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           Title: A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil. In Six
                  Letters to --.
      Creator(s): Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)
     Print Basis: London: R. and J. Dodsley (1761)
   CCEL Subjects: All;
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   A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.
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PREFACE.

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   in publick: he knows, that mankind live all in masquerade, and that
   whoever presumes to come amongst them barefaced must expect to be
   abused by the whole Assembly: he could therefore have no motive for
   thus imparting his free sentiments to the publick, except the dictates
   of his own heart, which tell him, that it is every man's duty, who
   comes into the world, to use his best endeavours, however
   insignificant, to leave it as much wiser, and as much better as he can.
   Induced by this motive alone he at first undertook this Inquiry; and
   now, actuated by the same principle, and unprovoked by all the
   senseless misapprehensions, and malicious misconstructions, with which
   it has been tortured, he will here, with all possible conciseness,
   endeavour to explain those parts of it, which have been so
   misunderstood, or misrepresented, and give satisfaction to all, who are
   either able or willing to understand it.

   The first Letter treats of Evils in general, and endeavours to prove,
   that they all owe their existence, not to any voluntary admission of a
   benevolent Creator, but to the necessity of their own natures, that is,
   to the impossibility of excluding them from any system of created
   beings whatever; and that in all such systems, however wisely
   contrived, they must have, and must at all times have had a place.
   Against this, but one material objection has been urged; which is this,
   that, in order to make room for this necessity of Evil, the real
   existence of a paradisiacal state is represented as at all times
   impossible; and consequently, the Mosaick account of that state is
   utterly exploded, on which the whole fabrick of the Christian Religion
   is erected. How far the literal belief of that account is essential to
   the true faith of a Christian, need not be here decided; because not
   the least mention of it is made in this Letter: and therefore this
   objection is intirely founded on a mistake. The argument there made use
   of, is only this, that some have endeavoured to justify the goodness of
   God from the introduction of Evil, by asserting, that at the beginning
   there was no such thing, but that, at first, all creation came out of
   his omnipotent hand, endued with absolute perfection, and free from all
   Evil, both Natural and moral: to shew, that this was an ancient
   opinion, some lines are quoted from Ovid's Metamorphosis, describing
   the Golden Age, in such a state of perfect happiness and innocence; on
   which the Author, thinking them to be no part of any one's Creed,
   imagined himself at liberty to observe, that from the nature of man,
   and the nature of this terrestrial globe, which he inhabits, the real
   existence of such a state seemed impossible; and therefore, that these
   descriptions of it could be nothing more, than amusing dreams, and
   inchanting fables. This bears not the least reference to the Mosaick
   Account of Paradise, in which such a State of absolute perfection, void
   of all Evil, is so far from being described, that the Serpent, or the
   Devil, the parent of all Evil, is one of the principal characters of
   that History; which therefore by no means contradicts the proposition
   here asserted.

   The second Letter undertakes to shew, that Evils of Imperfection are in
   truth no Evils at all; but only the absence of comparative good,
   resulting solely from the necessary inferiority of some Beings with
   regard to others, which cannot be prevented in a system of creation,
   whose very essence consists in a chain of subordination, descending
   from infinite perfection to absolute nothing. To this likewise one
   objection only has been made; which is, that no such chain of
   subordinate Beings, reaching from infinite perfection to absolute
   nothing, can, in fact, exist; for this notable reason; because no being
   can approach next to infinite perfection; nor any be contiguous to
   nothing. But this argument being no more than a quibble on metaphysical
   terms, to which no precise ideas are affixed, neither deserves, nor is
   capable of an answer.

   The third Letter treats of Natural Evils; and attempts to shew that
   most of these, which we complain of, are derived likewise from the same
   source; that is, from the imperfection of our natures, and our station
   in the universal system: to this are added three conjectures; first,
   that many of our miseries may be owing to some secret, but invincible
   disposition in the nature of things, that renders it impracticable to
   produce pleasure exclusive of pain; a certain degree of which must
   therefore be endured by individuals, for the happiness and well-being
   of the whole: secondly, that many other of our miseries may be
   inflicted on us by the agency of superior Beings, to whose benefit they
   may possibly be as conducive as the deaths and sufferings of inferior
   animals are to ours: and, lastly, that by the ancient doctrine of
   Transmigration, the miseries, which for the sake of general utility we
   are obliged to suffer in one life, may be recompensed in another, and
   so the divine goodness be sufficiently justified from the admission of
   them all. To every one of these some objections have been made: against
   the first it has been alledged, that this impracticability to produce
   pleasure, without pain, whence arises this utility of the sufferings of
   individuals for the good of the whole, is meerly a production of the
   Author's own daring imagination, founded on no reason, and supported by
   no proof. To which he answers, that he proposes it as a conjecture
   only; but cannot think it ill-founded, since it is confirmed by the
   appearance of every thing around us, and since it is reasonable to
   believe, that a benevolent Creator would not have permitted his
   creatures to have suffered on any other terms. In ridicule of the
   second conjecture, it has been asked, with an air of humour, whether we
   can think it credible, that superior beings should ride, or hunt, or
   roast, or eat us, as we make use of inferior animals? Which question is
   most properly to be answered by another: whether, in the unbounded
   system of creation, there may not be numberless methods, by which
   beings of different orders may be subservient to each others uses,
   totally above the reach of our comprehensions? To doubt of which would
   be like the incredulity of the ignorant peasant, who can scarce be
   persuaded to believe that there is any thing in the world, some
   specimen of which he has not beheld within the narrow limits of his own
   parish. To the last it is objected, that the doctrine of Transmigration
   being only the fanciful and exploded opinion of some ancient
   Philosophers, in the times of darkness, ought not, by the Author, to
   have been here advanced in direct contradiction to the faith and tenets
   of the Christian religion: to which he replies, that he neither
   proposes this doctrine as an article of his own belief, or imposes it
   on others; but mentions it only as the most rational conjecture of the
   human mind, uninformed by supernatural assistance concerning a future
   stare: that it is confirmed by Revelation he does not pretend, but that
   it directly contradicts it, by no means appears; so silent are the
   Scriptures concerning the state of the soul between death and the
   resurrection, that the most learned divines still widely differ on that
   subject; some maintaining that it enters immediately into a state of
   retribution; others, of sleep; and others, of purgation from past
   offences: why therefore is it more repugnant to the sense of these
   writings, to suppose, that it may possibly animate other bodies during
   that period, and, at the last day, receive such punishments or rewards
   as is due on the whole account of its past behaviour? Thus the
   probability of every one of these conjectures seems to be sufficiently
   established, and they appear perfectly consistent with reason, and not
   at all contradictory to revelation.

   The fourth Letter endeavours to account for Moral Evil: the most
   arduous part of the whole undertaking; to which end it attempts to
   shew, that the common opinion, which derives it solely from the abuse
   of free-will in man, is ineffectual for that purpose; and that
   therefore, though its very essence consists in the production of
   natural Evil, yet it could never have been admitted into the works of a
   just and beneficent Creator, if it had not some remote and collateral
   tendency to universal good, by answering some ends beneficial to the
   immense and incomprehensible whole: one of which may possibly be the
   conversion of unpreventable miseries into just punishment by the
   production of guilt, without which they must have been inflicted on
   perfect innocence. To this account of the Origin of Moral Evil, not
   only many weighty objections have been made, but on it many imputations
   have been laid, of a most formidable nature, as that it makes God the
   cause of all wickedness, destroys Free-will in man, and consequently
   roots up the foundation of all Virtue and Morality whatever; and it is,
   moreover, charged with inconsistency and self-contradiction thro' every
   part. To all this the Author replies only, that he is assured, that, if
   any intelligent reader will peruse the whole Letter together with
   candor, and attention, it will evidently appear that these accusations
   are entirely groundless. He makes no manner of doubt, but that man is
   endued with Free-will, and is justly punishable for the abuse of it;
   and hopes he has so expressed himself, through this whole piece, as to
   leave no uncertainty of his opinion on that question: all he means is,
   that though the abuse of Free-will is undoubtedly the immediate cause
   of Moral Evil, yet it cannot from thence derive its original admission
   into the works of a benevolent Creator; because man, not being a
   self-existent and independent being, must receive that Will itself,
   together with his nature and formation, from the supreme Author of all
   things: for which reason he cannot apprehend, that the general
   wickedness of mankind can be an accident proceeding from their
   unforeseen wrong elections, by which the whole benevolent system is
   defeated; but must be a part, and a material part too, of the original
   plan of creation, wisely calculated by the incomprehensible operations
   of vice, and punishment, to promote the good and happiness of the
   whole. For, to assert, that any thing has happened which God did not
   intend, or that he intended any thing which did not happen, is a
   language, which may be allowed to the Poet, or the Orator, but never to
   the Philosopher; unless we can suppose, that Omniscience can be
   disappointed, and Omnipotence defeated. As to Inconsistency, he denies
   not the charge; but believes he is not more inconsistent than all who
   have undertaken to write on the same subject: the Scriptures themselves
   are guilty of the same seeming inconsistency on this head; they all
   represent Man as a Being s perfectly free, punishable, and punished for
   his misbehaviour; yet as constantly speak of him as a creature deriving
   all his thought, will, and dispositions from his Creator, and under his
   perpetual influence, and direction: the appearance of inconsistency in
   which two propositions, both undoubtedly true, proceeds only from our
   ignorance in the nature, and limits of free-will, and divine influence,
   and our inability to comprehend them. In the latter part of this
   Letter, a few hints are flung out, to shew that on the principles of
   the foregoing theory some of the most abstruse doctrines of the
   Christian revelation, of original sin, grace, predestination, and
   vicarious punishment might be rendered reconcileable to the strictest
   reason; a proposal from whence surely much advantage might accrue to
   the cause of Christianity in general, and by which possibly some
   articles of our own Church might be proved to be much less incompatible
   with common sense than they are thought to be by all those, who will
   not subscribe them, and by many, who do: with this, two classes of men
   are particularly offended; the rational dissenters, as they please to
   call themselves, and the Methodists: the former of these having
   arbitrarily expunged out of their Bibles every thing, which appears to
   them contradictory to reason, that is, to their own reason, or in other
   words, every thing which they cannot understand, are displeased to see
   those tenets explained, which they have thought proper to reject: the
   latter having embraced these very doctrines only because they appeared
   unintelligible, are unwilling to see them cleared up, and afraid lest
   those dark and thorny covers should be laid open, under which they have
   so long sheltered themselves from the rays of reason: with either of
   these all debate would be vain, and useless, because the first, though
   for the most part honest, religious and learned men, are unable to
   comprehend any reasoning, which soars above the limits of their own
   confined literature, and education; and the others are determined to
   listen to no reasoning at all, having with all reason and common-sense
   declared eternal warfare.

   The design of the fifth Letter is to shew, that in the government of
   such imperfect creatures as men over each other there must be much
   unavoidable Evil: that all human governments, whether of the
   monarchical, popular, or mixed kinds, were at first founded on force or
   interest, and must ever be supported by the same means, that is, by
   compulsion, or corruption, both of which must be productive of
   innumerable Evils: that these ought not to be imputed to God, because
   he could not have prevented them without the total alteration of human
   nature; much less can they be eradicated by men; but that they may in
   some measure be lessened by the diminution of Moral Evil, from which
   all Political Evils are derived; and therefore that we ought quietly to
   submit to these Evils, when they do not arise to any intolerable
   degree, and to apply principally that remedy to the faults of
   government, which is ever the most effectual, that is, the amendment of
   our own. It is no wonder, that a lesson so disagreeable to the restless
   humours of most men, and so repugnant to the arts and ends of faction,
   should call up against the Author many opponents, who have liberally
   bestowed on him the titles of an enemy to Liberty, and an advocate for
   corruption, with the same justice that a physician might be stiled an
   enemy to health, and an advocate for the gout, who in that distemper
   prescribes patience, and temperance, rather than such inflaming
   medicines as might convert it into a more dangerous disease. All that
   he has asserted in this Letter amounts to no more than this: that no
   government can subsist without some principle of governing; that is,
   that men cannot be governed without some means by which their obedience
   can be obtained; a proposition, which seems as incontestible, as that
   every effect must have a cause. That all government, must be
   disagreeable to those who are governed is demonstrable from the nature
   and essence of government itself, which being nothing more than a
   compulsion of individuals to act in such a manner in support of society
   as they are neither wise nor honest enough to do from the suggestions
   of their own heads, or heart this compulsion must be contrary to both
   their judgments, and inclinations, and consequently disagreeable, and
   for that reason perpetually resisted: some method must therefore be
   made use of to overcome the resistance, and what that method can be
   except force, or interest, he cannot find out he is an advocate for
   neither; except from their necessity; and, if any one will point out
   another, he will readily declare his disapprobation of them both.

   The sixth and last letter proceeds up the same plan as the rest, and
   endeavours to shew, that religious Evils, that is, the defects so
   visible in all human religion and the mischievous consequences
   resulting from them, are not owing to any want of wisdom or goodness in
   our Creator, but proceed, like all others, from our nature, and
   situation, and the impracticability of giving a perfect religion to an
   imperfect creature. In order to explain this it was necessary to point
   out the particular imperfections, which in fact do exist in all human
   religions, whether natural or revealed; not with any design to
   depreciate the one, or to invalidate the authority of the other, but
   only to account for them consistently with God's wisdom and
   benevolence: those charged upon natural religion have been readily
   enough agreed to, but those imputed to revelation have offended many,
   who have from thence considered the whole of this Inquiry as intended
   secretly to undermine the foundations of Christianity, than which
   nothing can be more averse from the intentions as well as from the
   sentiments of the Author: but indeed many late deistical writers have
   attacked that religion so unfairly by insinuating many cavils, which
   they dared not express, that they have made it very difficult for any
   one to treat freely on that subject, without incurring the suspicion of
   the same insincerity: of all such disingenuous artifices the Author
   sincerely declares his utmost detestation, and begs to be understood to
   mean all that he expresses, and nothing more: he solemnly professes,
   that by recounting these imperfections, he is so far from entertaining
   any secret designs destructive to that sacred institution, that by it
   he intended not only to wrest out of the hands of infidelity those
   weapons, with which it has ever been most successfully assaulted, but
   also to obviate all those doubts and difficulties, which frequently
   occur to the minds of thinking men, though no infidels, on viewing the
   deplorable state in which all human religion has continued throughout
   all ages, and the ineffectual assistance it has received even from this
   divine interposition itself, by no means exempted from numberless
   Evils, and imperfections: to those, who perceive none of these
   Imperfections, and consequential Evils, he means not to write, nor
   desires to let in any new light on their tender organs, which can serve
   only to disturb their present repose; nor does he aspire to the honour
   of working for those middle sized understandings, who can be well
   fitted with ready made arguments from every Pulpit: to the learned,
   impartial, sagacious, and inquisitive, he alone applies, the
   establishing one of whom in a rational and well-grounded belief of the
   Christian Religion does more real service to that cause, than the
   inlisting legions under that denomination whose immoveable faith
   proceeds only from their ignorance; that is, who believing without any
   reason, can possibly have no reason for doubting. To account for the
   corruption of religion it was necessary to specify the particular
   abuses, and abusers of it: and here the Author could scarcely overlook
   the Clergy: but he hopes that nothing has escaped his pen, that can
   throw the least reflection upon them as Clergy, but as men only,
   subject to the same imperfections, and actuated by the same passions as
   other men, and pursuing the ends of self-interest and ambition by the
   same paths, in which all others would have trod, conducted by the same
   temptations, and opportunities; he has treated them with no more
   freedom than he has done Princes and Parliaments, Ministers and
   Patriots, Conquerors and Heroes, and his work would admit of no
   partiality; sure he is, that nothing he has said can bear the most
   distant relation to the present Clergy of this country, whom he
   sincerely thinks are a body of men as honest, learned, and
   unprejudiced, as ever existed, and for whose persons and profession, he
   has the highest regard. In another part of this Letter there is an
   assertion, which has given some offence; which is, that every religion
   must be corrupted as soon as it becomes established: this has been
   thought a reflection upon all national churches, and a persuasion to
   schism, and dissention; but those, who think thus, totally misapprehend
   the tenor of this whole work, which endeavours to prove, that every
   thing human must be attended with Evils, which therefore ought to be
   submitted to with patience and resignation; that many imperfections
   will adhere to all governments and religions in the hands of men, but
   that these, unless they rise to an intolerable degree, will not justify
   our resistance to the one, or our dissention from the other: the
   assertion itself, the Author cannot retract, but the inference, which
   he desires may be drawn from it, is by no means favourable to
   dissentions, because from them he can perceive no remedy, which can
   accrue to these Evils: for if it was every one's duty to desert a
   national church on account of those corruptions which proceed from its
   establishment, and this duty was universally complied with, let us see
   the consequence! one of these things must necessarily follow; either
   that some dissention of superior purity, which usually arises from its
   being a dissention, must be established in its room; or no religion
   must be established at all: if the first of these methods should take
   place, the end proposed by it would by itself be entirely defeated;
   because that purer religion which was established would by that very
   establishment become equally corrupt with that which was deserted, and
   so the same reason would eternally remain for a new dissention: if the
   latter should be taken, that is, to establish no religion at all; this
   would be so far from producing the intended reformation, that it would
   let in such an inundation of enthusiasm, and contradictory absurdities,
   as must in a short time destroy not only all religion, but all peace,
   and morality whatever: of which no one can entertain the least doubt,
   who is not totally unacquainted both with the nature, and history of
   mankind. From, whence it is plain, that all dissentions from a national
   church, not in itself sinful, arise from ignorance; that is, from a
   kind of short-sightedness, which enables men to pry out every
   imperfection within their reach, but prevents their discerning the more
   remote necessity for those imperfections, and the dangers of amending
   them.

