Thoughts on Freethinking, and on Free-thinkers, particularly the late Earl of Shaftesbury and the late Lord Bolingbroke, by the late Mr. Gray; in a Letier from Mr. Gray to Mr. Stonhewer; with Observations on these Thoughts, by Mr. Mason, &c. From Mr. Mason's Edition of Mr. Gray's Works.

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Cambridge, Aug. 18, 1758. AM as sorry as you seem to be, that our acquaintance harped so much on the subject of materialism, when I saw him with you in town, because it was plain to which side of the long-debated ques tion he inclined. That we are indeed mechanical and dependent beings, I need no other proof than my own feelings; and from the same feelings I learn, with equal conviction, that we are not merely such: that there is a power within that struggles against the force and biass of that mechanism, commands its motion, and, by frequent practice, reduces it to that ready obedience which we call habit; and all this in conformity to a preconceived opinion (no matter whether right or wrong) to that least material of all agents, a thought. I have known many in his case, who, while they thought they were Conqueting an old prejudice, did not perceive they were under the influence of one far more dangerVOL. XVIII. 1775.

ous; one that furnishes us with a ready apology for all our worst actions, and opens to us a full licence for doing whatever we please; and yet these very people were not at all the more indulgent to other men, (as they naturally should have been) their indignation to such as offended them, their desire of revenge on any body that hurt them, was nothing mitigated: in short, the truth is, they wished to be persuaded of that opinion for the sake of its convenience, but were not so in their heart; and they would have been glad (as they ought in common prudence) that nobody else should think the same, for fear of the mischief that might ensue to themselves. His French author I never saw, but have read fifty in the same strain, and shall read no more. I can be wretched enough without them. They put me in mind of the Greek sophist that got immortal honour by discoursing so feelingly on the miseries of our condition, that fifty of his audience went home and hanged themselves; yet he lived himself (I suppose) many years after in very good plight.

You say you cannot conceive how Lord Shaftesbury came to be a phi losopher in vogue; I will tell you: first, he was a Lord; 2dly, he was as vain as any of his readers; 3dły, men are very prone to believe what

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they do not understand; 4thly, they will believe any thing at all, provided they are under no obligation to believe it; 5thly, they love to take a new road, even when that road leads no where; 6thly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said. Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead lord ranks but with commoners: vanity is no longer interested in the matter, for the new road is become an old one. The mode of freethinking is like that of ruffs and farthingales, and has given place to the mode of not thinking at all; once it was reckoned graceful, half to discover and half conceal the mind, but now we have been long accustomed to see it quite naked: primness and affectation of style, like the good breeding of Queen Anne's court, has turned to hoydening and rude familiarity.

It will, I think, be no improper supplement to the foregoing letter to insert a paper of Mr. Gray's, which contains some very pertinent strictures on the writings of a later Lord, who was pleased to attack the moral attributes of the Deity, or what amounted to the same thing, endeavoured to prove, "that we have no adequate ideas of his

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goodness and justice, as we have of his natural ones, his wisdom and power." This position the excu lent author of the View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy, calls the MAIN PILLAR of his systern; and || adds, in another place, that the FATE OF ALL RELIGION is cluded in this question. On this important point, therefore, that able writer has dwelt largely, and confuted his Lordship effectually. Some sort of readers, however, who probably would slight that confutation, may regard the arguments of a layman, and even a poet, more than those which are drawn up by the pen of a divine and a bishop: it is for the use of these that the paper is published; who, if they learn nothing else from it, will find that Mr. Gray was not of their party, nor so great a wit as to disbelieve the existence of a Deity*.

