554.

man, and every man's hand against him." Gen. xvi. 12. "But," he puuningly concluded, “the Unitarians are verily like Esau, they have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage!"

Such, Sir, are the remarks which have been repeatedly made to me, a professed and decided friend to liberal sentiment, candour and Christian charity in speaking of our neighbours, respecting the communication in question; and I have no doubt that you will prove your superior liberality by giving them a place in the Mon. Rep. as a caution to others, and as a proof that you are not so bigoted and in

temperate observations which persons of different sentiments may make on the contents of your pages.

Another "Friend of Justice, Truth and Candour," and

A CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN.

Natural Theology. No. I.

their power;"" and so also do the philosophical and rational Unitarians," triumphantly exclaimed my orthodox antagonist. Because the orthodox note-writer parenthetically mentioned Unitarianism in the same paragraph with the name of Gibbon, it is candidly concluded that "this can arise only from one of three causes-want of charity-or of knowledge-or of honesty. Of which will the writer of the note make his choice?" [ix.] Here, Sir, is an example of the most intolerant, uncandid and illiberal bigotry that ever existed; it is the more odious that it is found in an avowed friend to liberal sentiment and Christian charity, and cannot be sur-tolerant as to refuse insertion to any passed by any thing in the Evangelical, Orthodox, Catholic or Antijacobin Magazines. To declare that a writer must be a bigot, an ignoramus or a knave, on no other grounds than the frank and manly expression of his real sentiments, or a simple allusion to a particular hypothesis, might perhaps be tolerable in the dark ages or in the tribunals of the Inquisition; but in the present, it is truly deplorable. "If this be the practice," he continued," of modern Unitarians, they may have changed names, but certainly not principles; τίς πατρίδος φυγὰς τῶν, καὶ élòv øye, or as Seneca observed, Sequitur seipsum et urget gravissimus comes; and whatever they may call themselves, they are still practically Papists, Calvinists or dogmatists, and inasmuch as they profess but do not practice liberality, hypocrites." It is indeed strange that any man possessing the least knowledge of the human mind should ever consider mere opinions as virtues or vices, and found a general character on what may be as transitory as the morning dreams. A man may be a Unitarian to-day and a Trinitarian to-morrow, or vice versa, without any change in his moral character, provided that merely his motive is the love of truth to the best of his knowledge. Finally, Sir," Your correspondent," remarks my orthodox critic, "evin

ces

a very imperfect acquaintance with the Scriptures;" he gravely says, "We Unitarians are, in one respect, in the situation of Esau. The hand of every man is against us, and our hand is against every man." Perhaps this "Friend of Truth" meant Ishmael, whose “hand will be against every

Sir,

AS

SI presume it was never the intention of the projector of the Monthly Repository, nor the wish of the generality of its readers, that all its pages should be devoted to theological controversy and scriptural criticism, however important these subjects may be in themselves, and necessary to the elucidation of a rational system of religion, I shall, if consistent with the plan of your work, commence a series of papers on a topic that is always interesting to young persons, and which may afford matter for useful and serious reflection to those further advanced in life, who, perhaps, may, from circumstances not necessary to be enumerated, have hitherto paid little or almost no attention to the wisdom and contrivance displayed in the works of the Almighty.

Those who are acquainted with the subject of Natural Theology will not expect originality, much less will they look for discovery. For persons of this class these papers are not intended: they hope to claim the attention and excite the interest of those readers only who would be glad to investigate the wouders of creation, without possessing the means of doing so.

It has been observed, that the great disadvantage of the subject is its ex

treme simplicity, and the vast multiplicity of obvious and decisive evidences that nray every where be found for its illustration. "The great book of the universe lies open to all mankind, and he who cannot read in it the name and the titles of its Author, will probably derive but little benefit from the labours of any commentator: their instructions may elucidate a few dark passages, and exalt our admiration of many that we already perceive to be beautiful; but the bulk of the volume is legible without assistance: and much as we may find out by study and meditation, it will still be as nothing in comparison with what is forced upon our apprehension."

No person accustomed to reason, or even but slightly reflect upon what he is every day the witness of, can possibly doubt that there are abundant marks of design in the universe: and any enumeration of the instances in which this design is manifest, appears at first sight unnecessary. It is however a fact that cannot be disputed, that all persons do not reason from nor reflect upon even the plainest marks of wisdom and benevolence exhibited in the creation. It is true that a single example might be as conclusive with regard to the contrivance manifested in the world as a thousand; and he who could not discover the most evident marks of wise design in the formation of an eye or an ear, did he perfectly understand the structure of these organs, would be deaf to any arguments offered to his mind to prove the existence of a wise, a benevolent and designing first cause.

The ancient sceptics had nothing to set up against a designing Deity, but the doctrine of Chance and the combination of a chaos of atoms in endless motion. The task of their opponents therefore was not at all difficult: they appealed at once to the order and symmetry that pervaded the whole of nature, and to the regularity and magnificence of the structure of the universe. The phenomena of the heavens, in particular, appear to have arrested their attention, and the magnitude and uniformity of the planetary motions afforded in their estimation, a sufficient proof not only of Divine power, but intelligence also.