   To conclude: the Author of this Inquiry having heard it so much, and as
   he thought so unjustly calumniated, has reviewed it with all possible
   care and impartiality; and though he finds many things in the style,
   and composition, which have need enough of amendment, he sees nothing
   in the sentiments which ought to be retracted. His intentions were to
   reconcile the numerous evils so conspicuous in the Creation with the
   wisdom, power and goodness of the Creator; to shew, that no more of
   them are admitted by him, than are necessary towards promoting
   universal good; and from thence to perswade men to an intire
   resignation to his all-wise, but incomprehensible dispensations. To
   ascertain the nature of virtue, and to enforce the practice of it: to
   prove the certainty of a future state, and the justice of the rewards
   and punishments that will attend it: to recommend submission to
   national governments, and conformity to national religions,
   notwithstanding the Evils and Defects, which must unavoidably adhere to
   them: and lastly, to shew the excellence and credibility of the
   Christian revelation, to reconcile some of its most abstruse doctrines
   with reason, and to answer all those objections to its authority, which
   have been drawn from its imperfections, and abuses. These, and these
   only were the intentions of the Author; and if after all, a work so
   designed, however unably executed, should by the united force of
   ignorance, and malevolence, of faction, bigotry, and enthusiasm, be
   represented as introductive of fatalism, immorality, slavery,
   corruption, and infidelity, he shall be little concerned, and shall
   only look upon it as an additional instance of that Imperfection of
   mankind, which he has here treated of: from them he desires only an
   exemption from calumny: honour and applause he has not the vanity to
   hope for; these, he knows, they bestow not on their benefactors, or
   instructors, but reserve for those alone, who deceive, disturb, and
   destroy them.
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LETTER I.

ON

Evils of Imperfection.

                                   LETTER I.

On Evil in general.

   SIR,

   HAVING enjoyed the pleasure of many accidental conferences with you on
   metaphysical, moral, political, and religious subjects; on which you
   ever seemed to converse with more sagacity, as well as more candor,
   than is usual on the like occasions; I imagined it might not be
   unentertaining either to you, or myself, to put together my sentiments
   on these important topics, and communicate them to you from time to
   time as the absence of business, or of more agreeable amusements may
   afford this life; apprehensive of still greater in another, and can
   give no probable account of this our wretched situation, what
   sentiments must we entertain of the justice and benevolence of our
   Creator, who placed us in it, without our sollicitations, or consent?
   The works of the Creation sufficiently demonstrate his existence, their
   beauty, perfection and magnificence, his infinite power and wisdom; but
   it is the Happiness only, which we enjoy, or hope for, which can
   convince us of his Goodness.

   It is the solution therefore of this important question alone, that can
   ascertain the moral Characteristic of God, and upon that only must all
   human Virtue eternally depend.

   If there's a power above us, (And that there is all Nature cries aloud
   Thro' all her works) he must delight in Virtue,

   And that, which he delights in, must be happy.

   But shou'd this divine reasoning of the philosopher be at last
   inconclusive; cou'd we once entertain such blasphemous notions of the
   Supreme being, as that He might not delight in Virtue, neither adhere
   to it himself, nor reward it in others; that He could make any part of
   his creation miserable, or suffer them to make themselves so, without a
   just cause, and a benevolent end; all moral considerations must be
   vain, and useless; we can have no rule by which to direct our actions,
   nor if we had, any kind of obligation to pursue it; nor in this case
   can any Revelation in the least assist us, the belief of all Revelation
   being in its own sature subsequent, not only to the belief of God's
   existence, but of his justice and veracity; for if God can injure us,
   he may also deceive us; and then there is an end of all distinctions
   between good and evil, truth and falsehood, and of all confidence in
   God or man.

   I mean not by this to insinuate the least possibility of a doubt
   concerning the Justice or Goodness of our Creator, but only to shew the
   importance of this Inquiry, and the utility of it towards settling our
   notions of his Attributes, and the regulation of our own behaviour in
   conformity to them. I intend not by it to prove the benevolence of God,
   but to reconcile the miseries we see and suffer, with that
   uncontrovertable benevolence: I design not to shew that God approves
   Virtue; but that the admission of moral Evil is not inconsistent with
   that undoubted approbation: nor would I be understood to assert, that
   our obligation to be virtuous depends on this abstruse Speculation, but
   only that our right understanding it will remove all doubts concerning
   the nature of virtue, and our obligation to pursue it, and fix them on
   the most firm, and immoveable Basis.

   To find out therefore, how Evil of any kind can be the production of
   infinite Goodness, joined with infinite power, should be the first step
   in all our religious inquiries; the examination into which wonderful
   paradox will lead us into many useful and sublime truths; and its
   perfect comprehension, was that possible for our narrow capacities,
   would, I doubt not, make as surprising discoveries in the Moral World,
   as mathematical and physical knowledge have in the Natural.

   To clear up this difficulty, some ancient Philosophers have had
   recourse to the supposition of two first Causes, one Good, and the
   other Evil, perpetually counteracting each other's designs. This system
   was afterwards adopted by the Manichæan Heresy, and has since been
   defended by the ingenious Mons. Bayle but as the supposition of two
   first Causes is even in itself a contradiction, and as the whole scheme
   has been demonstrated by the best metaphysical Writers to be as false
   as it is impious, all further arguments to disprove it would be
   needless.

   Others have endeavoured to account for this by the introduction of a
   Golden Age, or Paradisiacal State, in which all was innocence and
   happiness.

     Poeena metusque aberant, nec verba minacia fixo

     Ære legebantur, nec supplex turba timebant
     Judicis ora sui; sed erant sine vindice tuti.

     When Man yet new,
     No rule but uncorrupted reason knew, And with a native bent did Good
     pursue;

     Unforc'd by punishment, unaw'd by fear,
     His words were simple, and his soul sincere:
     Needless was written law, when none opprest,
     The law of Man was written in his breast:
     No suppliant crowds before the Judge appear'd,
     No court erected yet, nor cause was heard,
     But all was safe, for Conscience was their Guard.

     Ver erat æternum, placidisque tepentibus auris
     Mulcebant Zephyri natos sine semine flores;
     Mox etiam fruges tellus inarata ferebat,
     Nec renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis,
     Flumina jam lactis, jam flumina nectaris ibant,
     Flavaque de viridi stillabant ilice mella.

     The flow'rs unsown in fields and meadows reign'd,

     And Western Winds immortal Spring maintain'd.

     In following years the bearded corn ensu'd

     From Earth unask'd, nor was that Earth renew'd.

     From veins of valleys milk and nectar broke,

     And honey sweated from the pores of oak

   Amusing dreams! as absurd in philosophy as in poetry delightful! For
   though it is probable, from the most ancient history as well as from
   analogy drawn from the Nature's productions, that the World be more
   happy and more innocent in its fancy, than in more advanced Ages; it
   could ever be totally free from Vi.., Misery, may easily, I think, be
   impossible, both from the nature of the terrestrial Globe, and the
   nature of its inhabitants. So that these inchanting ... can in fact
   never have existed: but, had, the short duration of this period... is
   equally incontinent with infinite joined to infinite Wisdom and Good...
   as any original imperfection whatever. Fables then of this kind can
   never in the least account for the Origin of Evil: they are all but
   mean expedients, which will never be able to take away the difficulty,
   and can at most but obscure it, by shifting it a little backward into a
   less clear light; like that Indian philosophy, accounting for the
   support of the World, which informs us, that it is sustained by a vast
   Elephant, that Elephant by a Tortoise, and then prudently drops any
   further inquiry.

   The Divines and Moralists of later ages seem perfectly satisfied that
   they have loosed this Gordian knot, by imputing the source of all Evil
   to the abuse of Free-will in Created Beings. God, they say, never
   design'd any such thing should exist as Evil, moral or natural; but
   that giving to some beings, for good and wise purposes, a power of
   Free-agency, they perverted this power to bad ends, contrary to his
   intentions and commands; and thus their accidental wickedness produced
   consequential Misery. But to suppose in this manner, that God intended
   all things to be good and happy, and at the same time gave being to
   creatures able and willing to obstruct his benevolent designs, is a
   notion so inconsistent with his wisdom, goodness, omniscience, and
   omnipotence, that it seems equally unphilosophical, and more evidently
   absurd than the other. They have been led into this error by
   ridiculously judging of the dispensation of a Creator to his creatures,
   by the same rules which they apply to the dealings of Men towards each
   other; between which there is not the least proportion or similitude. A
   Man who endeavours, to the utmost of his power, to make others virtuous
   and happy, however unsuccessful, is sufficiently justified; but in a
   Being omnipotent and omniscient, the Cause of all causes, the Origin of
   all thought, will, and action; who sees all things past, present, and
   to come, in one instantaneous view, the case is widely different; his
   active and permissive will must be exactly the same; and, in regard to
   him, all consequential and future Evils, through every moment of time,
   are actually present.

   Since therefore none of these pretended solutions can, I am certain,
   give such satisfaction to your comprehensive understanding, let us now
   try to find out one more rational, and more consistent with the analogy
   of every thing around us.

   That there is a Supreme Being infinitely powerful, wise and benevolent,
   the great Creator and Preserver of all things, is a truth so clearly
   demonstrated, that it shall be here taken for granted. That there is
   also in the universal system of things, the works of his almighty hand,
   much misery and wickedness, that is, much natural and moral Evil, is
   another truth, of which every hour's fatal experience cannot fail to
   convince us. How these two undoubted, yet seeming contradictory truths
   can be reconciled, that is, how Evils of any sort could have place in
   the works of an omnipotent and good Being, is very difficult to account
   for. If we assert that he could not prevent them, we destroy his power;
   if that he would not, we arraign his goodness; and therefore his power
   and goodness cannot both be infinite.

   But however conclusive this argument may seem, there is somewhere or
   other an error in it; and this error I take to arise from our wrong
   notions of Omnipotence. Omnipotence cannot work contradictions, it can
   only effect all possible things. But so little are we acquainted with
   the whole system of nature, that we know not what are possible, and
   what are not: but if we may judge from that constant mixture of pain
   with pleasure, and of inconvenience with advantage, which we must
   observe in every thing around us, we have reason to conclude, that to
   endue created beings with perfection, that is, to produce Good
   exclusive of Evil, is one of those impossibilities which even infinite
   Power cannot accomplish.

   The true solution then of this incomprehensible paradox must be this,
   that all Evils owe their existence solely to the necessity of their own
   natures, by which I mean they could not possibly have been prevented,
   without the loss of some superior Good, or the permission of some
   greater Evil than themselves; or that many Evils will unavoidably
   insinuate themselves by the natural relations and circumstances of
   things into the most perfect system of Created Beings, even in
   opposition to the will of an almighty Creator, by reason they cannot be
   excluded without working contradictions; which not being proper objects
   of power, it is no diminution of Omnipotence to affirm that it cannot
   effect them.

   And here it will be proper to make a previous apology for an
   expression, which will frequently occur in the following pages, which
   is, that God cannot do such and such things: by which is always to be
   understood not any retrenchment of the divine Omnipotence, but only
   that such things are in their own natures impracticable, and impossible
   to be performed.

   That the Almighty should be thus limited, and circumscribed by the
   nature of things, of which he himself is the Author, may to some seem
   not very intelligible: but surely it is not at all difficult to
   conceive, that in every possible method of ordering, disposing, and
   framing the universal system of things, such numberless inconveniencies
   might necessarily arise, that all that infinite Power and Wisdom could
   do, was to make choice of that method, which was attended with the
   least and fewest; and this not proceeding from any defect of power in
   the Creator; but from that imperfection which is inherent in the nature
   of all created things.

   This necessity, I imagine, is what the Ancients meant by Fate, to which
   they fancied that Jupiter, and all the Gods, were obliged to submit,
   and which was to be controuled by no power whatever. The Stoicks seem
   to have had some dark and unintelligible notions of this kind, which
   they neither understood themselves, nor knew how to explain to others;
   that the untractableness of Matter was the cause of Evil; that God
   would have made all things perfect, but that there was in Matter an
   evil bias, repugnant to his benevolence, which drew another way, whence
   arose all manner of Evils. Of the like kind is a Maxim of the same
   Philosophers, That Pain is no Evil; which, if asserted with regard to
   the individuals who suffer it, is downright nonsense; but if considered
   as it affects the universal System, is an undoubted truth, and means
   only that there is no more pain in it than what is necessary to the
   production of happiness. How many soever of these Evils then force
   themselves into the Creation, so long as the Good preponderates, it is
   a work well worthy of infinite Wisdom and Benevolence; and,
   notwithstanding the imperfections of its parts, the whole is most
   undoubtedly perfect.

   Hence then we may plainly see that much Evil may exist, not at all
   inconsistent with the power and goodness of God: and the further we
   pursue this clue, the more we shall at every step discern new lights
   break out; which will discover clearly numberless examples, where the
   infinite power and goodness of God is fairly reconcileable with the
   misery and wickedness of his Creatures, from the impossibility of
   preventing them; and if, in the very small part of the universal System
   that lies within the reach of our imperfect capacities, many instances
   of this kind appear, in which they are visibly consistent, we ought
   with the utmost assurance to conclude, what is undoubtedly true, that
   they are really so in all, tho' we are not able to comprehend them.
   This is the kind of Faith most worthy of the human understanding, and
   most meritorious in the sight of God, as it is the offspring of Reason,
   as well as the Parent of all Virtue and Resignation to the just, but
   unscrutable, dispensations of Providence.

   But, in order more clearly to explain this abstruse speculation, it
   will be necessary to divide Evils into their diffeent species, and
   bestow on each a separate confederation. This I shall do under the
   following heads: Evils of Imperfection, Natural Evils, Moral Evils,
   Political Evils, and Religious Evils, which, I think, will comprehend
   most of those to which human Nature is unhappily liable. And now, Sir,
   lest I should add one more Evil to this melancholy Catalogue, which is
   that of a long and tedious Epistle, I shall reserve the examination
   into each of these particulars for the subject of a future Letter; and
   conclude this by assuring you, that I am,

   S I R, &c.
     __________________________________________________________________

LETTER II.

ON

EVILS of Imperfection.

LETTER II.

  On Evils of imperfection.

   SIR,

   IN pursuance of the plan proposed in my last, I shall now proceed to
   examine into the Nature of each particular kind of Evil, and in the
   first place of those therein denominated Evils of Imperfection; which
   are in truth no Evils at all, but rather the absence of some
   comparative Good; and therefore I shall not have occasion to detain you
   long on this part of my subject.

   No System can possibly be formed, even in imagination, without a
   subordination of parts. Every animal body must have different members
   subservient to each other; every picture must be composed of various
   colours, and of light and shade; all harmony must be formed of trebles,
   tenors, and basses; every beautiful and useful edifice must consist of
   higher and lower, more and less magnificent apartments. This is in the
   very essence of all created things, and therefore cannot be prevented
   by any means whatever, unless by not creating them at all: for which
   reason, in the formation of the Universe, God was obliged, in order to
   carry on that just subordination so necessary to the very existence of
   the whole, to create Beings of different ranks; and to bestow on
   various species of animals, and also on the individuals of the same
   species, various degrees of understanding, strength, beauty, and
   perfection; to the comparative want of which advantages we give the
   names of folly, weakness, deformity, and imperfection, and very
   unjustly repute them Evils: whereas in truth they are blessings as far
   as they extend, tho' of an inferior degree. They are no more actual
   Evils, than a small estate is a real misfortune, because many may be
   possessed of greater.

   Whatever we enjoy, is purely a free gift from our Creator; but that we
   enjoy no more, can never sure be deemed an injury, or a just reason to
   question his infinite benevolence. All our happiness is owing to his
   goodness; but that it is no greater, is owing only to ourselves, that
   is, to our not having any inherent right to any happiness, or even to
   any existence at all. This is no more to be imputed to God, than the
   wants of a beggar to the person who has relieved him: that he had
   something, was owing to his benefactor; but that he had no more, only
   to his original poverty.

   They who look upon the privation of all the good they see others enjoy,
   or think possible for infinite power to bestow, as positive Evil,
   understand not that the Universe is a system whose very essence
   consists in subordination; a scale of beings descending by insensible
   degrees from infinite perfection to absolute nothing; in which, tho' we
   may justly expect to find perfection in the whole, could we possibly
   comprehend it; yet would it be the highest absurdity to hope for it in
   all its parts, because the beauty and happiness of the whole depend
   altogether on the just inferiority of its parts, that is, on the
   comparative imperfections of the several Beings of which it is
   composed.

   It would have been no more an instance of God's wisdom to have created
   no Beings but of the highest and most perfect order, than it would be
   of a painter's art, to cover his whole piece with one single colour,
   the most beautiful he could compose. Had he confined himself to such,
   nothing could have existed but demi-gods, or archangels, and then all
   inferior orders must have been void and uninhabited: but as it is
   surely more agreeable to infinite benevolence, that all these should be
   filled up with Beings capable of enjoying happiness themselves, and
   contributing to that of others, they must necessarily be filled with
   inferior Beings, that is, with such as are less perfect, but from whose
   existence, notwithstanding that less perfection, more felicity upon the
   whole accrues to the Universe, than if no such had been created. It is
   moreover highly probable that there is such a connexion between all
   ranks and orders by subordinate degrees, that they mutually support
   each other's existence, and every one in its place is absolutely
   necessary towards sustaining the whole vast and magnificent fabrick.

