purely material machines. If they are in no sense free, they can never be judged, nor rewarded as good men, or punished as wicked. If they are but material machines, they can have no degree of freedom, and never can act, but as they are acted upon. All men, in their senses, know what matter is, so far, I mean, as it is of use to them to know it, but no man farther. The philosophers indeed talk of it, as if they knew a great deal more, but talk very idly, as they do on all other subjects, a little beyond the verge of utility. Aristotle confesses, that he knows not what it is, how much it is, or what sort of thing it is. Thus he speaks of it, as a philosopher; though he and the meanest Athenian, perfectly well knew this or that quantity of it, what it was in its distinguishing properties, how great or small this or that parcel of it was, and what sort of a thing that parcel was. Our modern philosophers, Newton among the rest, have been bolder with it; but talked, all of them, such nonsense on the subject, on the substratum of its accidents, on the inherence of those accidents in the substratum, as reduces it as absolutely to nothing in earnest, as Berkeley does in ridicule. But, after their handling, if it can

think, it is well, and certainly, as a mere nonentity, it can do nothing else. If people of all sorts, especially philosophers, would talk on subjects only so far as they understand them, it would certainly save a great deal of trouble, and probably tend more to the advancement of science than will be readily believed. Cartesius stuffed infinite space so full of matter, as not to leave therein the smallest interstice. Newton very happily cleared so much of it as to leave convenient room for the solar system, wherein planets and comets have been carried round in excellent order ever since, by centrifugal and centripetal powers. But unhappily he afterward, relapses into matter, adopts an ether, subtile enough to penetrate gold and adamant almost as easily as a vacuum, and sets this at work to whirl the planets about in different planes, intersecting one another in different angles, without seeming to remember, that a fluid so exceedingly rare could not possibly lay hold of, or carry with it, such prodigious masses of matter, through which it could so freely pass, and without asking leave of the centrifugals and centripetals, in possession of his prior patent. How this may do among the stars, I know not, but it makes wild confusion in the heads of his implicit disciples. Perhaps this weakness of their master imboldens them to make free with the vis inertia, made by him essential to matter, so as to ascribe to it a locomotive power, a power of thinking and choosing, or of acting as if it could really think and choose. Many, were they to read this, would say, I do not understand Sir Isaac, and it is just as easy for me to reply, that I am not single in charging him as I have done; that thousands, even philosophers, understand him no better than I do; and that his admirers are too slavishly addicted to all he says, howsoever contradictory, to recall the dictates of a master, held infallible, to the test of common sense. If the vast capacity of Newton was no better able to guide him through the mazes of matter, let the minuter tribe of philosophers take care how they launch out beyond him into an opinion, that matter, howsoever modified, may have a faculty of thinking. They pretend to say, that electrical fire is instantaneous, and quick enough for thought. Now, not to insist, as may be reasonably done, that thought requires a great deal more than quickness to produce it, I deny that the electrical vapour moves faster than the light of the sun, which requires seven minutes to arrive at this world; whereas I, without being a philosopher, can in a single instant outstrip the light, and think of a star a million times

farther off, than the most distant twinkler ever seen by Newton or Halley. But the materialists urge, that, if it were not the body, or bodily organs, which think, how should it come to pass, that a violent blow on the head of a wise man should instantly turn him into a fool or madman? Or (kill him? Should be added), may it not be true, that the soul, while closely united to the body, cannot duly exercise its proper functions, but by the organical instrumentality of the brain, nerves, or animal spirits, insomuch, that as often as they are greatly disordered, its faculties, for the time, are proportionably thrown into confusion. An able musician, sitting at his harpsichord, does justice to the composition of a Corelli, a Purcel, or a Haudel, until a rude fellow, with a club, dashed against the instrument, puts it extremely out of order. Does it follow that the musician is annihilated? Or that there neither was, nor is, any such person as a musician? Or that the harpsichord, of itself, performed the tune before it was shattered? None but the deaf, or one wholly destitute of a harmonic nerve, can draw such a consequence. What mere matter may be made to do, should, I think, be carefully distinguished from what she can of herself do, which will be found to be little, or absolutely nothing at all. Des Cartes, her greatest votary, filled infinite space with her. Newton fairly confined her to a small part of it, I mean, at first, and, for some time, seemed to do her more justice than the Frenchman, who had enlarged her into a sort of goddess; and, in favour of her, degraded into mere clockwork Montaigne's cat, and Agrippa's dog, though honoured by some with the high title of a devil; and yet, after returning to her with a grand train of attractions, operating at small distances, he charged her with such repulsions at a greater, and so great a degree of subtility, that, with all those powers of thinking, ascribed to her by some, she knew not what to do, whether to go backward or forward, indeed, whether she had so much as a being or not. He kept her busy in a proximity of attractions, then in distant repulsions; and nevertheless, without so much as letting her know, how long, and how far she might continue to repel, hooked her to the sun by a chain long enough to reach her beyond the orbit of Saturn. Forced into this fickleness of conduct by her great prime minister, her gravity, long celebrated, was brought into shrewd suspicion. In this distress she hath been induced to represent her case to the French philosophers of the present time by a memorial, nearly to the following purport, Humbly shewing,