To modern sceptics the exclamation of Dr. Beattie, from his Elements of Moral Science, may be fitly addressed;

"The man who should suppose a large city consisting of a thousand palaces, all finished in the minutest parts and furnished with the greatest elegance and variety of ornament, and with all sorts of books, pictures and statues executed in the most ingenious manner, to have been produced by the accidental blowing of winds and rolling of sands would justly be accounted irrational, but to suppose the universe, or our solar system, or this earth," or even the human frame, "to be a work of undesigning chance, is an absurdity incomparably greater."

Astronomy and anatomy are indeed the studies which present us with the most striking view of the two greatest attributes of the Supreme Being. The first of these fills the mind with the idea of his immensity, in the largeness, distances and number of the heavenly bodies, the last, which we mean to form the first part of our arrangement astonishes with the intelligence and art in the variety and delicacy of animal mechanism.

The human body has been represented under the name of "Microcosmus," as if it did not differ so much from-the universal system of nature, in the symmetry and number of its parts, as in their size. Galen's excellent treatise on the use of those parts, entitled " De usu Partium Corporis humani ;" and which was written in the second century of the Christian era, was composed as a sort of prose hymn to the Creator, and it abounds with the most irresistible proofs of a supreme cause and overruling providence and Cicero, who flourished two centuries and a half prior to Galen dwells more on the structure and economy of animals, than on all the other productions of nature, when he wishes to demonstrate the existence of the Gods from the order and beauty of the universe. It is not, however, my intention to carry the reader back to the works of the ancients: among the moderns we have the subject amply and feelingly discussed, by persons who have considered the structure and functions of animals with direct reference to the display of the perfections of the Creator; such, in many instances has been the object of a Ray, a Derham, and a Paley, to whose volumes we shall have frequent occasion to recur, and. of whose labours we shall, without

38

to particulars, and point out in a clear and distinct manner the provisions which have been made for the due exercise of each of them.

If, Sir, you judge the foregoing observations worthy a place in the Monthly Repository, I will in the following number give some account of the eye as the organ of vision, and am, Your sincere well-wisher,

Y.

Jan. 1, 1815.

SIR, WORK upon whatever subject could scarcely fail to attract curiosity, if written in our language by a foreigner who had become a classic

in his own. Such is the following

publication:

"An Essay upon the Civil Wars of France, extracted from curious manuscripts, and also upon the Epic Poetry of the European Nations from HoBy M. de Volmer down to Milton. taire, Author of the Henriade. The Second Edition, corrected by himself. London: printed for N. Prevost and Comp. at the Ship, over against Southampton Street, in the Strand. 1728. Price, stitched, 1s. 6d." Pp. 130. It is well known from the biographies of Voltaire that he came into this country in 1726, at the age of thirty-two, for the purpose of publishing in its finished form his celebrated Epic, parts of which had been printed at London in 1723, under the title of The League; and it cannot fail to be related in future histories of poetry as a curious coincidence that the Henriade and Charlemagne both made their first appearance from the English press. According to memoirs attributed to Voltaire, and translated in the Annual Register for 1777, (p. 34) "George the First, and more particularly the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen of England, raised an immense subscription for him." The king died at Osnaburg, in 1727, during Voltaire's stay in England. To the young Queen he presented the Henriade, with an English dedicacation which is prefixed to the Poem in his works (x. 19). The author also testified his gratitude for English patronage by introducing in his first canto a panegyric on our threefold form of government, concluding with

these lines, to which I subjoin a literal
translation.

Heureux lorsque le peuple, instruit dans
son devoir,

Respecte, autant qu'il doit, le souverain
pouvoir!

Plus heureux lorsqu' un roi, doux, juste
et politique,

Respecte, autant qu'il doit, la liberté
publique.

Happy the people, to their duties true,
That pay the sovereign power allegiance
due;

Happier if just, wise, good, a King de-
clare

The public liberty, his duteous care.

It is not very creditable to the literary research of Voltaire's French or English Biographers, that none of them mention this Essay, though it is incidentally noticed by Ruffhead, in his Life of Pope, 1769, on introducing a short English letter from Voltaire to the Bard of Twickenham, whom he compliments for having"dressed Homer so becomingly in an English coat." Mr. Hayley also quotes the Essay in his Milton, 2d Ed. p. 248, as "a work which, though written under such disadvantage, posseuses the peculiar vivacity of this extraordinary writer, and is indeed so curious a specimen of his versatile talents, that it ought to have found a place in that signal monument to the name of Voltaire, the edition of his works in ninety-two volumes." The following is the author's own account:

"Advertisement to the Reader.

"It has the appearance of too great a presumption in a traveller, who hath been but eighteen months in England, to attempt to write in a language, which he cannot pronounce at all, and which he hardly understands in conversation. But I have done what we do every day at school, where we write Latin and Greek, though surely we pronounce them both very pitifully, and should understand neither of them if they were uttered to us with the right Roman or Greek pronunciation. I look upon the English language as a learned one, which deserves to be the object of our application in France, as the French tongue is thought a kind of accomplishment in England.

"As to this present Essay, it is intended as a kind of Preface or Introduction to the Henriade, which is al