   You see therefore, that it is utterly impracticable, even for infinite
   power, to exclude from Creation this necessary inferiority of some
   Beings in comparison with others. All that it can do is to make each as
   happy as their respective situations will permit: and this it has done
   in so extraordinary a manner, as to leave the benevolence of our great
   Creator not to be doubted of; for tho' he cannot make all superior, yet
   in the dispensations of his blessings his wisdom and goodness both are
   well worthy the highest admiration; for, amongst all the wide
   distinctions which he was obliged to make in the dignity and
   perfections of his Creatures, he has made much less in their happiness
   than is usually imagined, or indeed can be believed from outward
   appearances. He has given many advantages to Brutes, which Man cannot
   attain to with all his superiority, and many probably to Man which are
   denied to Angels; amongst which his ignorance is perhaps none of the
   least. With regard to him, tho' it was necessary to the great purposes
   of human life to bestow riches, understanding, and health, on
   individuals in very partial proportions; yet has the Almighty so
   contrived the nature of things, that happiness is distributed with a
   more equal hand. His goodness, we may observe, is always striving with
   these our necessary imperfections, setting bounds to the
   inconveniencies it cannot totally prevent, by balancing the wants, and
   repaying the sufferings of all by some kind of equivalent naturally
   resulting from their particular situations and circumstances. Thus, for
   example, poverty, or the want of riches, is generally compensated by
   having more hopes, and fewer fears, by a greater share of health, and a
   more exquisite relish of the smallest enjoyments, than those who
   possess them are usually blessed with. The want of taste and genius,
   with all the pleasures that arise from them, are commonly recompenced
   by a more useful kind of common sense, together with a wonderful
   delight, as well as success, in the busy pursuits of a scrambling
   world. The sufferings of the Sick are greatly relieved by many trifling
   gratifications imperceptible to others, and sometimes almost repaid by
   the inconceivable transports occasioned by the return of health and
   vigour. Folly cannot be very grievous, because imperceptible; and I
   doubt not but there is some truth in that rant of a mad Poet, that
   there is a pleasure in being mad, which none but madmen know.
   Ignorance, or the want of knowledge and literature, the appointed lot
   of all born to poverty, and the drudgeries of life, is the only opiate
   capable of infusing that insensibility which can enable them to endure
   the miseries of the one, and the fatigues of the other. It is a cordial
   administered by the gracious hand of Providence; of which they ought
   never to be deprived by an ill-judged and improper Education. It is the
   basis of all subordination, the support of society, and the privilege
   of individuals: and I have ever thought it a most remarkable instance
   of the Divine Wisdom, that whereas in all animals, whose individuals
   rise little above the rest of their species, knowledge is instinctive;
   in Man, whose individuals are so widely different, it is acquired by
   Education; by which means the Prince and the Labourer, the Philosopher,
   and the Peasant, are in some measure fitted for their respective
   situations. The same parental care extends to every part of the animal
   creation. Brutes are exempted from numberless anxieties, by that happy
   want of reflection on past, and apprehension of future sufferings,
   which are annexed to their inferiority. Those amongst them who devour
   others, are taught by Nature to dispatch them as easily as possible;
   and Man, the most merciless devourer of all, is induced, by his own
   advantage, to feast those designed for his sustenance, the more
   luxuriously to feast upon them himself. Thus misery, by all possible
   methods, is diminished or repaid; and happiness, like fluids, is ever
   tending towards an Equilibrium.

   But was it ever so unequally divided, our pretence for complaint could
   be of this only, that we are not so high in the scale of existence as
   our ignorant ambition may desire: a pretence which must eternally
   subsist; because, were we ever so much higher, there would be still
   room for infinite power to exalt us; and since no link in the chain can
   be broke, the same reason for disquiet must remain to those who succeed
   to that chasm, which must be occasioned by our preferment. A man can
   have no reason to repine, that he is not an Angel; nor a Horse, that he
   is not a Man; much less, that in their several stations they possess
   not the faculties of another; for this would be an insufferable
   misfortune. And doubtless it would be as inconvenient for a Man to be
   endued with the knowledge of an Angel, as for a Horse to have the
   reason of a Man; but, as they are now formed by the consummate wisdom
   of their Creator, each enjoys pleasures peculiar to his situation: and
   tho' the happiness of one may perhaps consist in divine Contemplation,
   of another in the acquisition of wealth and power, and that of a third,
   in wandering amongst limpid stream, and luxuriant pastures; yet the
   meanest of these enjoyments give no interruption to the most sublime,
   but altogether undoubtedly increase the aggregate sum of felicity
   bestowed upon the universe. Greatly indeed must that be lessened, were
   there no Beings but of the highest orders. Did there not, for instance,
   exist on this terrestrial Globe any sensitive creatures inferior to
   Man, how great a quantity of happiness must have been lost, which is
   now enjoy'd by millions, who at present inhabit every part of its
   surface, in fields and gardens, in extended desarts, impenetrable
   woods, and immense oceans; by monarchies of Bees, republics of Ants,
   and innumerable families of insects dwelling on every leaf and flower,
   who are all possessed of as great a share of pleasure, and a greater of
   innocence, than their arrogant Sovereign, and at the same time not a
   little contribute to his convenience and happiness!


   Has God, thou Fool! work'd solely for thy good!

   Thy Joy, thy Pastime, thy Attire, thy Food!

   Who for thy Table feeds the wanton Fawn,

   For him as kindly spreads the flow'ry lawn.

   Is it for thee the Lark ascends and sings?

   Joy tunes his Voice, joy elevates his Wings.

   Is it for thee the Linnet pours his Throat?

   Loves of his own, and raptures, swell the note.

   The bounding Steed you pompously bestride,

   Shares with his Lord the pleasure and the pride.

   Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?

   The birds of Heav'n shall vindicate their grain.

   Thine the full harvest of the Golden Year?

   Part pays, and justly, the deferring Steer.

   Pope.

   Thus the Universe resembles a large and well-regulated Family, in which
   all the officers and servants, and even the domestic animals, are
   subservient to each other in a proper subordination: each enjoys the
   privileges and perquisites peculiar to his place, and at the same time
   contributes by that just subordination to the magnificence and
   happiness of the whole.

   It is evident, therefore, that these Evils of Imperfection, proceeding
   from the necessary inferiority of some Beings in comparison of others,
   can in no sense be called any Evils at all: but if they could, it is as
   evident from thence, that there are many which even infinite power
   cannot prevent; it being sufficiently demonstrable, that to produce a
   system of created Beings, all supreme in happiness and dignity, a
   government composed of all Kings, an army of all Generals, or a
   universe of all Gods, must be impracticable for Omnipotence itself.

   We have here then made a large stride towards our intended Goal, having
   at once acquitted the Divine Goodness, and freed Mankind from a
   numerous train of imaginary Evils, by most clearly shewing them to be
   no Evils at all; and yet under this head are really comprehended all
   the Evils we perpetually complain of, except actual pain, the nature of
   which, and how it came to have a place in the works of an omnipotent
   and good Being, shall be considered in the next Letter from,

   S I R, &c.
     __________________________________________________________________

LETTER III.

ON

Natural Evils.

LETTER III.

  On Natural Evils.

   SIR,

   I Shall now lay before you my free sentiments concerning the Origin of
   Natural Evils, by which I understand the sufferings of sensitive Beings
   only; for tempests, inundations and earthquakes, with all the disorders
   of the material World, are no farther Evils than they affect the
   sensitive: so that under this head can be only comprehended pains of
   body, and inquietudes of mind. That these are real Evils, I readily
   acknowledge; and if any one is philosopher enough to doubt of it, I
   shall only beg leave to refer him to a severe fit of sickness, or a
   tedious lawsuit, for farther satisfaction.

   The production of Happiness seems to be the only motive that could
   induce infinite Goodness to exert infinite Power to create all things:
   for, to say truth, Happiness is the only thing of real value in
   existence; neither riches, nor power, nor wisdom, nor learning, nor
   strength, nor beauty, nor virtue, nor religion, nor even life itself,
   being of any importance but as they contribute to its production. All
   these are in themselves neither Good nor Evil; Happiness alone is their
   great end, and they desirable only as they tend to promote it. Most
   astonishing therefore it must appear to every one who looks round him,
   to observe all creatures blessed with life and sensation, that is, all
   creatures made capable of Happiness, at the same time by their own
   natures condemned to innumerable and unavoidable miseries. Whence can
   it proceed, that Providence should thus seem to counteract his own
   benevolent intentions? To what strange and invisible cause are all
   these numerous and invincible Evils indebted for their existence? If
   God is a good and benevolent Being, what end could he propose from
   creation, but the propagation of Happiness? and if Happiness is the end
   of all existence, why are not all creatures that do exist happy?

   The true solution of this important question, so long and so vainly
   searched for by the philosophers of all ages and all countries, I take
   to be at last no more than this, That these real Evils proceed from the
   same source as those imaginary ones of Imperfection before treated of,
   namely, from that subordination, without which no created system can
   subsist; all subordination implying imperfection; all Imperfection
   Evil, and all Evil some kind of inconvenience or suffering; so that
   there must be particular inconveniences and sufferings annexed to every
   particular rank of created Beings by the circumstances of things, and
   their modes of existence. Mot of those to which we ourselves are liable
   may be easily shewn to be of this kind, the effects only of human
   nature, and the station Man occupies in the universe: and therefore
   their Origin is plainly deducible from necessity; that is, they could
   not have been prevented without the loss of greater good, or the
   admission of greater Evils than themselves; or by not creating any such
   creatures as Men at all. And tho' this upon a general view of things,
   does not so forcibly us; yet, on a more minute inspection into every
   grievance attendant on human nature, it will most evidently appear.
   Most of these, I think, may be comprehended under the following heads:
   poverty, labour, inquietudes of mind, pains of body, and death; from
   none of which we may venture to affirm Man could ever have been
   exempted, so long as he continued to be Man. God indeed might have made
   us quite other creatures, and placed us in a world quite otherwise
   constituted; but then we had been no longer Men; and whatever Beings
   had occupied our stations in the universal System, they must have been
   liable to the same inconveniences.

   Poverty, for example, is what all could not possibly have been exempted
   from, not only by reason of the fluctuating nature of human
   possessions, but because the world could not subsist without it; for
   had all been rich, none would have submitted to the commands of
   another, or the drudgeries of life; thence all governments must have
   been dissolved, arts neglected, and lands uncultivated, and so an
   universal penury have overwhelmed all, instead of now and then pinching
   a few. Hence by the bye, appears the great excellence of Charity, by
   which men are enabled by a particular distribution of the blessings and
   enjoyments of life, on proper occasions, to prevent that poverty which
   by a general one Omnipotence itself could never have prevented: so
   that, by inforcing this duty, God as it were demands our assistance to
   promote universal happiness, and to shut out Misery at every door,
   where it strives to intrude itself.

   Labour, indeed, God might easily have excused us from, since at his
   command the Earth would readily have poured forth all her treasures
   without our inconsiderable assistance: but if the severest Labour
   cannot sufficiently subdue the malignity of human nature, what plots
   and machinations, what wars, rapine, and devastation, what profligacy,
   and licentiousness, must have been the consequence of universal
   idleness! So that Labour ought only to be looked upon as a task kindly
   imposed upon us by our indulgent Creator, necessary to preserve our
   health, our safety, and our innocence.

   Inquietudes of mind cannot be prevented without first eradicating all
   our inclinations and passions, the winds and tides that preserve the
   great Ocean of human life from perpetual stagnation. So long as Men
   have pursuits, they must meet with disappointments; and whilst they
   have disappointments they must be disquieted; whilst they are injured,
   they must be enflamed with anger; and whilst they see cruelties, they
   must be melted with pity; whilst they perceive danger, they must be
   sensible of fear; and whilst they behold beauty, they must be inflaved
   by love: nor can they be exempted from the various anxieties attendant
   on these various and turbulent passions. Yet without them we should be
   undoubtedly less happy and less safe; for without anger we should not
   defend ourselves, and without pity we should not assist others; without
   fear we should not preserve our lives, and without love they would not
   be worth preserving.

   Pains of body are perhaps but the necessary consequences of the union
   of material and spiritual essences; for matter being by nature
   divisible, when endued with sensibility, must probably be affected by
   pains and pleasures by its different modifications: therefore, to have
   been freed from our sufferings, we must have been deprived of all our
   sensual enjoyments; a composition by which few surely would be gainers.
   Besides, the pains of our bodies are necessary to make us continually
   mindful of their preservation; for what numberless lives would be lost
   in every trifling pursuit, or flung away in ill humour, was the
   piercing of a sword no more painful than the tickling of a feather.

   Death, the last and most dreadful of all Evils, is so far from being
   one, that it is the infallible cure of all others.


   To die is landing on some silent shore,

   Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar.

   Ere well we feel the friendly strole 'tis o'er.

   Garth.

   For, abstracted from the sickness and sufferings usually attending it,
   it is no more than the expiration of that term of life, God was pleased
   to bestow on us, without any claim or merit on our part. But was it an
   Evil ever so great, it could not be remedied but by one much greater,
   which is by living for ever; by which means our wickedness,
   unrestrained by the prospect of a future state, would grow so
   insupportable, our sufferings so intolerable by perseverance, and our
   pleasures so tiresome by repetition, that no being in the Universe
   could be so compleatly miserable as a species of immortal men. We have
   no reason therefore to look upon death as an Evil, or to fear it as a
   punishment, even without any supposition of a future life: but if we
   consider it as a passage to a more perfect state, or a remove only in
   an eternal succession of still improving states (for which we have the
   strongest reasons) it will then appear a new favour from the divine
   munificence; and a man must be as absurd to repine at dying, as a
   traveller would be, who proposed to himself a delightful tour thro'
   various unknown countries, to lament that he cannot take up his
   residence at the first dirty Inn which he baits at on the road. The
   instability of human life, or the hasty changes of its successive
   periods, of which we so frequently complain, are no more than the
   necessary progress of it to this necessary conclusion; and are so far
   from being Evils deserving these complaints, that they are the source
   of our greatest pleasures, as they are the source of all novelty, from
   which our greatest pleasures are ever derived. The continual succession
   of Seasons in the human life, by daily presenting to us new scenes,
   render it agreeable, and like those of the year, afford us delights by
   their change, which the choicest of them could not give us by their
   continuance. In the Spring of Life, the gilding of the sun-shine, the
   verdure of the fields, and the variegated paintings of the Sky, are so
   exquisite in the eyes of Infants at their first looking abroad into a
   new World, as nothing perhaps afterwards can equal. The heat and vigour
   of the succeeding Summer of Youth ripens for us new pleasures, the
   blooming maid, the nightly revel, and the jovial chace: the serene
   Autumn of compleat Manhood feasts us with the golden harvests of our
   worldly pursuits: nor is the hoary Winter of old age destitute of its
   peculiar comforts and enjoyments, of which the recollection and
   relation of those past are perhaps none of the least; and at last death
   opens to us a new prospect, from whence we shall probably look back
   upon the diversions and occupations of this world with the same
   contempt we do now on our Tops, and Hobby-horses, and with the same
   surprise, that they could ever so much entertain or engage us.

   Thus we see all these evils could never have been prevented even by
   infinite Power, without the introduction of greater, or the loss of
   superior good; they are but the necessary consequences of human Nature;
   from which it can no more be divested, than matter from extension, or
   heat from motion, which proceed from the very modes of their existence.

   If it be objected, that, after all that has been said, there are
   innumerable miseries entailed upon all things that have life, and
   particularly on man; many diseases of the body, and afflictions of
   mind, in which Nature seems to play the Tyrant, ingenious in contriving
   torments for her children; that we cannot avoid feeing every moment
   with horror numbers of our fellow-creatures condemned to tedious and
   intolerable miseries, some expiring on racks, others roasting in
   flames, some starving in dungeons, others raving in mad houses; some
   broiling in fevers, others groaning whole months under the exquisite
   tortures of gout and stone: If it be said further, that some men being
   exempted from many calamities with which others are afflicted proves
   plainly that all might have been exempted from all; the charge can by
   no means be disputed, nor can it be alledged that infinite Power could
   not have prevented most of these dreadful calamities. From hence
   therefore I am perswaded, that there is something in the abstract
   nature of pain, conducive to pleasure: that the sufferings of
   individuals are absolutely necessary to universal happiness; and that,
   from connections to us inconceivable, it was impracticable for
   Omnipotence to produce the one, without at the same time permitting the
   other. Their constant and uniform concomitancy thro' every part of
   Nature with which we are acquainted, very much corroborates this
   conjecture, in which scarce one instance, I believe, can be produced of
   the acq tion of pleasure or convenience by any tures, which is not
   purchased by the previous or consequential sufferings of themselves or
   others; pointing out, as it were, th... certain allay of Pain must be
   cast into universal mass of created Happiness, inflicted somewhere for
   the benefit of the whole. Over what mountains of slai.. every mighty
   Empire rolled up to the summit of Prosperity and Luxury, and new scenes
   of desolation attend its fall? what infinite toil of Men, and other
   mals, is every flourishing City indebted for all the conveniencies and
   enjoyments of I... and what vice and misery do those very enjoyments
   introduce? The pleasures pec to the continuing our species are several
   paid for by pains and perils in one and by cares and anxieties in both.
   Those annexed to the preservation or ourselves are both preceded and
   followed by numberless sufferings; preceded by the massacres and
   tortures of various animals preparatory to a feast, and followed by as
   many diseases lying in wait in every dish to pour forth vengeance on
   their destroyers. Our riches and honours are acquired by laborious or
   perilous occupations, and our sports are pursued with scarce less
   fatigue or danger, and usually attended with distresses and destruction
   of innocent animals. This universal connection of pain with pleasure
   seems, I think, strongly to intimate, that pain abstractedly considered
   must have its uses; and since we may be assured, that it is never
   admitted but with the reluctance of the supreme Author, those uses must
   be of the highest importance, tho' we have no faculties to conceive
   them.

   The human mind can comprehend but a very small part of the great and
   astonishing whole: for any thing we know, the sufferings (and perhaps
   the crimes producing those sufferings) of the Inhabitants of this
   terrestrial Globe may some way or other affect those of the most
   distant planet, and the whole animal world may be connected by some
   principle as general as that of attraction in the corporeal, and so the
   miseries of particular Beings be some way necessary to the happiness of
   the whole. How these things operate is indeed to us quite
   inconceivable; but that they do operate in some such extensive manner,
   is far, 1 think, from improbable.

   All Ages and Nations seem to have had confused notions of the merits of
   sufferings abstracted from their tendency to any visible good, and have
   paid the highest honors to those who have voluntarily endured them, as
   to their common benefactors. Many in Christian countries have formerly
   so fainted for long fasting, for whipping ... tormenting themselves,
   for sitting whole s in uneasy postures, or exposing themselves to the
   inclemency of the weather on the tops of pillars. Many at this day in
   the East are almost deified for loading themselves with heavy chains,
   bending under burthens, or confining themselves in irs stuck round with
   pointed nails. Now, if these notions are not totally devoid of all
   reason and common sense, (and , I believe, are so which become
   universal they can be founded on no other principle than this, of the
   necessity of pain to induce happiness, which seems another mighty
   instance of the probability of this ancient and universal opinion, tho'
   the reasons for it are forgot or unknown, and the practices derived
   from it big with the most absurd and ridiculous superstitions.