"That Lady Matter, your memorialist, hath been miserably mauled by a number of her pretenders, particularly by one, calling himself Newton, who seemed to be almost as much her admirer as Des Cartes himself, and to whom she was ever fond of displaying her highest attractions, and even secrets concealed from the rest; that this deceiver, though still closely following her, hath really jilted your memorialist, and fallen in love with a light sort of minx, known by the name of Inanity Vacuum; that, not satisfied with this gross affront, he hath aspersed your memorialist by the title or attribute of vis inertia, as if she were no better than a mere passive lump; that, as a consequence to this most abusive scurrility, he hath, in the opinion of his followers, stripped her of cogitation in its lowest degree, as a poor unthinking creature; and finally, that through the encouragement given by him, and other dabblers, in ideas, one Berkeley hath published a libel against her, wherein he attempts to destroy the opinion of her very existence. Now, gentlemen, as you are all satisfied, that there is no other be ing but herself, who can think, will, or act; to you she flies for protection against the aforesaid breaches of privilege and outrages. Give her leave to hope, that you the most lively and frisky people in the world, and who exhibit in your persons such an experimental demonstration of the active powers she possesses, will no longer suffer the poor Britons to be superstitiously haunted by a belief in spirits, but will be pleased to dictate to them the fashion of materialism. There is no people on earth more addicted to fashion than they; and though they pretend to hate you, they do nothing but mimic you in every thing; insomuch, that an English, Scotch, or Irish man, not Frenchified, is by themselves deemed fit only for the canaille. Make them sensible, that if they set up for souls, their priests may happen to damn them, in case they should catch them at a short turn towards a bawdy-house, or a gaming-table; and that materialism may serve them perfectly well for Arianism, Scepticism, Deism, and other their systems of freedom, ecclesiastical or civil, which, for a long time, they have been at so much trouble to maintain. This summary opinion, without stopping short, or going farther, will at once do every thing for them they wish. It is soul only that enslaves and plagues them. You that have done so much for their colonies, do something now for themselves. Be assured, this one masterly stroke, without costing you a single livre, will soon bring them under your yoke. Fighting, you may perceive, after a trial of seven centuries, will

never do; you ought to know by this time, that the English obstinacy will hardly ever yield to force; but that, of all people, they are the most easily cajoled. It is but a few years ago since almost all the fine ladies in the British isles, and not a few of the nobles and gentry of the other sex, were ambitious to wear the livery of a French harlot, and were far from taking it ill to be told, that they wished to be like her in every respect. If a very handsome kind of cap were invented at Paris, and worn at Versailles, as a signal of proof, that the wearer believed there was neither a God in heaven, nor a soul in any human creature, all the British ladies would wear it, and allow their lovers and husbands to construe the mode as they pleased." Not to let this fine lady, now she pretends to the faculty of thinking, talk on eternally, our inquiry must draw a little closer to her pretensions. If angels and men are but matter, then angels and men, if agents at all, can be but necessary agents; there can be neither virtue nor vice in the universe; no good, no evil action was ever done, or possibly could be done; no one can be rewarded or punished for what he was compelled to do by a necessity of his nature, and by the power of extrinsical causes and motives operating upon him. How absurd would it be to suppose, that either angel or man should ever be made happy or miserable, in consequence of actions which he had neither power nor liberty to avoid? So, however it happens, virtue and happiness, on the one side, and sin and misery on the other, are inseparably united, in every intelligent being, in angels and men. Angels and men therefore are morally free agents, and as such, must have somewhat in them above matter, which can neither act, nor freely act. To deny the truth of this doctrine, is to deny the being, or at least justice, of a Creator. Here comes out a point absolutely demonstrated, that the materialist neither is or can be any thing better than a gross Atheist. Lest the Atheist should here urge, that I beg the principle of connexion between virtue and happiness, and between sin and misery, by referring to a future judgment, not yet demonstrated to him, I deny the fact. I appeal only to the present life for both connexions, and insist they are made evident even here, not only by all the laws of man, but by the general course of things, to say nothing of self-approbation, or remorse, on which two subjects I dare not appeal to the breast of any Atheist, though I do to that of all other men, It is readily confessed, that the god of this world, as he is styled by the apostle, is now and then permitted to raise his servants to