"I will allow Lord Bolingbroke, that the moral, as well as physical, attributes of God must be known to us only à posteriori, and that this is the only real knowledge we can have either of the one or the other; I will allow too that perhaps it may be an idle distinctica which we make between them? his moral attributes being as much in his nature and essence as those we call his physical; but the occasion of our inaking some distinction

is plainly this: his eternity, infinity, omniscience, and almighty power, are not what connect him, if I may so speak, with us his crea tures. We adore him, not because he always did in every place, and always will, exist; but because he gave and still preserves to us our own existence by an exertion of his goodness. We adore him, not be cause he knows and can do all things, but because he made us capaple of knowing and of doing what may conduct us to happiness: it is therefore his benevolence which we adore, not his greatness or power; and if we are made only to bear our part in a system, without any regard to our own particular happiness, we can no longer worship him as our all-bounteous, parent: there is no meaning in the term. The idea of his malevolence (an impiety I tremble to write) must succeed. We have nothing left but our fears, and those too vain; for whither can they lead to but to despair and the sad "desire of annihilation?" If then, justice "and goodness be not the same in "God as in our ideas, we mean nothing when we say that God "is necessarily just and good; and "for the same reason it may as well be said that we know not "what we mean when, according to Dr. Clarke, (Evid. 26th) we "affim that he is necessarily a "wise and intelligent Being." What then can Lord Bolingbroke mean, when he says every thing shews the wisdom of God, and yet adds, every thing does not shew in like manner the goodness of God conformably to our ideas of this attribute in either? By wisdom he must only mean, that God knows and employs the fittest means to a

certain end, no matter what that end may be: this indeed is a proot, of knowledge and intelligence; but these aloneę do not constitute wisdom: the word implies the appli cation of these fittest means to the best and kindest end: or, who will call it true wisdom? even amongst ourselves, it is not held as such. All the attributes then that he seems to think apparent in the constitution of things, are his unity, infinity, eternity and intelligence; from no one of which, I boldly affirm, can result any duty of gratitude or adoration incumbent on mankind, more than if he and all things round him were produced, as some have dared to think, by the necessary working of eternal mat ter in an infinite vacuum: for, what does it avail to add intelli-gence to those other physical attri- butes, unless that intelligence be directed, not only to the good of the whole, but also to the good of every individual of which whole is composed.

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in ourselves? Yet neither Lord Bolingbroke nor any other man, that thought on these subjects, ever believed that these our ideas were real and full representations of these attributes in the Divinity. They say he knows; they do not mean that he compares ideas which he acquired from sensation, and draws conclusions from them. They say he acts; they do do not mean by impulse, nor as the soul acts on an organized body. They say he is omnipotent and eternal; yet on what are their ideas founded, but on our own narrow conceptions of space and duration, prolonged beyond the bounds of space and time? Either therefore there is a resemblance and analogy (however imperfect and distant) between the attributes of the Divinity and our conceptions of them, or we cannot have any conceptions of them at all: he allows we ought to reason from earth, that we do know, to heaven which we do not know; how can we do so but by that affinity which appears between the one and the other?

In vain then does my Lord attempt to ridicule the warm but melancholy imagination of Mr. Wollaston in that fine soliloquy: "Must I then bid my last farewell "to these walks when I close these ids; and yonder blue regions and all this scene darken upon "me and go out? Must then only serve to furnish dust to be mingled with the ashes of these "herds and plants, or with this dirt under my feet? Have I

"been set so far above them in "life, only to be levelled with "them in death*?" No thinking head, ho heart, that has the least sensibility, but must have made the same reflection; or at least must feel, not the beauty alone, but the truth of it, when he hears it from the mouth of another. Now what reply will Lord Bolingbroke make to these questions which are put to him, not only by Wollaston, but by all mankind? He will tell you, that we, that is, the animals, ve getables, stones, and other clods of earth, are all connected in one immense design; that we are all dramatis personæ, in different characters, and that we were not made for ourselves, but for the action: that it is foolish, presumptuous, impious and profane to murmur against the Almighty Author of this drama, when we feel ourselves unavoidably unhappy. On the contrary, we ought to rest our head on the soft pillow of resignation, on the inmoveable rock of tranquillity; secure, that, if our pains and affictions grow violent indeed, an immediate end will be put to our miserable being, and we shall be mingled with the dirt under our feet, a thing common to all the animal kind; and of which he who complains, does not seem to have been set by his reason so far above them in life, as to deserve not to be mingled with them in death. Such is the consolation his philosophy gives us, and such the hope on which Lis tranquillity was founded t.

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