   One cause, I think, from which many of our severest sufferings may be
   derived, may be discovered by analogical reasoning, that is, by
   assimilating those things which are not objects of our understandings,
   to others which lye within their reach. Man is one link of that vast
   Chain, descending by insensible degrees from infinite perfection to
   absolute nothing. As there are many thousands below him, so must there
   be many more above him. If we look downwards, we see innumerable
   species of inferior Beings, whose happiness and lives are dependent on
   his will; we see him cloathed by their spoils, and fed by their
   miseries and destruction, inslaving some, tormenting others, and
   murdering millions for his luxury or diversion; is it not therefore
   analogous and highly probable, that the happiness and life of Man
   should be equally dependent on the wills of his superiors? As we
   receive great part of our pleasures, and even subsistence from the
   sufferings and deaths of lower animals, may not these superior Beings
   do the same from ours, and that by ways as far above the reach of the
   most exalted human understandings, as the means by which we receive our
   benefits are above the capacities of the meanest creatures destined for
   our service? The fundamental Error in all our reasonings on this
   subject, is that of placing ourselves wrong in that presumptuous climax
   of Beast, Man, and God; from whence, as we suppose falsely, that there
   is nothing above us except the Supreme Being, we foolishly conclude
   that all the Evils we labour under must be derived immediately from his
   omnipotent hand: whereas there may be numberless intermediate Beings,
   who have power to deceive, torment, or destroy us, for the ends only of
   their own pleasure or utility, who may be veiled with the same
   privileges over their inferiors, and as much benefited by the use of
   them, as ourselves. In what manner these benefits accrue to them, it is
   impossible for us to conceive; but that impossibility lessens not the
   probability of this conjecture, which by Analogy is so strongly
   confirmed.

   Should you, Sir, have been lately employed in reading some of those
   sublime Authors, who, from pride and ignorance, delight to puff up the
   dignity of Human Nature, the notions here advanced may appear to you
   absurd and incredible, because inconsistent with that imaginary
   dignity; and you may object, that it is impossible that God should
   suffer innocence to be thus afflicted, and reason thus deceived; that
   tho' he may permit animals made solely for the use of man to be thus
   abused for his convenience, or recreation; yet that Man himself, the
   sole possessor of reason, the Lord of this terrestrial globe, his own
   ambassador, vicegerent, and similitude, should be thus dependent on the
   will of others, must be utterly inconsistent with the divine Wisdom and
   justice. But pray, Sir, what does all this prove, but the importance of
   a Man to himself? Is not the justice of God as much concerned to
   preserve the happiness of the meanest Insect which he has called into
   being, as of the greatest Man that ever lived? Are not all creatures we
   see made subservient to each other's uses? and what is there in Man
   that he should only be exempted from this common fate of all created
   Beings? The superiority of Man to that of other terrestrial animals is
   as inconsiderable, in proportion to the immense plan of universal
   existence, as the difference of climate between the north and south end
   of the paper I now write upon, with regard to the heat and distance of
   the Sun. There is nothing leads us into so many Errors concerning the
   works, and designs of Providence, as that foolish vanity that can
   persuade such insignificant creatures that all things were made for
   their service; from whence they ridiculously set up Utility to
   themselves as the standard of good, and conclude every thing to be Evil
   which appears injurious to them or their purposes. As well might a nest
   of Ants imagine this Globe of Earth created only for them to cast up
   into hillocks, and cloathed with grain and herbage for their sustenance
   then accuse their Creator for permitting spades to destroy them, and
   plows to lay waste their habitations; the inconveniences of which they
   feel, but are utterly unable to comprehend their uses, as well as the
   relations they themselves bear to superior Beings.

   It is surprizing that none of those Philosophers, who were drove to the
   supposition of two first Causes, and many other absurdities, to account
   for the Origin of Evil, should not rather have chosen to impute it to
   the ministration of intermediate Beings; and when they saw the
   happiness of all inferior animals dependent on our wills, should not
   have concluded, that the good order and well-being of the Universe
   might require that ours should be as dependent on the wills of superior
   Beings, accountable like ourselves to one common Lord and Father of all
   things. This is the more wonderful, because the existence and influence
   of such Beings has been an article in the Creed of all religions that
   have ever appeared in the world. In the beautiful system of the Pagan
   theology, their Sylvan and Houshold Deities, their Nymphs, Satyrs, and
   Fawns, were of this kind. All the barbarous nations that have ever been
   discovered, have been found to believe and adore intermediate spiritual
   Beings, both good and evil. The Jewish religion not only confirms the
   belief of their existence, but of their tempting, deceiving, and
   tormenting mankind; and the whole system of Christianity is erected
   entirely on this foundation.

   Thus, Sir, you see, the good order of the whole, and the happiness it
   receives from a proper subordination, will sufficiently account for the
   sufferings of individuals; and all such should be considered but as the
   necessary taxes, which every member of this great Republick of the
   Universe is obliged to pay towards the support of the Community. It is
   no derogation from the divine Goodness that these taxes are not always
   imposed equally in the present state of things; because as every
   individual is but a part of the great whole, so is the present state
   but a part of a long, or perhaps an eternal succession of others; and,
   like a single day in the natural life, has reference to many more, both
   past and to come. It is but as a page in a voluminous accompt, from
   which no judgment can be formed on the state of the whole; but of this
   we may be assured, that the balance will some time or other be settled
   with justice and impartiality. The certainty, therefore of a future
   state, in which we, and indeed all creatures endued with sensation,
   shall somehow or other exist, seems (if all our notions of justice are
   not erroneous) as demonstrable as the Justice of their Creator; for if
   he is just, all such Creatures must have their account of happiness and
   misery somewhere adjusted with equity, and all creatures capable of
   virtue and vice must, according to their behaviour, receive rewards and
   punishments; and, to render these punishments consistent with infinite
   goodness, they must not only be proportioned to their crimes, but also
   some way necessary to universal Good; for no creatures can be called
   out of their primitive nothing by an all-wise and benevolent Creator,
   to be losers by their existence, or to be made miserable for no
   beneficial end, even by their own misbehaviour: so that all future
   misery, as well as present, must be subservient to happiness, or
   other-wise infinite Power, joined with infinite Goodness, would have
   prevented both vice and punishment.

   For this reason, amongst all the shortsighted conjectures of Man into
   the dispensations of Providence and a future State, the ancient
   doctrine of Transmigration seems the most rational and most consistent
   with his wisdom and goodness; as by it all the unequal dispensations of
   things so necessary in one Life may be set right in another, and all
   creatures serve the highest and lower, the most eligible and most
   burthensome offices of life, by an equitable kind of rotation; by which
   means their rewards and punishments may not only be well proportioned
   to their behaviour, but also subservient towards carrying on the
   Business of the Universe, and thus at the same time answer the purposes
   both of justice and utility. But the pride of man will not suffer us to
   treat this subject with the seriousness it deserves; but rejects as
   both impious and ridiculous every supposition of inferior creatures
   ever arriving at its own imaginary dignity, allowing at the same time
   the probability of human Nature being exalted to the angelick, a much
   wider and more extraordinary transition, but yet such a one as may
   probably be the natural consequence, as well as the reward of a
   virtuous life: nor is it less likely that our vices may debase us to
   the servile condition of inferior animals, in whose forms we may be
   severely punished for the injuries we have done to Mankind when amongst
   them, and be obliged in some measure to repair them, by performing the
   drudgeries tyrannically imposed upon us for their service.

   From what has been said, I think it plainly appears that numberless
   Evils do actually exist, which could not have been excluded from the
   works of infinite goodness even by infinite power; and from hence it
   may be concluded, that there are none which could; but that God has
   exerted all his omnipotence to introduce all possible happiness, and as
   far as the imperfection of created things would permit, to exclude all
   misery, that is, all natural Evil, from the universal system; which
   notwithstanding will introduce itself in many circumstances, even in
   opposition to infinite Power.

   The Origin of Moral Evil lies much deeper, and I will venture to assert
   has never yet been fathomed by the short line of human understanding,
   That I shall be able to reach it, I have by no means the vanity to
   imagine: but, laying aside all preconceived opinions and systematical
   prejudice I will in my next endeavour to come as near it as lies in the
   power of,

   S I R, &c
     __________________________________________________________________

LETTER IV.

ON

Moral Evil.

LETTER IV.

  On Moral Evil.

   SIR,

   I Must now leave that plain and easy road thro' which I have hitherto
   conducted you, and carry you thro' unfrequented paths, and ways
   untrodden by philosophic feet. Already, I think, the existence of
   Natural Evil has been sufficiently accounted for, without any
   derogation from the power, wisdom, or goodness of God. What next
   remains to be cleared up, is the Origin of Moral Evil; which,
   consistently with the same Divine Attributes, I have never ken
   accounted for by any Author, ancient or modern, in a manner that could
   give tolerable satisfaction to a rational Inquirer. Nor indeed can this
   be ever effectually performed, without at the same time taking into
   consideration all those most abstruse speculations concerning the
   nature of Virtue, Free-will, Fate, Grace, and Predestination, the
   debates of ages, and matter of innumerable folio's. To attempt this,
   therefore, in the compass of a Letter, would be the highest
   presumption, did not I well know the clear and ready comprehension or
   the person to whom it is addressed; and also, that the most difficult
   of these kinds of disquisitions are usually better explained in a few
   lines, than by a thousand pages.

   In order therefore to find out the true Origin of Moral Evil, it will
   be necessary, in the first place, to inquire into its nature and
   essence; or what it is that constitutes one action Evil, and another
   Good. Various have been the opinions of various Authors on this
   Criterion of Virtue; and this variety has rendered that doubtful, which
   must otherwise have been clear and manifest to the meanest capacity.
   Some indeed have denied that there is any such thing, because different
   ages and nations have entertained different sentiments concerning it:
   but this is just as reasonable as to assert, that there are neither
   Sun, Moon, nor Stars, because Astronomers have supported different
   systems of the motions and magnitudes of these celestial bodies. Some
   have placed it in conformity to truth, some to the fitness of things,
   and others to the will of God. But all this is merely superficial: they
   resolve us not why truth, or the fitness of things, are either eligible
   or obligatory, or why God should require us to act in one manner rather
   than another. The true reason of which can possibly be no other than
   this, because some actions produce Happiness, and others Misery: so
   that all Moral Good and Evil are nothing more than the production of
   Natural. This alone it is that makes truth preferable to falsehood,
   this that determines the fitness of things; and this that induces God
   to command some actions and forbid others. They who extoll the truth,
   beauty, and harmony of Virtue, exclusive of its consequences, deal but
   in pompous nonsense; and they who would persuade us, that Good and Evil
   are things indifferent, depending wholly on the will of God, do but
   confound the nature of things, as well as all our notions of God
   himself, by representing him capable of willing contradictions; that
   is, that we should be, and be happy, and at the same time that we
   should torment and destroy each other; for injuries cannot be made
   benefits, pain cannot be made pleasure, and consequently vice cannot be
   made virtue by any power whatever. It is the consequences therefore of
   all human actions that must stamp their value. So far as the general
   practice of any action tends to produce Good, and introduce happiness
   into the world, so far we may pronounce it virtuous; so much Evil as it
   occasions, such is the degree of vice it contains. I say, the general
   practice, because we must always remember in judging by this rule, to
   apply it only to the general species of actions, and not to particular
   actions; for the infinite wisdom of God, desirous to set bounds to the
   destructive consequences which must otherwise have followed from the
   universal depravity of mankind, has so wonderfully contrived the nature
   of things, that our most vitious actions may sometimes accidentally and
   collaterally, produce Good. Thus, for instance, robbery may dirperse
   useless hoards to the benefit of the publick. Adultery may bring heirs,
   and good humour too, into many families, where there would otherwise
   have been wanting; and Murder free the world from tyrants and
   oppressors. Luxury maintains its thousands, and Vanity its ten
   thousands. Superstition and Arbitrary Power contribute to the grandeur
   of many nations, and the liberties of others are preserved by the
   perpetual contentions of avarice, knavery, selfishness and ambition:
   and thus the worst of vices and the worst of Men are often compelled by
   Providence to serve the most beneficial purposes, contrary to their own
   malevolent tendencies and inclinations; and thus private vices become
   public benefits by the force only of accidental circumstances. But this
   impeaches not the truth of the Criterion of Virtue before mentioned,
   the only solid foundation on which any true system of ethics can be
   built, the only plain, simple, and uniform rule by which we can pass
   any judgment on our actions, but by this we may be enabled, not only to
   determine which are good, and which are Evil, but almost mathematically
   to demonstrate the proportion of Virtue or Vice which belongs to each,
   by comparing them with the degrees of happiness or misery which they
   occasion. But tho' the production of happiness is the Essence of
   virtue, it is by no means the End: the great End is the probation of
   Mankind, or the giving them an opportunity of exalting or degrading
   themselves in another state by their behaviour in the present. And thus
   indeed it answers two most important purposes; those are, the
   conservation of our happiness, and the test of our obedience: for had
   not such a test seemed necessary to God's infinite wisdom, and
   productive of universal Good, he would never have permitted the
   happiness of Men, even in this life, to have depended on so precarious
   a tenure, as their mutual good behaviour to each other. For it is
   observable, that he who best knows our formation, has trusted no one
   thing of importance to our reason or virtue: he trusts only to our
   appetites for the support of the individual, and the continuance of our
   species; to our vanity, or companion, for our bounty to others; and to
   our fears, for the preservation of ourselves; often to our vices for
   the support of Government, and sometimes to our follies for the
   preservation of our Religion. But since some test of our obedience was
   necessary, nothing sure could have been commanded for that end so fit
   and proper; and at the same time so useful, as the practice of virtue;
   nothing have been so justly rewarded with happiness, as the production
   of happiness in conformity to the will of God. It is this conformity
   alone which adds merit to virtue, and constitutes the essential
   difference between Morality and Religion. Morality obliges Men to live
   honestly and soberly, because such behaviour is most conducive to
   publick happiness, and consequently to their own; Religion, to pursue
   the same course, because conformable to the will of their Creator.
   Morality induces them to embrace virtue from prudential considerations;
   Religion, from those of gratitude and obedience. Morality, therefore,
   entirely abstracted from Religion can have nothing meritorious in it;
   it being but wisdom, prudence, or good oeconomy, which, like health,
   beauty, or riches, are rather obligations conferred upon us by God,
   than merits in us towards him; for tho' we may be justly punished for
   injuring ourselves, we can claim no reward for self-preservation; as
   suicide deserves punishment and infamy, but a Man deserves no reward or
   honours for not being guilty of it. This I take to be the meaning of
   all those passages in our Scriptures in which Works are represented to
   have no merit without Faith; that is not without believing in
   historical facts, in creeds, and articles; but without being done in
   pursuance of our belief in God, and in obedience to his commands. [1]
   And now, having mentioned Scripture, I cannot omit observing, that the
   Christian is the only religious or moral institution in the world that
   ever set in a right light these two material points, the Essence and
   the End of virtue; that ever founded the one in the production of
   happiness, that is in universal benevolence, or, in their language,
   Charity to all men; the other, in the probation of man, and his
   obedience to his Creator. Sublime and magnificent as was the philosophy
   of the Ancients, all their moral systems Were deficient in these two
   important articles. They were all built on the sandy foundations of the
   innate beauty of virtue, or enthusiastick patriotism; and their great
   point in view was the contemptible reward of human glory; foundations
   which were by no means able to support the magnificent structures which
   they erected upon them; for the beauty of virtue, independent of its
   effects, is unmeaning nonsense: patriotism which injures mankind in
   general for the sake of a particular country, is but a more extended
   selfishness, and really criminal; and all human glory but a mean and
   ridiculous delusion. The whole affair then of Religion and Morality,
   the subject of so many thousand volumes, is in short no more than this:
   The Supreme Being, infinitely good, as well as powerful, desirous to
   diffuse happiness by all possible means, has created innumerable ranks
   and orders of Beings, all subservient to each other by proper
   subordination. One of these is occupied by Man, a creature endued with
   such a certain degree of knowledge, reason, and free-will, as is
   suitable to his situation, and placed for a time on this globe as in a
   school of probation and education. Here he has an opportunity given him
   of improving or debasing his nature, in such a manner, as to render
   himself fit for a rank of higher perfection and happiness, or to
   degrade himself to a state of greater imperfection and misery;
   necessary indeed towards carrying on the business of the Universe, but
   very grievous and burthensome to those individuals, who, by their own
   misconduct, are obliged to submit to it. The test of this his
   behaviour, is doing good, that is, cooperating with his Creator, as far
   as his narrow sphere of action will permit, in the production of
   happiness. And thus the happiness and misery of a future state will be
   the just reward or punishment of promoting or preventing happiness in
   this. So artificially by this means is the nature of all human virtue
   and vice contrived, that their rewards and punishments are woven as it
   were into their very essence; their immediate effects give us a
   foretaste of their future; and their fruits in the present life are the
   proper samples of what they must unavoidably produce in another. We
   have Reason given us to distinguish these consequences, and regulate
   our conduct; and lest that should neglect its post, Conscience also is
   appointed as an instinctive kind of monitor, perpetually to remind us
   both of our interest and our duty.

   When we consider how wonderfully the practice of Virtue is thus
   inforced by our Great Creator, and that all which he requires of us
   under that title is only to be happy, that is, to make each other so;
   and when at the same time we look round us, and see the whole race of
   mankind thro' every successive generation tormenting, injuring and
   destroying each other, and perpetually counteracting the gracious
   designs of their Maker, it is a most astonishing paradox how all this
   comes to pass; why God should suffer himself to be thus defeated in his
   best purposes by creatures of his own making; or why man should be made
   with dispositions to defeat them at the expence of his own present and
   future happiness; why infinite Goodness should form creatures inclined
   to oppose its own benevolent designs, or why infinite Power should thus
   suffer itself to be opposed.

