have not, we are always in great danger of hurting ourselves, or at least deserving of ridicule and contempt, by vain and idle efforts.

Locke. I agree with you, that human nature should know its own weakness; but it should also feel its strength, and try to improve it. This was my employment as a philoso pher. I endeavored to discover the real powers of the mind, to see what it could do, and what it could not; to - restrain it from efforts beyond its ability; but to teach it how to advance as far as the faculties given to it by nature, with the utmost exertion and most proper culture of them, would allow it to go. In the vast ocean of philosophy, I > had the line and the plummet always in my hands. Many of its dephs I found myself unable to fathom; but, by caution in sounding, and the careful observations I made in the course of my voyage, I found out some truths of so mach use to mankind, that they acknowledge me to have been their benefactor.

Bayle. Their ignorance makes them think so. Some other philosopher will come hereafter and show those truths to be falsehoods. He will pretend to discover other truths of equal importance. A later sage will arise, perhaps among men now barbarous and unlearned, whose sagacious discov. eries will discredit the opinions of his admired predecessor. In philosophy, as in nature, all changes its form, and one thing exists by the destruction of another.

Locke. Opinions taken up without a patient investigation, depending on terms not accurately defined, and principles begged without proof, like theories to explain the phænomina of nature, built on suppositions instead of experiments, must perpetually change and destroy one another. But, some opinions there are, even in matters not obvious to the common sense of mankind, which the mind has received on such rational grounds of assent, that they are as immovea. ble as the pillars of heaven; or (to speak philosophically) as the great laws of Nature, by which, under God, the uni verse is sustained. Can you seriously think, that, because the hypothesis of your countryman, Descartes, which was nothing but an ingenious, well imagined romance, has been lately exploded, the system of Newton, which is built on e periments and geometry, the two most certain methods discovering truth, will ever fail ; or that, because the whir of fanatics and the divinity of the schoolmen, cannot no

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be supported, the doctrines of that religion, which I, the declared enemy of all enthusiasm and false reasoning, firmly believed and maintained, will ever be shaken ?

Bayle. If you had afked Descartes, while he was in the height of his vogue, whether his system would ever be confuted by any other philosophers, as that of Aristotle had been by his, what answer do you suppose he would have returned?

Locke Come, come, you yourself know the difference between the foundations on which the credit of those systems, and that of Newton is placed. Your scepticism is more affected than real. You found it a shorter way to a great reputation, (the only wish of your heart,) to object than to defend; to pull down, than to set up. And your talents were admirable for that kind of work. Then your huddling together in a Critical Dictionary, a pleasant tale, or obscene jest, and a grave argument against the Christian religion, a witty confutation of some absurd au thor, and an artful sophism to impeach some respectable truth, was particularly commodious to all our young smarts and smatterers in free thinking. But what mischief have you not done to human society? You have endeavored, and with some degree of success, to shake those foundations, on which the whole moral world, and the great fabric of social happiness, entirely rest. How could you, as a philosopher, in the sober hours of reflection, answer for this to your conscience, even supposing you had doubts of the truth of a system, which gives to virtue its sweetest hopes, to impenitent vice its greatest fears, and to true penitence its best consolations which restrains even the least approaches to guilt, and yet makes those allowances for the infirmities of our nature, which the stoic pride denied to it, but which its real imperfection, and the goodness of its infinitely benevolent Creator, so evidently require?

Bayle. The mind is free; and it loves to exert its freedom. Any restraint upon it is a violence done to its na ture, and a tyranny, against which it has a right to rebel.

Locke. The mind, though free, has a governor within it self, which may and ought to limit the exercise of its freedom. What governor is reason.

Bayle. Yes but reason, like other governors, has a poliey more dependent upon uncertain caprice, than upon any

fixed laws. And if that reason, which rules my mind or yours, has happened to set up a favorite notion, it not only submits implicitly to it, but desires that the same respect should be paid to it by all the rest of mankind. Now I hoid that any man may lawfully oppose this desire in another; and that if he is wise, he will do his utmost endea vors to check it in himself.

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

Bayle. I believe we do; and by this means it often hap. pens that, if one man build and consecrate a temple to folly, another pulls it down.

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

Bayle. I cannot say that I do.

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

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

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

Bayle. With regard to morality, I was not indifferent. Locke. How could you then be indifferent with regard to the sanctions religion gives to morality? how could you publish what tends so directly and apparently to weaken in mankind the belief of those sanctions? was not this sacrificing the great interests of virtue to the little motives of vanity?

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

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Locke. An enthusiast, who advances doctrines prejudicial to society, or opposes any that are useful to it, has the strength of opinion, and the heat of a disturbed imagina. tion to plead in alleviation of his fault. But your cool head, and sound judgment, can have no such excuse. know very well there are passages in all your works, and those not few, where you talk like a rigid moralist. I have also heard that your character was irreproachably good. But when in the most labored parts of your

writings,

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writings, you sap the surest foundations of all ́'moralTMɗh. ties; what avails it that in others, or in the conduct of your life, you appeared to respect them? How many, who have stronger passions than you had, and are desirous so get rid of the curb that restrains them, will lay hold of your scepticism, to set themselves loose from all obliga. tions of virtue! What a misfortune is it to have made such a use of such talents! It would have been better for you and for mankind, if you had been one of the duliest of Dutch theologians, or the most credulous monk ́in a Portuguese convent. The riches of the mind, like those of fortune, may be employed so perversely, as to become a nuisance and pest, instead of an ornament and support to-society.

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

Leske. The root of these evils, you well know, was falsereligon but you struck at the true. Heaven and hell are not more different, than the system of faith I defended, and that which produced the horrors of which you speak. Why would you so fallaciously confound them together in some of your writings, that it requires much morejudgment, and a more diligent attention, than ordinary readers have, to separate them again, and to make the prop er distinctions? This, indeed, is the great art of the most celebrated free thinkers. They recommend themselves to warm and ingenuous minds, by lively strokes of wit and by arguments really strong, against superstition; enthusiasm, and priestcraft. But, at the same time, they insidiously throw the colors of these upon the fair face of true religion; and dress her out in their garb, with a malignant intention to render her odious or despicable, to those who have not penbration enough to discern the impious fraud. Some of

them

them may have thus deceived themselves as well as others. Yet it is certain, no book, that ever was written by the most acute of these gentlemen, is so repugnant to priestcraft, to spiritual tyranny, to all absurd superstitions, to all that can tend to disturb or injure society, as that gospel they so much -affect to despise.

Bayle. Mankind are so made, that when they have been over heated, they cannot be brought to a proper temper again till they have been over cooled. My scepticism might be necessary, to abate the fever and phrenzy of false religion.

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

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

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

THE

LESSON XLVI.

PUBLIC SPEECHES,

SECTION I.

Cicero against Verres.

LORD LITTLETON.

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

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