meeting its deceased companion, never more to be divided by accident or death. On the other hand, your philofopher's whole fum of perfection confifts in a total indifference to the accidents of life, in doing unhallowed violence to his own feelings, and in ftifling the affections and workings of nature. His mind wraps itself up in an apathy, gloomy, hopelets, and ungenerous, the tranquillity of a brute. Nor is he lefs unamiable in the indifference with which he would fortify himself against the approaches of his own death. Every hope and fear of futurity which nature whispers to the foul he rejects as deficient in proof, and unworthy of a philofopher; but that fortitude, brutal as it is, which he boats to have acquired, is now found a delufion. It was his principal care to extinguish and root out the affections and workings of nature, in pursuit of a fortitude, which not being founded on the hopes and feelings of nature, is in the hour of distress unattainable. In the days of health and joy he may think he has attained it; and though he may have rendered his heart callous at the death of a friend, yet at the approach of his own, unless he is abforbed in an unthinking ftupidity, injured nature will then plead her own cause, and painfully convince him that she cannot repose herself in the hopeless indifference and apathy of philofophy. Nor in death only does injured nature affert her claim to be heard: in the horrors of poverty, and in the torture of disease she will feek relief; and in that breast, where juftice has been taught to hope no future reward, and villainy to fear no tranfmundane punishment, the confequence is certain; nature will be heard. In the one cafe fraud will enfue; and, in the other, the only refuge of your philofopher is felf-murder; an exit truly worthy of fo deteftable a character. Nor is it only injured nature that will, in thefe cafes, compel your philofopher to thefe reliefs; his own philofophy alfo leads him to them. On his own principles, in thefe extremes, it is his duty to do fo; for on his principles it can never be proved a duty to fuffer, nor a vice to catch at the relief that can avoid detection.- -Such, Voltaire, is the idea of modern philofophy I have been able to collect from yours, from Bolingbroke's, and the writings of your other friends.-The fortitude it would attain is exactly the unnatural apathy of the Stoics; by giving up the hopes of immortality which that fect indulged, it has deftroyed the best, the only motives of virtue, and therefore has no claim to that love of it, for which the difciples of Zeno were juffly honoured. But you and your friends have fometimes talked of immortality.

I know your writings are ftrangely contradictory; but will a good fentiment in one page prove that you have not a bad one in the next? I know your modern philofophers have a method which would have been defpifed by antiquity: after build-,

ing your systems with the utmost care, you throw in a few fentences of a contrary tendency; and to these you loudly and abfurdly appeal as your true meaning, when the horrid confequences of your fyftems are objected to you. Juftly, O Rousseau, have you represented the moderns as forming a felf-contradictory monster, a fiend deftructive to every generous feeling, to every virtue, and which they dignify with the name of philofophy. Rouffeau. Godlike Socrates, turn not away!

• Soc. My pity for the helpless state of philofophy affects me with melancholy: I haften away to shake it off in the regions of the bleffed.'

The next dialogue is between Voltaire and the Emperor Julian. Consciousness of guilt in Julian prevails over the flattery of Voltaire, and modern unbelievers. Porphyry joins the party, and they enter warmly into the debate about the reality of those miracles which are afcribed to our Lord and his apostles, upon which the divinity of their character depends. The ancient enemies of Chriftianity allowed the facts, but according to Voltaire himself, abfurdly afcribed them to magic; whereas modern Infidels affert, that a miracle never was or can be wrought.

Voltaire. When we are hard urged by our adverfaries, we tell them plainly, that if the whole English nation had afferted that Queen Elizabeth had returned to life, after being dead and buried, we were refolved not to believe it.-See H-'s Effay on Miracles.

Julian. A happy argument, truly! to shift the fuppofition from a cafe which carries the appearance of the greatest benevolence of the Deity, to a cafe that could have no utility in it at all!'

The weapon with which Voltaire next attacks Christianity is that with a million of edges;' our criticifm, fays he, by which we expose any particular paffage we please of the volume which the fuperftitious receive as the book of God.

Julian. A pretty device to blind the multitude! But the information, O Voltaire, which will give us joy, is to acquaint us of any argument against Christianity that has truth and true philofophy on its fide. Common honefty and candour will demand a fair trial to the books held facred; and to a fair trial their advocates have always triumphantly appealed.-Porphyry did no good to our caufe when he challenged the antiquity of the book of Daniel.

Volt. But M. Freret has done greatly: he levels the whole fabrick at once. The New Teftament is all a forgery, he fays, contrived about Conftantine's time, never once mentioned by the firft Chriftian writers.

Jal. Amazing falfhood! I myself have given teftimony to fome of its books being written by the apoftles: its forgery, in my uncle's age, had never efcaped undetected by me, who must have been in the fecret, from my connections with the leaders of the church. Long ere Conftantine lived it was a thousand times cited, as the rule of faith, by the earliest fathers. I had lately a long difcourfe with Lardner: the authorities he has produced reflect difgrace on Freret.'

Another objection is that which is urged against the doctrine of the immortality of the foul, as it is taught in the facred fcriptures.-Porphyry denies the force of this, and in answer to Voltaire's queftion, what argument would most effectually refute revelation, proceeds: I can give you fome defcription of the argument that would do it. Chriftianity addreffes itself to the feelings, the fears, and wifhes of the human heart. Now when the world can produce a fyftem that will lay a ftronger hold on thefe, that will give piety a fublimer hope, that will give to vice greater fears, and to true penitence fweeter confolations*; then, and then only, will Chriftianity be rationally and effectually refuted. The prophecy of Montesquieu, that Chriftianity would not ftand its ground above other two hundred years, diffufed joy through our manfions; but I now fear the completion will never take place. Either better arguments must be difcovered, or, what indeed feems already to be far advanced, a want of honefty in making enquiry, and a fuperficial dabbling and trifling in philofophy, muft take entire poffeffion of the human mind; in either of these cafes, but in no other, the prophecy may be fulfilled. The latter would prove no allevi ation to us; and of the former, alas! I greatly defpair.'