   There are some, I know, who extricate themselves from this difficulty
   very concisely by asserting, that there is in fact no such original
   depravity, no such innate propensity to vice in human nature; but as
   this assertion is directly contrary to the express declaration of the
   Scriptures, to the opinion of the Philosophers and Moralists of all
   ages, and to the most constant, and invariable experience of every
   hour; I think they no more deserve an answer, than they who would
   affirm, that a stone has no tendency to the Center by its natural
   gravity, or that flame has no inclination to ascend.

   .But the usual solution applied to this difficulty by the ablest
   Philosophers and Divines, with which they themselves, and most of their
   readers, seem perfectly satisfied, is comprehended in the following
   reasoning: that Man came perfect out of the hands of his Creator, both
   in virtue and happiness, but it being more eligible that he should be a
   free-agent, than a mere machine, God endued him with Freedom of will;
   from the abuse of which Freedom, all Misery and Sin, that is, all
   natural and moral Evils, derive their existence: from all such
   therefore the Divine Goodness is sufficiently justified, by reason they
   could not be prevented without the loss of superior Good: for to create
   Men free, and at the same time compel them to be virtuous, is utterly
   impossible.

   But whatever air of demonstration this argument may assume, by whatever
   fam'd Preachers it may have been used, or by whatever learned Audiences
   it may have been approved, I will venture to affirm, that it is false
   in all its Principles, and in its Conclusion also; and I think it may
   be clearly shewn, that God did not make Man absolutely perfect, nor
   absolutely Free: nor, if he had, would this in the least` have
   justified the introduction of wickedness and misery.

   That Man came perfect, that is endued with all possible perfections,
   out of the hands of his Creator, is evidently a false notion derived
   from the Philosophers of the first ages, founded on their ignorance of
   the Origin of Evil, and inability to account for it on any other
   hypothesis: they understood not that the universal System required
   Subordination, and consequently comparative Imperfections; nor that in
   the Scale of Beings there must be somewhere such a creature as Man with
   all his infirmities about him: that the total removal of these would be
   altering his very nature; and that as soon as he became Perfect he must
   cease to be Man. The truth of this, I think, has been sufficiently
   proved; and besides, the very supposition of a Being originally
   perfect, and yet capable of rendering itself wicked and miserable, is
   undoubtedly a Contradiction, that very power being the highest
   imperfection imaginable.

   That God made Man perfectly free is no less false: Men have certainly
   such a degree of Free-will as to make them accountable, and justly
   punishable for the abuse of it; but absolute and independent Free-will
   is what, I believe, no created Being can be possessed of. Our actions
   proceed from our Wills, but our wills must be derived from the natural
   dispositions implanted in us by the Author of our Being: wrong
   elections proceed from wrong apprehensions, or unruly passions; and
   these from our original Frame or accidental Education: these must
   determine all our actions, for we have no power to act differently,
   these previous circumstances continuing exactly the same. Had God
   thought proper to have made all Men with the same heads, and the same
   hearts, which he has given to the most virtuous of the species, they
   would all have excelled in the same virtues: or had the Bias implanted
   in Human Nature drawn as strongly towards the good side, as it now
   apparently does towards the bad, it would have operated as
   successfully, and with as little infringement on human Liberty. Men, as
   well as all other animals, are exactly fitted for the purposes they are
   designed for; and have inclinations and dispositions given them
   accordingly: He, who implanted patience in the Lamb, obedience in the
   Horse, fidelity in the Dog, and innocence in the Dove, might as easily
   have inspired the breast of Man with these and all other virtues; and
   then his actions would have certainly corresponded with his Formation:
   therefore, in the strict philosophical sense, we have certainly no
   Free-will; that is, none independent of our Frame, our Natures, and the
   Author of them.

   But were both these propositions true, were Men originally created both
   perfect and free, yet this would by no means justify the introduction
   of moral Evil; because, if his perfection was immediately to be
   destroyed by his Free-will, he might as well never have been possest of
   the one, and much better have been prevented from making use of the
   other: let us dispute therefore as long as we please, it must eternally
   be the same thing, whether a Creator of infinite power and knowledge
   created Beings originally wicked and miserable, or gave them a power to
   make themselves so, foreknowing they would employ that power to their
   own destruction.

   If moral Evil therefore cannot be derived from the Abuse of Free-will
   in Man, from whence can we trace its origin? Can it proceed from a
   just, a wise, and a benevolent God? Can such a God form Creatures with
   dispositions to do Evil, and then punish them for acting in conformity
   to those evil dispositions? Strange and astonishing indeed must this
   appear to us, who know so little of the universal Plan! but it is far,
   I think, from being irreconcileable with the justice of the Supreme
   Disposer of all things: for let us but once acknowledge the truth of
   our first great proposition, (and most certainly true it is) that
   natural Evils exist from some necessity in the nature of things, which
   no power can dispense with or prevent, the expediency of moral Evil
   will perhaps follow on course: for if misery could not be excluded from
   the works of a benevolent Creator by infinite power, these miseries
   must be endured by some creatures or other for the good of the whole:
   and if there were none capable of wickedness, then they must fall to
   the share of those who are perfectly innocent. Here again we see our
   difficulties arise from our wrong notions of Omnipotence, and
   forgetting how many difficulties it has to contend with: in the present
   instance it is obliged either to afflict Innocence or be the cause of
   Wickedness; it has plainly no other Option: what then could infinite
   Wisdom, Justice, and Goodness do in this situation, more consistent
   with itself, than to call into being Creatures formed with such
   depravity, in their dispositions, as to induce many of them to act in
   such a manner as to render themselves proper subjects for such
   necessary sufferings, and yet at the same time indued with such a
   degree [2] of Reason and Free-will as to put it in the power of every
   individual to escape them by their good behaviour: such a Creature is
   Man; so corrupt, base, cruel and wicked as to convert these unavoidable
   miseries into just punishments, and at the same time so sensible of his
   own depravity and the fatal consequences of guilt, as to be well able
   to correct the one, and to avoid the other. Here we see a substantial
   Reason for the depravity of Man, and the admittance of Moral Evil in
   these circumstances seems not only compatible with the justice of God,
   but one of the highest instances of his consummate wisdom in ordering
   and disposing all things in the best manner their imperfect natures
   will admit.

   I presume not by what has been here said to determine on the councils
   of the Almighty, to triumph in the compleat discovery of the Origin of
   Moral Evil, or to assert that this is the certain or sole cause of its
   existence; I propose it only as a Guess concerning the reason of its
   admission, more probable, and less derogatory from the divine wisdom,
   and justice, than any, that has hitherto been offered for that purpose.

   There is undoubtedly something farther in the general Depravity of
   Mankind than we are aware of, and probably many great and wise ends are
   answered by it to us totally incomprehensible. God, as has been shewn,
   would never have permitted the existence of Natural Evil, but from the
   impossibility of preventing it without the lots of superior Good: and
   on the same principle the admission of Moral Evil is equally consistent
   with the divine Goodness: and who is he so knowing in the whole
   stupendous system of Nature as to assert, that the Wickedness of some
   Beings may not, by means inconceivable to us, be beneficial to
   innumerable unknown Orders of others? or that the Punishment of some
   may not contribute to the Felicity of numbers infinitely superior?

   To this purpose the learned Hugenius says with great sagacity, Præterea
   credibile est, ipsa illa animi vitia magnæ hominum parti, non sine
   summo concilio data esse: Cum enim Dei providentiâ talis sit Tellus,
   ejusque incolæ, quales cernimus, absurdum enim foret existimare omnia
   hæc alia facta esse, quam ille voluerit, sciveritque futura. [3]

   But let us not forget that this necessity of Vice and Punishment, and
   its subserviency to publick Good, makes no alteration in their natures
   with regard to Man; for, tho' the wisdom of God may extract from the
   wickedness of Men some remote benefits to the Universe; yet that alters
   not the case with regard to them, nor in the least extenuates their
   Guilt. He has given them reason sufficient to inform them, that their
   injuries to each other are displeasing to him, and Free-will sufficient
   to refrain from such actions, and may therefore punish their
   disobedience without any infringement of justice: He knows indeed, that
   though none are under any compulsion to do Evil, yet that they are all
   so framed, that many will certainly do it; and He knows also that
   incomprehensible secret why it is necessary that many should: but his
   knowledge having no relation to their determinations renders not their
   vices less criminal, nor the punishment of them less equitable: for,
   tho' with regard to God, Vice may be perhaps the consequence of Misery;
   that is, Men may be inclined to Vice in order to render them proper
   objects of such a degree of Misery as was unavoidably necessary, and
   previously determined for the sake of publick Good, yet, in regard to
   Man, Misery is the consequence of Vice; that is, all human Vices
   produce Misery, and are justly punished by its infliction.

   If it be objected that this makes God the Author of Sin, I answer, God
   is and must be the Author of every thing; and to say that any thing is,
   or happens, independent of the first Cause, is to say that something
   exists, or happens, without any Cause at all. God is the Author, if it
   may be so expressed, of all the natural Evils, in the Universe; that
   is, of the fewest possible in the nature of things; and why may he not
   be the Author of all moral Evil in the same manner and on the same
   principle? If natural Evil owes its existence to necessity, why may not
   moral? If Misery brings with it its Utility, why may not Wickedness?

     "If storms and earthquakes break not Heav'n's design,

     "Why then a Borgia or a Catiline!"

   Wherefore, it ought always to be considered, that, tho' Sin in Us, who
   see no farther than the Evils it produces, is Evil, and justly
   punishable; yet in God, who sees the causes and connections of all
   things, and the necessity of its admission, that admission may be no
   Evil at all, and that necessity a sufficient vindication of his
   Goodness.

   But it may be alledged that this principle totally changes the Nature
   of Vice, destroys the Criterion before affixed to it, and encourages
   the universal practice of wickedness: for if Moral Evil, and the
   punishment of it, are necessary towards promoting universal Good, then
   the more wicked men are, the more they promote that Good; and the more
   they co-operate with their Creator in compleating his great and
   benevolent plan of universal happiness. But this reasoning is extremely
   fallacious: because no collateral, remote, unknown and undesigned Good
   resulting from Vice can alter the Nature of it, or divest it of
   criminality; and moreover if that Good arises only from its punishment,
   so far is it from an encouragement to wickedness, that it proves only
   that the punishment of it is necessary, and unpreventable; nay in its
   nature incapable of remission, without a penal satisfaction from some
   Being or other, nor does its co-operation with the designs of
   Providence render it less criminal, or less worthy of his just
   indignation: all Histories are filled with instances of the wickedness
   of Men conspiring to bring about the Councils of the Almighty; such
   were the ambition and ferocity of the Romans, the obstinacy of the
   Jews, the cruelty of Herod, and the treachery of Judas, yet were these
   never esteemed for that reason meritorious, or innocent.

   From this important proposition, that all Natural Evil derives its
   existence from necessity, and all Moral from expediency arising from
   that necessity; I say, from this important proposition, well considered
   and pursued, such new lights might be struck out as could not fail, if
   directed by the hands of Learning and Impartiality, to lead the human
   Mind thro' the unknown regions of speculation, and to produce the most
   surprising and useful discoveries in Ethicks, Metaphysicks, and in
   Christianity too: I add Christianity, because it is a Master-key, which
   will, I am certain, at once unlock all the mysterious and perplexing
   doctrines of that amazing Institution, and explain fairly, without the
   least assistance from theological artifice, all those abstruse
   speculations of Original Sin, Grace and Predestination, and vicarious
   punishments, which the most learned, for want of this Clue, have never
   yet been able to make consistent with Reason or Common-sense.

   In the first place, for instance, the Doctrine [4] of Original Sin is
   really nothing more than the very System here laid down, into which we
   have been led by closely pursuing Reason, and without which the Origin
   of Moral Evil cannot be accounted for on any principle whatever.
   Indeed, according to the common notions of the absolute Omnipotence of
   God, and the absolute Free-will in Man, it is most absurd and impious,
   as it represents the Deity voluntarily bringing Men into Being with
   depraved Dispositions, tending to no good purposes, and then
   arbitrarily punishing them for the sins which they occasion with
   torments which answer no ends, either of their reformation or utility
   to the Universe: but when we see, by the foregoing explanation, the
   difficulties with which Omnipotence was environed, and that it was
   obliged by the necessity of Natural Evils to admit Moral, all these
   absurdities at once vanish, and the Original Depravity of Man appears
   fairly consistent with the Justice, and even Goodness of his Creator.

   The Doctrines of Predestination and Grace as set forth in the
   Scriptures, on the most impartial Interpretation, I take to be these:
   that some men come into the world with dispositions so extremely bad,
   that God foreknows that they will certainly be guilty of many crimes,
   and in consequence be punished for them; that to others He has given
   better dispositions, and moreover protects them from vice by a powerful
   but invisible influence, in the language of those writings called
   Grace: this Scheme has appeared to many so partial and unjust that they
   have totally rejected it, and endeavoured, by forced interpretations,
   to explain it quite out of the Bible, in contradiction to all the sense
   of language and the whole tenour of those writings: and indeed, on the
   old plan of God's absolute Omnipotence, uncontrouled by any previous
   necessity, in the nature of things, to admit both Natural and Moral
   Evil, it is highly derogatory from His wisdom and goodness: but, on the
   supposition of that previous necessity, there appears nothing
   incredible in it, nor the least inconsistent with divine; because if
   God was obliged by the nature of things, and for the good of the whole,
   to suffer some to be wicked, and consequently miserable, he certainly
   might protect others both from guilt and punishment. He in this light
   may be compared to the commander of a numerous army, who, tho' he is
   obliged to expose many to danger, and some to destruction, yet protects
   others with ramparts and covert-ways; but so long as he exercises this
   power for the good of the whole, these distinctions amongst individuals
   ought never to be imputed to Partiality or Injustice.

   The Doctrine [5] of Sacrifice, or Vicarious punishment, is the most
   universal, and yet exclusive of this plan the most absurd, of all
   religious Tenets that ever entered into the Mind of Man: so absurd is
   it, that how it came to be so universal is not easy to be accounted
   for: Pagans, Jews and Christians, have all agreed in this one point,
   tho' differing in all others; and have all treated it as a self-evident
   principle, that the Sins of one Creature might be attoned for by the
   Sufferings of another: but from whence they derived this strange
   opinion, none of them have pretended to give any account, or to produce
   in its defence the least shadow of a Reason: for that there should be
   any manner of connection between the Miseries of one Being and the
   Guilt of another; or, that the punishing the Innocent, and excusing the
   Guilty, should be a mark of God's Detestation of Sin; or, that two acts
   of the highest Injustice should make one of Justice, is so
   fundamentally wrong, so diametrically opposite to common-sense, and all
   our ideas of justice, that it is equally astonishing that so many
   should believe it themselves, or impose it upon others. But on the
   foregoing theory this also may be a little cleared up, and will by no
   means appear so very inconsistent with Reason: for if a certain
   quantity of Misery in some part of the Universal System is necessary to
   the Happiness and Well-being of the Whole; and if this necessity arises
   from its answering some purposes incomprehensible to the human
   Understanding; I will ask any impartial Reasoner, Why the Sufferings of
   one Being may not answer the same Ends, or be as effectual towards
   promoting Universal Good as the Sufferings of another? If the Miseries
   of Individuals are to be looked upon as taxes which they are obliged to
   pay towards the support of the Publick, why may not the sufferings of
   one Creature serve the same purposes, or absolve as much of that
   necessary tax as the Sufferings of another, and on that account be
   accepted as a payment or satisfaction for their Sufferings; that is,
   for the Sufferings due to the Publick Utility from the punishment of
   their crimes, without which the happiness of the whole could not
   subsist, unless they should be replaced by the Sufferings of others? As
   we are entirely ignorant why Misery has any existence at all, or what
   interest it serves in the general System of things, this may possibly
   be the case for any thing we know; and that it is not, I am certain no
   one can affirm; with Reason: Reason indeed cannot inform us that it is
   so, but that it may be, is undoubtedly no contradiction to Reason.

   If I mistake not it might be shewn, that this principle of the
   necessity of Moral Evil, and its punishment, is the foundation on which
   the whole fabrick of the Christian Dispensation is erected; the
   principle itself is avowed by the Author of that Dispensation in clear,
   and express words: It must needs be, says he, that offences come; but
   woe unto that man by whom the Offence cometh. That is, it is necessary
   towards compleating the designs of Providence, that some men should
   commit crimes; but as no Individual is compelled by necessity to commit
   them, Woe unto all, who are thus guilty. He came by his excellent
   precepts, and example, to diminish the quantity of Moral Evil in the
   World, and of Misery consequential from its punishment, but found it
   necessary to replace that Misery in some degree by his own voluntary,
   and unmerited Sufferings: and perhaps the unparallel'd tortures
   inflicted on his disciples and followers might be also necessary, and
   subservient to the same purposes.

   From what has been here said, I think, it is evident that the Origin of
   Evil is by no means so difficult to account for as at first sight it
   appears; for it has been plainly shewn that most of those we usually
   complain of are Evils of Imperfection, which are rather the absence of
   comparative Advantages than positive Evils, and therefore, properly
   speaking, no Evils at all; and as such, ought to be intirely struck out
   of the Catalogue. It has likewise been made appear, that of natural
   Evils, which are the sufferings of sensitive Beings, many are but the
   consequences naturally resulting from the particular circumstances of
   particular ranks in the scale of Existence, which could not have been
   omitted without the destruction of the Whole; and that many more are in
   all probability necessary, by means to us incomprehensible, to the
   production of Universal Good. Lastly, it has been suggested, that from
   this necessity of Natural Evils may arise the expediency of Moral,
   without which those necessary Sufferings

   [page is not available]

   more, I am sure, of all it would require) encouraged by your Favour,
   and assisted by your Sagacity, would undertake it, and condescend to
   fill up these out-lines so inaccurately sketched out by,

   S I R, &c.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] What was that Faith, which the Author of the Christian Religion
   indispensably required in all his disciples? It could not be a literal,
   and implicit belief of the divine inspiration of all the Books of the
   Old Testament; and consequently of all the History, Chronology,
   Geography, and Philosophy contained in them; because to these he Jews,
   who rejected it, adhered with the most superstitious exactness: it
   could not be the same kind of belief in the writings of the New
   Testament, because these in his life-time had no existence: much less
   could it consist in a blind assent to the numberless explanations of
   these books, and least of all in the Belief of Creeds, Articles, and
   theological Systems founded on such explanations, for all these were
   the productions of later Ages. It must therefore have been this, and
   this alone; a sincere Belief in the divine Authority of his mission,
   and a constant practice of all Moral duties from a sense of their being
   agreeable to his commands.

   [2] Some have asserted that there can be no degrees of Free-will, but
   that every Being must be absolutely free, or possessed of no Freedom at
   all: and this seems to have been the principal error that has led those
   who have supported both sides of this Question into so many
   absurdities; as it well might, since they were both equally wrong in
   espousing a proposition, which contradicts both reason, and experience,
   Brutes have a certain degree of Free-will; else why do we correct them
   for their misbehaviour, or why do they amend upon correction? yet
   certainly they have not so great a degree as ourselves. A man raving
   mad is not, nor is considered as a Free-agent; a man less mad has a
   greater portion of Freedom; and a man not mad at all has the greatest;
   but still the degree of his Freedom must bear a proportion to the
   weakness of his understanding, and the strength of his passions, and
   prejudices; all which are a perversion of reason, and madness as far as
   they extend, and operate on Free-will in the very same manner: so that
   it is so far from being true, that all men are equally free, that
   probably there are no two men, who are possessed of exactly the same
   degree of Freedom.

   [3] Cosmotheoros, Lib, I. p. 34.

   [4] Original Sin is a contradiction in terms; Original signifying
   innate, and Sin the act of an accountable Being: by this expression
   therefore of Original Sin cannot be meant original or innate Guilt, for
   that is absolute nonsense, but only an original depravity, or an innate
   disposition to Sin.

   [5] If the punishments of the wicked serve not some ends with which we
   are unacquainted, the sufferings of the innocent can possibly bear no
   manner of relation to them; and consequently the words Sacrifice,
   Attonement, Propitiation, and Vicarious Punishments can no more have
   any ideas affixed to them than the ringing of a bell, or the blowing of
   a trumpet, but are mere Sounds without any meaning at all.
     __________________________________________________________________

LETTER V.

ON

Political Evils.

LETTER V.

  On Political Evils.

   SIR,

   ACCORDING to my proposed Plan there still remain two sorts of Evils to
   be accounted for, Political and Religious; under which heads, (if you
   are not already tired with so abstruse and unentertaining a
   correspondence) I shall endeavour to shew you, that it is utterly
   impossible, even for Omnipotence itself, to give a perfect Government,
   or a perfect Religion to an imperfect Creature; and therefore, that the
   numberless imperfections inherent in all human Governments and
   Religions, are not imputable to God, nor any defect of power, wisdom,
   or goodness in Him; but only to the inferiority of Man's station in the
   Universe, which necessarily exposes him to Natural and Moral Evils, and
   must, for the same reason, to Political and Religious; which are indeed
   but the Consequences of the other Superior Beings may probably form to
   themselves, or receive from their Creator, Government without tyranny
   or Corruption, and Religions without Delusions or Absurdities; but Man
   cannot: God indeed may remove him into so exalted a Society; but whilst
   he continues to be Man, he must be subject to innumerable Evils;
   amongst which those I call Political and Religious are far from being
   the least.

   But as these two kinds of Evils are very different, they will require
   different considerations; I shall therefore, in the present confine
   myself to the Political only; by which I mean all those grievous
   burthens of Tyranny and Oppression, of Violence and Corruption, of War
   and Desolation, under which all Ages and nations have ever groaned on
   account of Government: little less destructive perhaps to the happiness
   of Mankind than even Anarchy itself; but notwithstanding, are so woven
   into the very essence of all Human Governments from the Depravity of
   Man, that without them none can be either established, maintained or
   administered, nor consequently can they be prevented without changing
   that Depravity into perfection; that is, without a compleat Alteration
   in Human Nature. How this comes to pass may be easily explained by a
   short examination, first into the nature and origin of Government in
   general, and afterwards into those of particular Forms and Policies;
   than which nothing has been more commonly misunderstood and
   misrepresented.

   As to Government in general, it is no wonder, that it is so productive
   of Evil, since its very Nature consists of Power trusted in the hands
   of such imperfect and vicious Creatures as Men, and exercised over
   others as imperfect and vicious as themselves; in which there must be
   Pride, Avarice and Cruelty on one Side, Envy, ignorance and Obstinacy
   on the other; and Injustice and Self-Interest on both. Its Origin also
   arises from the same impure source of human Imperfection; that is, Men
   being neither wise nor honest enough, to pursue their common or mutual
   interests without Compulsion, are obliged to submit to some, in order
   to secure their lives and properties from the depredations of all: but
   tho' this Necessity drives them into some kind of Government, yet it
   can never decide who govern, because all Men being by nature equal,
   every one has an equal right to this superiority: this therefore can be
   determined only by more Imperfections: that is, by the Struggles of
   Ambition, Treachery, Violence and Corruption; from success in which
   universal scramble are derived all the mighty Empires of the Earth: One
   Man at first by some of these methods acquiring the command over a few,
   then by their aid extending his power over greater numbers, and at last
   by the assistance of those numbers, united by the advantage of
   plundering others, subduing all opposition: and thus we see all human
   Government is the Offspring of Violence and Corruption, and must
   inherit the imperfection of both its parents. It is plain also that
   national Governments can never be supported by any other methods than
   those by which they were at first rais'd; for, being all independent of
   each other, and retaining still their original inclination to devour
   each other; and having no superior tribunal to refer to for justice,
   they can have no means to secure their own possessions, or to repel
   their mutual encroachments, but by force, which is call'd the Right of
   War; that is, the right of doing all the wrong that lies in their
   power: For war, however dignified with honours and encomiums by
   conquerors and their flatterers, is in fact nothing else but robbery
   and murder. Nations having no more right to plunder each other than
   Parishes, nor Men to kill one another in their political than in their
   private capacities.

   If we look into the internal constitutions of all these Governments, we
   shall find likewise, that they must be administered by the same
   violence and corruption to which they are indebted for their Origin;
   that is, by hiring one part of the society to force the other into
   subjection; and that none of them ever subsisted any longer than whilst
   the stronger part, not always the most numerous, found it for their
   advantage to keep the weaker in obedience: for it should be ever
   remembered, as the fundamental of all politics, that men will never
   submit to each other merely for the sake of public Utility, [6] too
   remote a benefit to make any impression on the dull senses of the
   multitude; but must be always beat or bribed into obedience. Higher
   orders of Beings may submit to each other on nobler motives, from their
   sense of Virtue or of universal Benefit; but Man can be governed by
   nothing but the Fear of Punishment or the hopes of Reward; that is, by
   Self-interest, the great Principle that operates in the political World
   in the same manner that Attraction does in the natural, preserving
   order and restraining every thing to its proper course by the continual
   endeavours of every individual to draw all power and property to
   himself. [7]

   If we descend to the examination of particular forms of government, we
   shall see them all exactly correspond with this general plan; we shall
   find that none of them owe their Origin to patriarchal power, the
   divine right of Princes, or the uninfluenced choice of the people;
   things which never existed but in the idle dreams of visionary
   politicians; but all to the struggles of Ambition and Self-Interest,
   subsiding at last into some kind of policy; either into absolute
   Monarchy or some species of popular Government more or less remote from
   it, as the different parts of it have had Strength or Fortune to
   prevail; all which must be carried on by the same vitious methods of
   Violence or Corruption, and consequently be productive of numberless,
   if not of equal, Evils.

   In absolute Monarchies, for instance, great violence must be exercised
   to keep men, by nature equal, in so unnatural a Subjection; this must
   produce plots, rebellions, civil wars and massacres; and these most
   require more Violence to repress them: but this violence cannot be used
   without much corruption; for it is not the person of the sovereign, his
   crown and scepter, that can preserve his authority, nor can he destroy
   thousands with his own hand, like a Hero in a Romance; a powerful army
   must be kept in pay to enslave the people, and a numerous clergy to
   deceive them; [8] whose ambition, avarice, luxury and cruelty must be
   satiated with the blood and treasures of that very People as a reward
   for their services: hence infinite Evils must arise, the lives,
   liberties and properties of all must be dependent on the capricious
   will of One, or, what is worse, on the wills of his pimps, flatterers
   and favourites: justice must be perverted by favour, and that favour
   can seldom be obtained but by adulation, servility and treachery: this
   produces all kinds of Moral Evils, and these beget more Political.

   In Democratical governments, if there is less Violence there is more
   Corruption; which in these indeed is the Basis of all Power, and
   productive of the most mischievous effects; here all things are at the
   disposal of an ignorant and giddy Multitude, always led to their own
   destruction by the flimsy eloquence and pretended patriotism of Knaves,
   Fools, and enthusiastic Madmen; or commonly of some extraordinary
   Genius, formed for popularity by a lucky composition of all these
   excellent ingredients; all subordination is subverted; and the most
   insolent and vitious of the people must be caressed, bribed and
   intoxicated, and by that means rendered still more insolent and
   vitious; and all who by their methods acquire their favour must: be no
   less vitious than themselves. If in despotic Governments power cannot
   be attained but by Servility and Adulation, in Democratical it can
   never be acquired but by the more pernicious vices of Turbulence and
   Faction; for which Reason these are ever sure to be governed by the
   most wicked, ambitious, avaricious, and mischievous of their Members.

   Mixed Governments, tho' perhaps productive of fewer Evils than either
   of the former, yet must necessarily partake of those belonging to both,
   and be supported by more or less of violence, as they more or less
   approach the Despotic; or of Corruption, as they come nearer to the
   Democratical principles: the further they shrink from the iron scourges
   of the one, the more will they be entangled in the golden fetters of
   the other; for Corruption most always increase in due proportion to the
   decrease of arbitrary power, since where there is less power to command
   obedience, there must be more bribery to purchase it, or there can be
   no government at all. These have besides many Evils peculiar to
   themselves, the very excellence of these of constitutions being
   productive of conveniences: for this excellence consisting principally
   in this, that their different ts are able to counteract each others
   mischievous intentions, the reins of Government are kept tight only by
   each pulling a different way, and they subsist by a perpetual
   contention, like a body kept e by the opposite effects of contrary
   sons: a very precarious and uneasy kind of existence! This exposes them
   in some measure to all the Evils incident to both absolute and popular
   Governments, tho' in a less degree: to the oppression of the , and the
   licentiousness of the other, factions at home, weakness abroad, and
   nite expence in all parts of their admiration yet are there mixed
   constitutionsthe very best that human wisdom could ever discover for
   the regulation of human societies.

   All these Evils arise from the nature of Things and the Nature of Man,
   and not from the Weakness or Wickedness of particular Men, or their
   accidental ascendency in particular Governments: the degrees of them
   may indeed be owing to these, but their existence is immutable. So long
   as the Imperfection of human nature continues, so long will Princes,
   for the most part, convert that power with which they are trusted for
   the sake of publick Utility, to the ignoble ends of their own avarice;
   luxury or ambition; so long will the people prefer present
   Self-interest to remote benefits arising from national prosperity; and
   so long will corrupt ministers employ this popular venality to their
   own private advantage; and how many soever are lopt off,

   Non deficit aureus alter.

   It is the mifapprehension of this, that is the fundamental error of all
   ignorant, but well-meaning, speculative politicians, [9] of all others
   the most untractable in government, and mischievous in business, the
   engines with which knaves work, and the ladders on which they mount to
   preferment: who endeavour to destroy all governments, because they are
   not perfect; and oppose all administrations, because they cannot govern
   men by such means as they are not design'd, or form'd to be governed
   by: who, by a Sysiphæan kind of politics, are ever labouring to roll up
   a stone, that must recoil upon them; and to render that faultless,
   which infinite power and wisdom cannot exempt from inconveniences,
   abuses, and imperfections.

   Should one enumerate all of this kind, which cannot be excluded from
   Government without the total alteration of human nature, they would be
   endless; to instance but a few: all political bodies, like the natural,
   must have the seeds of their own dissolution sown in their very
   essence, and like them be destroyed by every excess; by excess of
   poverty or riches, of slavery or liberty, of ignorance or knowledge, of
   adversity or prosperity: a strong proof of their imperfection, that
   they cannot bear excess even of the greatest good; and yet they cannot
   be formed of more durable materials, so long as they are constituted of
   human creatures. All power trusted in the hands of so imperfect a
   creature as man, must be pernicious and oppressive, and yet somewhere
   such power must be trusted. All human Laws must be liable to
   misconstruction, and uncertainty, yet without Laws property cannot be
   secur'd. All popular Elections must be attended with corruption,
   licentiousness, and the perversion of justice, yet without them the
   liberty of no country can be preserv'd. All national provisions for the
   poor must not only be encouragements to idleness, but productive of
   contests, and oftentimes of cruelty, yet without such many honest but
   unfortunate people must inevitably perish. All religious tests, and
   subscriptions, are in their own natures subversive of truth and morals;
   yet the folly of one part of mankind, and the knavery of the other,
   will scarcely permit any government to subsist without them; Trade and
   wealth are the strength and the pursuit of every wise nation, yet these
   must certainly produce Luxury, which no less certainly must produce
   their destruction. All War is a complication of all manner of Evils
   natural and moral, that is of misery and wickedness; yet without it
   national contentions can never be determined. No Government can be
   carried on, nor subordination preserv'd, without forms, and
   ceremonials, pomp, and parade; yet all such, from the inferiority of
   human nature giving itself airs of grandeur and magnificence, and the
   despicable expedients it is obliged to have recourse to support it,
   must always have something mean and ridiculous in them to exalted
   understandings. All Governments are in a great measure upheld by absurd
   notions infused into the minds of the people, of the divine right of
   some particular person or family to reign over them; a foolish
   partiality for some particular spot of ground; an outrageous zeal for
   some religion which they cannot understand, or a senseless pursuit of
   Glory which they can never attain; these are all false principles, yet
   without them, or some like them, no nation can long subsist: they can
   never be defended by reason, yet reason can produce no others that can
   supply their places. Every flourishing nation endeavours to improve
   Arts, and cultivate Reason and good sense; yet if these are extended
   too far, or too universally diffus'd, no national government or
   national religion can long stand their ground; for it is with old
   establishments as with old houses, their deformities are commonly their
   supports, and these can never be remov'd without endangering the whole
   fabrick. In short, no Government can be administer'd without in some
   degree deceiving the people, oppressing the mean, indulging the great,
   corrupting the venal, opposing factions to each other, and temporising
   with parties.

   It is this necessity for Evil in all Government, which gives that
   weight and popularity, which usually attends all those who oppose, and
   calumniate any Government whatever; appearing always to have reason on
   their side, because the Evils of ...1 power are conspicuous to the
   meanest capacity, whereas the necessity for those evils are perceivable
   only to superior understandings: every one can feel the burthen of
   taxes, and see the inconveniences of armies, places, and pensions, that
   must encrease them, but very few are able to comprehend that no
   Government can be supported without them in a certain degree; and that
   the more liberty any nation enjoys, the greater must be their number
   and necessity. The most ignorant can perceive the mischiefs that must
   arise from corrupt Ministers and venal Parliaments; but it requires
   some sagacity to discern, that assemblies of men unconnected by
   self-interest will no more draw together in the business of the publick
   than horses without harness or bridles; but, like them, instead of
   being quietly guided in the right road of general utility, will
   immediately run riot, stop the wheels of government, and tear all the
   political machine to pieces.

   From hence it comes to pass that all ignorant wrongheaded people
   naturally run into opposition and faction, whilst the wise man knows
   that those Evils cannot be eradicated, and that their excess only can
   be prevented; that thus far every honest man still endeavour to his
   utmost, but to proceed farther only fools will hope for, or knaves
   pretend. He knows that numbers of men must always act in the same
   manner, if in the same circumstances; that Politics are a science as
   reducible to certainty as Mathematicks, and in them effects as
   invariably follow their causes: that the operations of Will are as
   uniform, as those of matter and motion; and that tho' the actions of
   individuals are contingencies, those of numbers are constant, and
   invariable: that tho' a single man may possibly prefer publick utility
   to private advantage, it is utterly impossible, that the majority of
   numerous bodies should be actuated by the same generous and patriotic
   principles; [10] these can spring only from Virtue and Wisdom,
   benevolent hearts, and comprehensive understandings; which, being the
   portion but of a few more exalted individuals, can never be found in
   the multitude to be govern'd: nor can they be bestow'd in any
   extraordinary degree on those who govern, who would thereby be rendered
   unfit for their occupations: Statesmen and Ministers, who must be
   hackney'd in the ways of men, cannot be made of such pure and refin'd
   materials; peculiar must be the composition of that little creature
   call'd a Great Man. He must be formed of all kinds of contradictions:
   he must be indefatigable in business, to fit him for the labours of his
   station, and at the same time fond of pleasures, to enable him to
   attach many to his interests by a participation of their vices: He must
   be master of much artifice and knavery, his situation requiring him to
   employ, and be employed by, so many knaves; yet he must have some
   honesty, or those very knaves will be unwilling to trust him: He must
   be possess'd of great magnanimity perpetually to confront surrounding
   enemies, and impending dangers; yet of great meanness, to flatter those
   enemies, and suffer tamely continual injuries, and abuses: He must be
   wise enough to conduct the great affairs of Mankind with sagacity and
   success, and to acquire riches and honours for his reward; and at the
   same time foolish enough to think it worth a wise man's while to meddle
   with such affairs at all, and to accept of such imaginary rewards for
   real sufferings. Since then in all human Governments such must the
   Governors, and such the Governed eternally be, it is certain they must
   be ever big with numberless imperfections, and productive of abundant
   Evils and it is no less pain, that if infinite Goodness could not
   exclude natural and moral Evils, infinite Power can never prevent
   Political.