Thefe extracts are fufficient to give the reader a general no tion of the plan and execution of this work, and to juftify the character which has been given of it. Rées.

ART. VIII. Genuine Letters between the Archbishop of Anneci, and Monf. de Voltaire, on the Subject of his Preaching at the Parish Church at Ferney, without being ordained; with the Archbishop's Reprefentation of the Cafe to his moft Chriflian Majefty, and Monf. de Voltaire's Confeffion of Faith, in Confequence of an Order from the French King. All properly authenticated by Certifi cates of the most unquestionable Authority, Tranflated from the French. 8vo. 1 s. Newbery. 1770.

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N all M. Voltaire's fkirmishes with the clergy, he never before came off with fo much difgrace to himself, nor left on the field fo many honours to the enemy. In all his fubtleties.

Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues of the Dead.

REV. Jan. 1771.

D

he

he was never fo ineffectually evafive; in all his inconfiftencies he never was fo contemptibly inconfiftent; in all his abject conceffions he never was fo abject. The philofopher of Ferney publishing a confeffion of faith in confequence of an order from the French King; folemnly maintaining the veracity of those articles of faith which he has inceffantly laughed at; folliciting the teftimony of the lowest ecclefiaftics, monks, friars, and proctors, to the orthodoxy of his principles-thefe are circumtances at the fame time fo humiliating and fo ridiculous, that we cannot but look upon them with the moft contemptuous pity.

Had they arisen from any religious conviction; from beholding in any new and more favourable light thofe circumstances of divine revelation he had fo frequently made the objects of a vain buffoonery, they would have been no lefs refpectable than they are otherwife ridiculous: but it is clear from the course and confequences of these letters, that the philofopher is vainly constraining himself to conceal a most unchristian rancour against this dignified correfpondent; while his fear of the civil power makes him openly profefs every principle of the Chriftian faith.

The occafion of thefe farcical fcenes was this. Voltaire had been robbed, and at the very folemn and public time of Eafter, he took upon him to enter the pulpit at Ferney, and to preach a fermon against theft. The clergy were generally and juftly fcandalized, that a layman should affume the ecclefiaftic function, and prostitute it to the purposes of private intereft or revenge. Upon this, M. de Voltaire received three letters from the Archbishop of Anneci which are here printed, together with Voltaire's answers to the first and fecond. Every candid and difcerning perfon who perufes thefe letters, will acknowledge the advantage which the Archbishop has over the philofopher, not only in point of rational argument and ingenuity, but even in literary compofition! What followed was the Archbishop's application to the King; and, in confequence of his reprefentations, the pious philofopher, for the edification of all good Catholics, attefted and published the following Confeffion of Faith:

I believe, firmly, all that the Catholic, Apoftolic, and Roman Church believes and confeffles. I believe in one God, in three Perfons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, really distinguished; having the fame nature, the fame divinity, and the fame power. That the Second Perfon was made man, called Jefus Chrift, who died for the falvation of all men; who has established the holy church, to which it belongs to judge of the true fenfe of the holy fcriptures. I condemn likewife, all the herefies the faid church has condemned and rejected; likewife all perverted misinterpretations which may be put on them.

• This

• This true and Catholic faith, out of which no one can be faved, I profefs and acknowledge to be the only true one; and I swear, promife and engage myself to die in this belief, by the grace of God.

I believe and acknowledge alfo, with a perfect faith, all, and every one of the articles of the Apoftles Creed. [Which he recited in: in Latin very distinctly.] I declare moreover, that I have made this confeffion before the reverend Father Capuchin, previous to his confeffing me.'

Thus, as the Editor obferves, has M. de Voltaire, who during the long period of his life has lived in open contempt of all religious establishments, in the most folemn manner profeffed to believe in the groffeft abfurdities, of that fyftem which all true Proteftants have, on the cleareft conviction, difbelieved and renounced. We fhall add nothing on the humiliating subject of an old man's imbecillity.

L.

ART. IX. The Philofopher, in Three Converfations. 8vo. is. 6d. Becket. 1771.

THERE have been times when political philofophy was a fashionable kind of writing, but then they were times when political virtue was no unfafhionable thing. Had the Author of this little tract lived during the existence of human liberty in the states of ancient Greece, and indulged his speculations in her academic fhades, his labours might have been no less useful than their intention was meritorious. But to fuppose that a system of polity, founded on the principles of philofophical truth, fhould find attention in these days, implies either a want of knowledge of the world, or an inclination to be idly bufy in purfuits as harmless as they are vain.

Prefixed to this work, however, we find a dedication to Lord Mansfield, fo fpirited, fo elegant, and fo much out of the ftyle of dedications in general, that we fhall give our Readers a view of the most effential part of it.

I have taken every opportunity, I could have, of hearing you fpeak in parliament, or on the bench: I have read every publication that has been attributed to you: I know of no man, whofe abilities are nearly equal to those of your Lordship. And I find myfeif, fo far from being fingle in this opinion, that none differ from me.But, my Lord-when the application and ufe of these abilities is made the fubject of converfation:If I should fay, you employ them to preserve the most effential parts of the conflitution, and to promote the happiness of your country,-almost every man would contra

dict me.

All men are fubject to delufions: the greatest men, to the greateft variety; they range in an unbounded region, and are elevated above the common ftandard of human views and actions. This is my reafon for prefuming to think, that I can throw out any hints, which may be of use to your Lordship. p 2

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