   I hope, Sir, the picture I have here drawn of human nature, and human
   Government, will not appear to you too much of the Caricature kind:
   your experience in both must inform you that it is like, tho' your good
   nature may incline you to be sorry that it is so. I trust likewise to
   your good sense to distinguish, that what has here been said of their
   imperfections, and abuses, is by no means intended as a defence of
   them, but meant only to shew their necessity: to this every wise man
   ought quietly to submit, endeavouring at the same time to redress them
   to the utmost of his power; which can be effected by one method only;
   that is, by a reformation of Manners: for as all Political Evils derive
   their Original from Moral, these can never be remov'd, until those are
   first amended. He therefore, who strictly adheres to Virtue and
   Sobriety in his conduct, and inforces them by his example, does more
   real service to a State, than he who displaces a Minister, or dethrones
   a Tyrant; this gives but a temporary relief, but that exterminates the
   Cause of the disease. No immoral Man then can possibly be a true
   patriot; and all those who profess outrageous zeal for the liberty and
   prosperity of their Country, and at the same time infringe her laws,
   affront her religion, and debauch her people, are but despicable
   Quacks, by fraud or ignorance increasing the disorders they pretend to
   remedy: as such, I know, they have always appear'd to your superior
   judgment, and such they are ever esteem'd by,

   S I R, &c.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [6] If any one is so ignorant of human nature, as to fancy that they
   will, let him make the experiment in a single parish, and there, if
   without Power or Compulsion, Interest or Gratuity, solely by the
   strength of reason, and motives of public advantage, he can perswade
   the inhabitants to submit to equal and necessary taxes, to repair
   roads, build bridges, inclose commons, drain marshes, employ their
   poor, or perform any works of general Utility: if he can accomplish
   this let him retain his opinion, but if he finds it utterly
   impracticable, let him not expect, that it can ever be done in a whole
   Nation, in which there are so many more factions, interests and
   absurdities to contend with.

   [7] There is indeed one other method of Government frequently made use
   of by the most illustrious Princes and Legislators, that is Fraud; but,
   as this operates only by the appearance of Self-Interest, it may
   properly be comprehended under that head.

   [8] It has been represented as if the Author by this designed to
   insinuate that the whole business of the Clergy was to deceive the
   people; than which nothing can be more distant from his intentions: all
   that he means is, that Men will not easily submit to Tyranny unless
   their consciences are first inslaved; or that popery is the the most
   effectual support of arbitrary power: a proposition which he supposes
   no one will presume to contradict.

   [9] It is a strange, but a certain Truth, that in politicks most
   principles speculatively right are practically wrong: to give a few
   instances of this kind out of many commonly adopted: viz. that those
   who are possest of most property will fight best in its defence: that
   national business is most successfully carried on by assemblies of Men
   uninfluenced and unconnected: that unbounded Liberty, civil and
   ecclesiastical, is most conducive to publick happiness and virtue: all
   these Propositions have reason on their side, but experience against
   them: they all captivate vulgar minds, because they look like truth,
   and they look like truth, because they would be true if mankind in
   general acted upon honest or even upon rational principles; but as in
   fact they do neither they are utterly Life, and all political
   structures built on such unstable foundations will inevitably fall to
   the Ground.

   [10] This may be demonstrated by a familiar Instance: It is by no means
   uncommon for a single Die to come up a Six, altho' the odds against it
   are five to one, but that a Majority of five hundred Dice should at the
   same time come up Six's is scarcely within the power of Fortune;
   because the odds against each individual become almost infinite when
   operating upon the whole five hundred together. For the same reason,
   supposing every Sixth Man to be wise, honest, and public-spirited,
   which surely in any Country is a very liberal allowance, there would
   not be the smallest probability that the Majority of any five hundred
   to be chosen out of the whole, would be of that sort, tho' elected with
   the utmost impartiality; but, if ambition, self-interest, and
   corruption interfere in the choice, as they most infallibly will, these
   will render it totally impossible.
     __________________________________________________________________

LETTER VI.

ON

Religious Evils.

LETTER VI.

   On Religious Evils.

   SIR,

   I NOW come to my last head of Evils which I call Religious; by which I
   mean all that madness, and folly, into which mankind have perpetually
   fallen under the name of Religion; together with all those
   Persecutions, Massacres, and Martyrdoms, which some have been induced
   to inflict, and others to suffer, from an Enthusiastic zeal for those
   errors and absurdities: Evils of the most enormous size, and which of
   all others are the most difficult to be accounted for, as their
   existence seems most inconsistent with infinite Goodness, and most
   easily preventable by infinite Power, For, tho' human nature could not
   be exempted from natural and moral Evil (as has been shewn) even by
   Omnipotence, yet, one would think, a far less degree of power might
   have been sufficient to have defended it from Religious; by imparting
   to Mankind a true, rational, and explicit system of Theology and
   Ethics; by which means all the absurdities of false Religions, and all
   the calamities flowing from those absurdities, would have been
   effectually prevented. Wonderful therefore must it appear, since the
   happiness of Men, thro' every part of their existence, so much depends
   on their Religion, that is, on their entertaining right notions of God
   and his Attributes, of their duty to him, and their behaviour to each
   other; most wonderful, I say, and astonishing it must appear, that a
   wise and benevolent Creator should so far have deserted his Creatures
   on this important occasion, as to have suffered them, thro' all
   generations, to have wandered amidst such perilous precipices in the
   dark; or if at any time he has vouchsafed them any supernatural light,
   that it should have been so faint and glimmering that it has rather
   served to terrify them with the gloomy prospect of their danger, than
   to enable them to avoid it.

   If we look back as far as history will carry us, we shall find all ages
   and nations practising, under the name of Religion, such inhuman,
   obscene, stupid and execrable Idolatries, that it would disgrace human
   Nature but to enumerate them: we shall see the wisest Men of the wisest
   Countries consulting Oracles of wood and stone, and confiding in the
   foolish superstition of the flight of birds, the entrails of beasts,
   and the pecking of chickens; we shall see them butchering their
   innocent herds and flocks as an attonement for their vices, and
   sacrificing their enemies, their slaves, their children, and sometimes
   themselves, to appease the wrath of their imaginary Deities, of whose
   worship no cruelty was too horrid to be made a part; and by whose
   infamous examples no wickedness was too execrable to be patronised. At
   length Christianity appeared, a sketch of Morality, the most rational,
   and of Religion the most sublime the world had ever seen; which, if
   ever God condescended to reveal his Will to Man, undoubtedly makes the
   fairest pretensions to be that Revelation: and indeed, if we seriously
   consider its internal Excellence, the reasonableness of its Morality,
   the sublimity of its Theology, that it alone has fixed the right
   Criterion of Virtue, alone discovered the magnanimity of Forgiveness:
   that its notions of the Deity, his attributes and dispensations, are so
   unlike all that ever entered into the heads of the wisest philosophers
   of preceding ages, and yet so well confirmed by the learned discoveries
   of all succeeding times; so far exalted above all human reason, and yet
   so conaonant with it, and what is most concluaive, so infinitely above
   the Capacities of those who published them to the World; if we add to
   this its obscure rise and amazing progress, I think, we can scarcely
   doubt but that there must be something Supernatural in it: and yet,
   with all these marks of Divinity stamped upon it, far from answering
   that idea of Perfection which we might expert from the divine
   Interposition, it was but a Sketch, whose Out-lines indeed appear the
   Work of a consummate Matter, but filled up from time to time by unequal
   and injudicious hands. It had many defeats in its institution, and was
   attended with many and great Evils in its consequences; in its
   institution it wanted Universality, [11] Authenticity, [12]
   Perspicuity, and [13] Policy, and in its consequences it was soon
   corrupted, and from that corruption productive of the most mischievous
   effects. Its great Author designed it not to be exempted from any of
   there Imperfections. He revealed it only to a small and obscure corner
   of the World in Parables and Mysteries: He guarded not its original
   Purity, which seems to have died with himself, by committing it to any
   written Records, but left it in the hands of illiterate Men, who, tho'
   they were honest enough to die for it, were never wise enough perfectly
   to understand it. All Policy he disclaims in express Words, saying, My
   kingdom is not of this World; that is, 1 meddle not with the Political
   Affairs of Mankind; I teach Men to despise the World, but not to govern
   it. Nor did He expect any better consequences from its progress than
   those which actually followed: He was by no means ignorant of its
   future corruption, and that, tho' his primitive institution breathed
   nothing but Peace, and Forbearance, Good-will and Benevolence; yet that
   in mixing with the Policies and Interests of Mankind, it would be
   productive of tyranny and oppression, of martyrdoms and massacres, of
   national wars and family dissentions. Think not, says he, I come to
   send peace on Earth, I come not to send peace but a Sword: for I am
   come to set a man at Variance against his father, and the daughter
   against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
   A Prophecy too fatally fulfilled!

   From what inscrutable source can all these imperfections, and all these
   consequent Evils, derive their existence? On what incomprehensible plan
   must the wise Disposer of all things proceed, to suffer men thus to
   bewilder themselves in the labyrinths of error, and from thence to
   plunge into the gulphs of wickedness and misery, when the least
   direction from his omnipotent hand would lead them thro' the flowery
   paths of Truth to Virtue and Felicity? Strange! that he has not given
   them reason sufficient to perform this important office! Stranger!
   that, if ever he condescended to assist that Reason with his infinite
   Wisdom, even the Religion that results from that supernatural
   assistance should be still deficient in almost every one of the
   principal requisites necessary towards accomplishing the great and
   beneficent ends it was designed for! that it should want Universality
   to render it impartial, Authenticity to make it demonstrable,
   Perspicuity to make it intelligible, and Policy to make it useful to
   Mankind: that it should immediately have been corrupted, and from that
   corruption been productive of all the Misery and Wickedness it seemed
   calculated to prevent. But on examination we shall find, that these
   Evils, like all those of which we have before treated, owe their
   existence to no defect of goodness or power in God, but to the
   imperfection of Man and their own necessity: that is, to the
   impracticability of giving a perfect Religion to an imperfect Creature.
   From whence this impracticability arises I will endeavour to explain.

   There are but two methods, that we know of, by which God can
   communicate a Religion to mankind: that is, either by the deductions
   which he has impowered him to make by the Force of that natural Reason
   which he has implanted in him, or by the extraordinary interposition of
   Divine Revelation: now from the first of these little need be said to
   shew that nothing perfect can be expected: our Reason is unstable in
   its foundations, and uncertain in its conclusions; our lives are
   extremely short, and our progress in science no less tedious, and
   retarded by numberless obstacles: much of our time is employed in
   getting ideas, and much in acquiring language to express them: few Men
   have capacities to reason, and fewer leisure: some having sense but no
   learning, want materials to work with: others having learning and no
   sense, become more absurd by having amassed much matter to mistake
   about: so that to raise any tolerable system of Religion, or Morals,
   from human reason, requires the labours of many generations; from all
   which have already part how little truth can we collect? and yet
   perhaps much of that little is owing to Revelation, which we are apt to
   think unnecessary from the very assistance we have received from it;
   like the Country-man who despised the Sun because it shined in the
   daytime. We see but a very small part of the great Whole, and see that
   small part so superficially, that we comprehend not the essence of any
   thing; neither of [14] Body or Spirit, of [15] Space or Time, of [16]
   Infinity or Eternity; we know scarce any thing of any thing, and least
   of all of the nature of God or ourselves; and therefore it is by no
   means surprismg that all Religions derived from such a source should be
   full of Errors and Absurdities. If it be asserted that God might have
   given to Man a more comprehensive Reason and a greater Insight into
   Nature and Futurity: I answer, he certainly might, and he might also
   have given him the strength of the Horse and the swiftness of the Stag,
   as well as the understanding of an Angel; but then he had not continued
   to be Man; or if he had, he would have suffered many superior Evils
   from there unhappy acquisitions.

   If we consider the other method, by which God can communicate a
   Religion to Mankind, we shall find it no less incapable of producing a
   perfect one; because tho' God is sufficiently able to give a perfect
   Religion, Man is utterly unable to receive it. God cannot impart
   knowledge to Creatures, of which he himself has made them incapable by
   their nature and formation he cannot instruct a Mole in Astronomy, or
   an Oyster in Musick, because he has not given, them Members nor
   Faculties necessary for the acquisition of those sciences: neither is
   this any diminution of his Omnipotence, because acting in such a manner
   would be willing Contrarieties at the same time: it would be opposing
   his own Designs, making Creatures what they are not, and granting them
   Powers which he thought proper to deny them: a Revelation therefore
   from God can never be such as we might expert from infinite Power,
   Wisdom and Goodness, but must condescend to the Ignorance and
   Infirmities of Man. Was the wisest Legislator in the World to compose
   Laws for a nursery, they must be childish Laws: so was God to reveal a
   Religion to Mankind, tho' the Revealer was divine, the Religion must be
   human, or it could be of no use to those for whose sake it was
   revealed: and therefore, like them, it must be liable to numberless
   Imperfections, amongst which all those Deficiencies before-mentioned
   are absolutely unavoidable, and impossible to be prevented by any power
   whatever these are the Want of Universality, Authenticity, Perspicuity
   and Policy; its certain Corruption, with all that inundation of
   Wickedness and Misery which must flow from that Corruption. Great and
   numerous Evils! from which it is not difficult to shew, that no
   Revelation communicated to Man can be exempted by an Omnipotent
   Revealer.

   First then it must want Universality: that is, however conducive it may
   be to the virtue and happiness of Mankind in general, it cannot be
   alike communicated to all Men in all ages and all nations of the World;
   because, from the nature of things, it must have a beginning and a
   progression: it must at first be revealed at some time and in some
   place; and when-ever and where-ever that is, there must have been times
   and places in which it was not revealed; and therefore it is impossible
   it can be Universal; and this not proceeding from any impotence or
   partiality in the Revealer; but from the modes of existence of all
   human affairs.

   It must likewise want Authenticity; that is, tho' its divine Authority
   may be more or less credible according to the circumstances of the
   evidence, yet it can never be capable of a direct or demonstrative
   proof; because God must communicate this Revelation to Mankind either
   by a general or a particular Inspiration: that is, either by inspiring
   all men, or by inspiring a few to teach it to others: the first of
   these methods, or a Universal Inspiration, is impossible in nature, and
   absurd even in imagination, and would be the total alteration of human
   nature: the other must ever be liable to infinite uncertainty, because
   tho' a Man may possibly know when he himself is inspired, (tho' that, I
   think, may be very well questioned) yet, that he should ever produce
   indubitable credentials of a Divine Commission to others, who are
   uninspired, seems utterly impracticable, there being no marks by which
   the fact can be ascertained, nor any faculties in the human mind which
   are able to distinguish it: the excellence of the Revelation he
   teaches, its beneficent ends, and the miracles he may work in its
   confirmation, may altogether render it more or less probable, but can
   never amount to a certain proof, because we know so little of the ends
   and consequences of things, and so much less of the nature of Miracles:
   we understand indeed nothing about them, but that we ourselves are
   unable to perform them; but what Beings of superior Orders may be able
   to do we cannot tell; nor yet what power, inclination or permission
   such Beings may have to deceive us: If it is impossible therefore we
   can be certain of the divine Authority of a Revelation, even by a
   personal communication with its first Author, much less can we be
   assured of it thro' the fallacious mediums of Tradition or History; for
   whoever observes the propensity men have to impose upon themselves and
   others, how difficult it is to come at a true representation of the
   commonest fact, even at the distance of a few miles or a few years,
   will be easily convinced, that all human Tradition can be nothing more
   than a Complication of designed Fraud and inevitable Error; a Glass
   which misrepresents all objects by magnifying or diminishing them, just
   as it is placed by the hand of Knavery for the inspection of Folly and
   Credulity. History indeed carries with it a greater Authority, but must
   ever be liable to infinite Imperfections: we can never be certain that
   the Writers of it, being Men, were not imposed upon themselves, or did
   not intend to impose on others; and therefore its original evidence
   cannot be conclusive, and must grow daily weaker in proportion to its
   antiquity: it must necessarily be subject to all uncertainties
   proceeding from the variation of languages and customs, ignorant
   transcribers, false translations, interpolations and forgeries; and as
   the histories of Religions are more connected with Mens interests than
   those of other occurrences, so they must be ever more subject to these
   Frauds and Impositions; for the same reason that a Bank-note is more
   likely to be counterfeited than a Newspaper. It is therefore impossible
   that History can afford us any certain proof of a supernatural and
   miraculous dispensation, because a Fact, unlikely to be true, can never
   be demonstrated by a relation not impossible to be false. If it be
   said, that God may inspire the writers of such important Records with
   Infallibility; I answer, the Proof that he has so inspired them will be
   attended with no less difficulty than the proof of that divine
   authority which is to be established by it; and it must ever be absurd
   to prove the truth of a Revelation by the infallibility of its Records,
   and the infallibility of its Records from the truth of the Revelation.
   It is plain therefore, that, tho' infinite Goodness may reveal a
   Religion to so imperfect a creature as Man, yet infinite Power cannot,
   by reason of that Imperfection, give to that Revelation such a degree
   of Authenticity, that is, such a demonstrable proof of its divine
   Authority, as some Men unreasonably expect, and others as ridiculously
   bestow upon it. [17]

   It must want Perspicuity: that is, it must be much more obscure both in
   its speculative and practical Doctrines, than might be expected from
   the interposition of infinite wisdom, truth and benevolence. In its
   speculative Doctrines, Obscurity must be unavoidable, because they must
   treat of subjects above the reach of our Comprehensions: which neither
   eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of Man to
   conceive; and therefore no Power can impart to us clear and explicit
   Ideas of such things without first bestowing on us new faculties and
   new senses; that is, without the total alteration of our Natures. But
   what is most of all extraordinary is, that it must be likewise to a
   certain degree obscure in its practical and moral precepts; and this
   from a reason not the less valid for having never before been insisted
   on; which is, from the Necessity of Moral Evil: that is, since God, as
   has been shewn, was obliged by Necessity to admit Moral Evil into the
   Creation, he must probably be obliged, by the same Necessity, to suffer
   it in some degree to continue; and therefore cannot inforce the
   universal practice of Virtue by laws so explicit, by threats and
   promises so glaring, and by commands so incontestably of divine
   Authority, as can admit of no doubt; for these would be so absolutely
   irresistible as at once to eradicate all human Vice, which has already
   been proved to have been admitted only from the impossibility of its
   exclusion without the introduction of greater Evils, or the loss of
   superior Good. If Omnipotence could not prevent the existence of Moral
   Evil by the original formation of Man, totally to extirpate it by
   Revelation would be to counteract his own wise, tho' incomprehensible
   designs and therefore a Divine Revelation can never be a regular Body
   of practical institutes, clear and perspicuous, free from all doubts
   and altercations, inforced by perpetual Miracles, by visible and
   immediate Rewards and Punishments; but a still Voice whispering gentle
   Warnings, divine Admonitions and supernatural Truths; a Light shining,
   in a dark place, illuminating to a certain degree the native obscurity
   of the human Mind, and discovering by faint glimmerings the Deigns of
   Providence, and a distant prospect of a future Life.

   It must also want Policy: that is, it can never prescribe political
   rules by which Mankind can be conducted in the Government of Nations,
   or their pretended rights of War and Peace, because all these affairs
   being incapable (as has been shewn) of being carried on by any other
   means than those of violence, fraud, and corruption; a Divine
   Revelation cannot possibly give any directions about them; because all
   such must be necessarily inconsistent either with Virtue or with
   practicability: totally to forbid these methods of governing mankind,
   who can be governed by no other, would be destructive of all
   government; to allow them, of all Morality: and therefore it is
   necessary that Men should be left to act in these matters at their
   peril, as particular circumstances may require, with only a general
   system of religion and morality for their guide. If a divine Revelation
   can give no laws for the management of Civil Government, much less can
   it institute any new policies peculiar to itself, under the names of
   Spiritual or Ecclesiastical; all which, however divine in their
   Original, must necessarily be administer'd, if administer'd by Man, by
   the same unjustifiable methods as others, with this additional
   inconvenience, that they could never be justly resisted. God cannot
   therefore, I apprehend, delegate Spiritual power to Man, without
   patronizing all that Violence, Corruption, and Iniquity, which must
   result from it, and without which no power in the hands of Men can be
   exercised over men. For the imperfection of Man is incompatible with
   the purity of a Divine Government. The Government of all creatures must
   correspond with their natures; and it seems to me as impossible that
   Societies of Men should submit under a Divine Government, as that
   Wolves and Tygers shou'd live together under the regulations of human
   Policy: but most of all impossible it must be that a divine and human
   Government should subsist together in the same Society, for they must
   immediately clash: and whenever that happens, the least spark of divine
   authority, if really divine, must infallibly consume all human power,
   and destroy all Civil Government whatever.

   Lastly, it must very soon be corrupted, and from that corruption be
   productive of the most mischievous effects: for, as the purest stream
   pour'd into an impure vessel must partake of its impurity; so must the
   most perfect Religion, that can be reveal'd by God to so imperfect a
   Creature as Man, partake of his imperfection, and produce many and
   great Evils, both natural and moral; that is, much of that misery, and
   wickedness, which it was intended to prevent: this no wisdom can
   obviate, no power put a stop to, so long as that imperfection remains;
   but it must constantly come to pass from a train of unavoidable
   consequences, which must invariably follow their causes, so long as
   human nature continues what it is.

   For instance, when a Divine Revelation is first communicated to
   mankind, it must be received (if received at all) because its precepts
   are approved, and its authority believed; and all those nations who
   thus approve the one, and believe the other, must esteem it both their
   interest and their duty to encourage and support it. This they can
   effect by no other means than by granting peculiar privileges to all
   who profess it, by forming from it their national Religion, and publick
   worship, and by maintaining an ,Order of Men to preach that Religion,
   and minister that worship to the people; all which amounts to a
   National Establishment. Now the moment any Religion becomes national,
   or established, its purity must certainly be lost, because it is then
   impossible to keep it unconnected with men's interests; and if
   connected, it must inevitably be perverted by them. Whenever temporal
   advantages are annex'd to any religious profession, they will be sure
   to call in all those who have no religion at all: knaves will embrace
   it for the sake of interest, fools will follow them for the sake of
   fashion; and when once it is in such hands, Omnipotence itself can
   never preserve its purity. That very Order of Men, who are maintained
   to support its interests, will sacrifice them to their own; and being
   in the sole possession of all its promises, and all its terrors, and
   having the tenderness of Childhood, the weakness of Age, and the
   ignorance of the vulgar to work upon; I say, these Men, vested with all
   these powers, yet being but Men, will not fail to convert all the
   mighty influence they must derive from them to the selfish ends of
   their own avarice and ambition, and consequently to the total
   destruction of its Original Purity: from it they will lay claim to
   powers which it never design'd them, and to possessions to which they
   have no right; to make good these false pretensions, false histories
   will be forg'd, and fabulous traditions invented; groundless terrors
   will be flung out to operate on superstition and timidity; Creeds and
   Articles will be contriv'd to confound all Reason, and tests imposed to
   sift outall who have honesty or courage enough to resist these
   unwarrantable encroachments. Devotion will be turned into farce and
   pageantry, to captivate men's eyes, that their pockets may with more
   facility be invaded: they will convert Piety into Superstition, Zeal
   into Rancour, and this Religion, notwithstanding all its Divinity, into
   diabolical malevolence. By degrees knaves will join them, fools believe
   them, and cowards be afraid of them; and having gained to considerable
   a part of the World to their interests, they will erect an independent
   dominion among themselves dangerous to the liberties of Mankind, and
   representing all those who oppose their tyranny as God's enemies, teach
   it to be meritorious in his fight to persecute them in this world and
   damn them in another. Hence must arise Hierarchies, Inquisitions, and
   Popery; for Popery is but the consummation of that tyranny which every
   religious System in the hands of Men is in perpetual pursuit of, and
   whose principles they are all ready to adopt whenever they are
   fortunate enough to meet with its success.

   This Tyranny cannot subsist without fierce and formidable Opposition,
   from whence innumerable Sects, Schisms, and Dissentions will lift up
   their contentious heads, each gaping for that very power, which they
   are fighting to destroy, tho' unable either to acquire or retain it;
   and introductive only of their constant concomitants, Ignorance,
   Self-conceit, Ill-breeding, Obstinacy, Anarchy, and Confusion. From
   these contests all kinds of Evils must derive their existence,
   blood-shed and desolation, persecutions, massacres, and martyrdoms.

   All these Evils, you see, are but the necessary Consequences of the
   national Establishment of any Religion which God can communicate to
   Man, in whose hands its Divinity can never long preserve its purity or
   keep it unmixed with his imperfections, his folly and wickedness. Nay,
   so far is the Divinity of a Revelation from being able to prevent its
   corruption, that it will but increase and hasten it; for the greater
   share of Divinity it partakes, the greater must be its Excellence; the
   greater its Excellence, the more universal must be its Approbation; the
   more it is approved, the more it must be encouraged; the more it is
   encouraged, the sooner it will be established; and the sooner it is
   established, the sooner it must be corrupted and made subservient to
   the worst purposes of the worst of men; yet it is plain this
   Establishment is no more than the consequence of its excellence, and
   men's approbation; no more than the alternative of its total
   extinction, and without which it cannot be preserved at all; and
   therefore the corruption of every divine Revelation communicated to
   Man, is, by the nature of Man, clearly unavoidable.

   From what has been here said it appears plainly, that all the numerous
   Evils which adhere to, and all the mischievous effects which follow all
   human Religions, whether natural or revealed, by no means owe their
   existence to any want of power, wisdom or goodness in God, but like all
   others, to the imperfection of Man; that is, to his folly and
   wickedness, which must inevitably corrupt them. It is also, I think, no
   less evident, that all arguments levelled against the divine Original
   of Christianity, founded on its imperfections and pernicious
   consequences, (which are all, I think, that have any weight) may be
   proved to be vain and inconclusive; and this not by concealing or
   denying those imperfections and pernicious consequences, as many have
   absurdly attempted, but by fairly shewing, that they all proceed from
   the imperfections of those Creatures to whom it is revealed; and that,
   so long as those continue, there cannot be prevented by any wisdom,
   goodness, or power whatever. [18]

   Thus, Sir, if I mistake not, I have sufficiently, tho' concisely,
   answered that most abstruse and important Question, Whence came Evil?
   and proved, that all the Evils we feel, and all which we see around us,
   derogate not in the least from the wisdom, power, or goodness of our
   Creator; but proceed entirely from that subordination which is so
   necessary to the happiness and even to the existence of the great and
   incomprehensible Whole. I have shewn that all subordination must imply
   imperfection in some Beings or other; and that all imperfection must
   consist in the absence of comparative good, or the admission of
   positive Evil. I have shewn that most of the Evils we usually complain
   of are of the first kind; the want only of those perfections we see
   others enjoy, or imagine infinite power might have bestowed upon
   ourselves; which are therefore in fact no Evils at all; that those of
   the latter sort, or positive Evils, are such as from the nature of
   things must intrude themselves into Creation, and therefore that
   Omnipotence can do no more than make choice of that System which admits
   the fewest; being obliged by the imperfection of all created Beings,
   the untractableness of Matter, and some incomprehensible connection
   between Good and Evil, Happiness and Misery, to admit both, or to give
   existence to neither. I have likewise shewn that Moral Evil may have
   its necessity and utility, as well as Natural; at least, that if
   Natural Evils are necessary, Moral ones are expedient, to prevent that
   necessary Misery from falling to the share of perfect. Innocence, and
   to convert unavoidable sufferings into just punishments; that tho' the
   essence of all Moral Evil consists in the production of Natural, yet it
   may have some collateral tendency to Good; and that the Wicked, whilst
   they are justly punished for the miseries which they occasion, may
   probably, by that very guilt and punishment, some way remotely
   contribute to universal happiness. I have shewn that if Natural and
   Moral Evils could not be prevented, the existence of Political and
   Religious Evils must of course be unavoidable, they being but the
   certain consequences of the other: that all human Government must be in
   the highest degree imperfect, and big with all manner of Evils, being
   the dominion of ignorant and wicked creatures over each other; that, as
   such creatures can be governed only by fear of punishment or hopes of
   reward, all Government amongst them must be founded on Violence or
   Corruption, and ever supported and administred by the same vitious and
   unjustifiable methods: that no power whatever can give a perfect
   Religion to so imperfect a creature as Man, either by Nature or
   Revelation; not by nature, because, whilst that is human nature, he can
   never discover by Reason the Truths on which a Perfect system of
   Theology or Ethics can be erected; not by Revelation, because he wants
   faculties to comprehend such supernatural discoveries, altho' they
   should be imparted to him; that, was he capable of once receiving a
   perfect Religion, it is not possible he could long retain it; because,
   if it could be kept entirely separate from his worldly interests, it
   would soon be neglected and perish in oblivion; and, if it was not,
   such a connection would quickly corrupt its purity, and destroy its.
   essence, so that national establishments would be necessary for its
   support, and yet infallibly productive of its destruction. That all
   these Evils proceed not from wrong dispositions or accidental causes,
   but singly and solely from the imperfection of Man; and yet that in the
   gradation from infinite perfection to absolute nothing, there must be
   one rank occupied by such a Creature as Man with all his imperfections
   about him; that these imperfections must be annexed to his situation,
   and adhere to every thing that relates to him, to his happiness, to his
   morals, to his government, and to his religion: that, in like manner,
   all other created Beings must have Evils and Imperfections peculiar to
   their stations and proportioned to their inferiority; notwithstanding
   all which, there is as much Good, and as little Evil in the universal
   system as the nature of Creation will admit of; and that therefore it
   is a work equal to what we might expect from the Operations of infinite
   Benevolence joined with infinite Power.

F I N I S.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [11] By want of Authenticity is here meant only the want of that
   demonstrable, and infallible Authority, of which all historical Facts
   are in their own Natures incapable; and which, had the friends of the
   Christian Revelation never pretended to bestow upon it, the truth of
   that event had been no more disputed, than the truth of any other
   well-attested History whatsoever.

   [12] The want of Perspicuity in this Revelation needs surely no other
   testimony, than the Millions of Writers, who for seventeen Centuries
   have laboured to demonstrate, harmonise, systemise, illustrate, and
   explain every one of its Doctrines; and the no less numberless, and
   various Opinions, that remain to this Day concerning them all: much
   indeed of this obscurity has proceeded from Men's endeavours to make it
   what they fancied it should have been, but for which it was never
   intended; that is, a regular, clear, and explicit body of moral and
   political Institutes.

   [13] By Policy is here meant all Institutions and Regulations of human
   Government, both civil, and ecclesiastical; concerning which the Author
   of the Christian Religion has carefully avoided giving any directions.
   All these he has left to be ordered by every State in such a manner as
   shall appear to them most convenient, and has commanded his disciples
   to be subject, as Men, to their ordinances, not only for Wrath but for
   Conscience sake; but foreseeing the infinite mischiefs that must arise
   from trusting human Creatures with a divine power, he has forbid them
   as Christians, either to exercise, or submit to any authority over each
   other, under any pretence of its being derived from himself: Ye know,
   he says, that the Princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them,
   and they that are great exercise authority upon them; But it shall not
   be so among you; &c. Matt. xx. 25. And perhaps there is no stronger
   proof of the divine Wisdom of this great Instructor of Mankind, than
   the extraordinary caution with which he has passed over a subject, on
   which no rules could be prescribed not inconsistent either with
   Practice or with Virtue: and yet a Subject which all other Legislators
   have considered as their most important Object.

   [14] Metaphysicians divide all Being into Spirit and Matter: to Spirit
   they attribute motion, activity, sensibility, thought, will, and
   reason, free from all solidity, and extension; to Matter they ascribe
   solidity and extension only, void of all self-motion, sense, and
   perception: but these descriptions are quite arbitrary, founded only
   upon their own imaginations, and by no means consistent with
   experience: for Spirit seems to have many properties not so distinct
   from Matter by its intimate Union with it in the composition of all
   animals; and matter has certainly many qualities contradictory to this
   distinction, such as cohesion, attraction, elasticity, electricity,
   fermentation, heat, and vegetation, none of which can be accounted for
   from the mere passive principles of solidity and extension.

   [15] Many philosophers have considered Time and Space as real essences;
   whereas they have certainly no more than an imaginary existence derived
   solely from the imperfection of human conceptions, and human language.
   They are in themselves really nothing, and the attributes we bestow
   upon them are applicable with equal propriety to nothing: that is,
   nothing has neither beginning nor end, nor can be comprehended within
   any bounds. The intervening period between historical facts we
   distinguish by the names of days and years; the distances between
   places we call yards and miles, and from this manner of expressing
   ourselves they gain the appearance of being something; whereas
   abstracted from those facts, and places, they are really nothing: so
   that if all things were annihilated, Space would immediately vanish,
   and literally speaking, Time would be no more.

   [16] All the Ideas we have of Infinity and Eternity are acquired by
   adding in our imagination Miles to Miles and Years to Years, by which
   means we come never the nearer to them: for no addition of parts can
   ever make any thing infinite or eternal; no two objects can be placed
   at an infinite distance, because they would then be the two ends of
   Infinity: an infinite number is a contradiction in terms; and therefore
   every thing that is infinite or eternal must exist in some manner which
   bears no manner of relation to Space, or Time, and which must therefore
   be to us totally incomprehensible.

   [17] Nothing here offered is meant by any means to invalidate the
   authority of Revelation: that of the Christian is possessed of as much
   certainty as the nature of the fact, and the nature of its evidence
   will admit of. Those who endeavour to bestow more upon it, do in
   reality but make it less; and, like unskillful Architects, weaken a
   building already sufficiently strong, by overloading it with
   unnecessary supporters.

   [18] If we look into the Deistical Writings of all times, we shall
   find, that they have always attacked the Christian Religion most
   successfully from this Ground; they have shewed the many Imperfections
   that adhere to it, and then concluded, that nothing imperfect could
   drive its Original from God: their adversaries have injudiciously
   denied those Imperfections, which for the most part are true, and
   agreed to their Conclusion, which is indiputably false; for every thing
   we possess is derived from God, and yet we possess nothing endued with
   absolute Perfection.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Latin Words and Phrases

     * Poeena metusque aberant, nec verba minacia fixo: [1]1
     * Ver erat æternum, placidisque tepentibus auris Mulcebant Zephyri
       natos sine semine flores; Mox etiam fruges tellus inarata ferebat,
       Nec renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis, Flumina jam lactis,
       jam flumina nectaris ibant, Flavaque de viridi stillabant ilice
       mella: [2]1
     * Non deficit aureus alter.: [3]1
     * Præterea credibile est, ipsa illa animi vitia magnæ hominum parti,
       non sine summo concilio data esse: Cum enim Dei providentiâ talis
       sit Tellus, ejusque incolæ, quales cernimus, absurdum enim foret
       existimare omnia hæc alia facta esse, quam ille voluerit,
       sciveritque futura: [4]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [5]i  [6]ii  [7]iii  [8]iv  [9]v  [10]vi  [11]vii  [12]viii  [13]ix
   [14]x  [15]xi  [16]xii  [17]xiii  [18]xiv  [19]xv  [20]xvi  [21]xvii
   [22]xviii  [23]xix  [24]xx  [25]xxi  [26]xxii  [27]xxiii  [28]xxiv
   [29]xxv  [30]xxvi  [31]xxvii  [32]xxviii  [33]xxix  [34]xxx  [35]xxxi
   [36]xxxii  [37]33  [38]34  [39]35  [40]36  [41]37  [42]38  [43]39
   [44]40  [45]41  [46]42  [47]43  [48]44  [49]45  [50]46  [51]47  [52]48
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   [162]158  [163]159  [164]160  [165]161  [166]162  [167]163  [168]164
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   [176]172  [177]173  [178]174  [179]175  [180]176  [181]177  [182]178
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   [232]228  [233]229  [234]230  [235]231  [236]232  [237]233  [238]234
   [239]235  [240]236
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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