: 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, infiuitely 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 greater imperfection and misery; necessary indeed towards carrying on the business of the universe, but very grievous and burdensome 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, co-operating with his Creator, as far as his narrow sphere of action will permit, in the production of happiAnd 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 ness. 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 compassion, 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 could 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 public hap-happiness, or to degrade himself to a state of piness, 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 economy, which, like health, beauty, or riches, are rather obligations conferred upon us by God, than merits in us towards him; for though we may be justly punished for injuring ourselves, we can claim no reward for self-pre-of all human virtue and vice contrived, that their servation; 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. 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 Si sic omnia dixisset! To this account of the in a right light these two material points, the es- essence of vice and virtue, it is only necessary sence and the end of virtue, that ever founded to add, that the consequences of human actions the one in the production of happiness, that is, being sometimes uncertain, and sometimes rein universal benevolence, or, in their language, mote, it is not possible in many cases for most charity to all men; the other, in the probation men, nor in all cases for any man, to determine of man, and his obedience to his Creator. what actions will ultimately produce happiness, blime and magnificent as was the philosophy and therefore it was proper that revelation sheu d of the ancients, all their moral systems were de- lay down a rule to be followed invariably in opficient in these two important articles. They position to appearances, and in every change of were all built on the sandy foundations of the circumstances, by which we may Le certain to innate beauty of virtue, or enthusiastic patriot-promote the general felicity, and be set free from ism; and their great point in view was the con- the dangerous temptation of doing Evil that Good temptible reward of human glory; foundations may come. 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, Su rewards and punishments are woven, as it were, in 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." Because it may easily happen, and in effect will happen very frequently, that our own private happiness may be promoted by an act injurious to others, when yet no man can be obliged by nature to prefer ultimately the happiness of others to his own; therefore, to the instructions of infinite wisdom it was necessary that infinite power should add penal sanctions. That every man to whom those instructions shall be imparted may know, that he can never ultimately injure himself by benefiting others, or ultimately by injuring others benefit himself; but that however the lot of the good and bad may be huddled together in the seeming confusion of our present state, the time shall undoubtedly come, when the most virtuous will be most happy. I am sorry that the remaining part of this Letter is not equal to the first. The author has indeed engaged in a disquisition in which we need not wonder if he fails, in the solution of questions on which philosophers have employed their abilities from the earliest times, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. He denies that man was created perfect, because the system requires subordination, and because the power of losing his perfection, of "rendering himself wicked and miserable, is the highest imperfection imaginable." Besides, the regular gradations of the scale of being required somewhere "such a creature as man with all his infirmities about him, and the total removal of those would be altering his nature, and when he became perfect he must cease to be man." I have already spent some considerations on the scale of being, of which yet I am obliged to renew the mention whenever a new argument is made to rest upon it; and I must therefore again remark, that consequences cannot have greater certainty than the postulate from which they are drawn, and that no system can be more hypothetical than this, and perhaps no hypothesis more absurd. He again deceives himself with respect to the perfection with which man is held to be originally vested. "That man came perfect, that is, endued with all possible perfection, out of the hands of his Creator, is a false notion, derived from the philosophers.-The universal system required subordination, and consequently comparative imperfection." That man was ever endued with all possible perfection, that is, with all perfection of which the idea is not contradictory, or destructive of itself, is undoubtedly false. But it can hardly be called a false notion, because no man ever thought it, nor can it be derived from the philosophers; for without pretending to guess what philosophers he may mean, it is very safe to affirm, that no philosopher ever said it. Of those who now maintain that man was once perfect, who may very easily be found, let the author inquire whether man was ever omniscient, whether he was ever omnipotent, whether he ever had even the lower power of arch-angels or angels. Their answers will soon inform him, that the supposed perfection of man was not ab solute but respective, that he was perfect in a sense consistent enough with subordination, perfect, not as compared with different beings but with himself in his present degeneracy; not perfect as an angel, but perfect as man. From this perfection, whatever it was, he thinks it necessary that man should be debarred, because pain is necessary to the good of the universe; and the pain of one order of beings extending its salutary influence to innumerable orders above and below, it was necessary that man should suffer; but because it is not suitable to justice that pain should be inflicted on innocence, it was necessary that man should be criminal. This is given as a satisfactory account of the Original of moral Evil, which amounts only to this, that God created beings, whose guilt he foreknew, in order that he might have proper objects of pain, because the pain of part is, no man knows how or why, necessary to the fellcity of the whole. The perfection which man once had, may be so easily conceived, that without any unusual strain of imagination we can figure its revival. All the duties to God or man that are neglected, we may fancy performed; all the crimes that are committed, we may conceive forborne. Man will then be restored to his moral perfections: and into what head can it enter, that by this change the universal system would be shaken, or the condition of any order of beings altered for the worse? He comes in the fifth Letter to political, and in the sixth to religious Evils. Of political Evil, if we suppose the Origin of moral Evil discovered, the account is by no means difficult: polity being only the conduct of immoral men in public affairs. The Evils of each particular kind of government are very clearly and ele gantly displayed, and from their secondary causes very rationally deduced; but the first cause lies still in its ancient obscurity. There is in this Letter nothing new, nor any thing eminently instructive; one of his practical deductions, that "from government Evils cannot be eradicated, and their excess only can be prevented," has been always allowed; the question upon which all dissension arises is, when that excess begins, at what point men shall cease to bear, and attempt to remedy. Another of his precepts, though not new, well deserves to be transcribed, because it cannot be too frequently impressed. "What has here been said of their imperfections and abuses, is by no means intended as a defence of them; every wise man ought 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 removed until those are first amended. REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, He, therefore, who strictly adheres to virtue and | hand which cannot build a hovel, may demolish a sobriety in his conduct, and enforces them by temple,* 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." Of religion he has said nothing but what he has learned, or might have learned from the divines; that it is not universal, because it must be received upon conviction and successively received by those whom conviction reached; that its evidences and sanctions are not irresistible, because it was intended to induce, not to compel; and that it is obscure, because we want faculties to comprehend it. What he means by his assertion, that it wants policy, I do not well understand; he does not mean to deny that a good christian will be a good governor, or a good subject; and he has before justly observed, that the good man only is a patriot. Religion has been, he says, corrupted by the wickedness of those to whom it was communicated, and has lost part of its efficacy by its connection with temporal interest and human pas sion. He justly observes, that from all this, no conclusion can be drawn against the divine original of Christianity, since the objections arise not from the nature of the revelation, but of him to whom it is communicated. All this is known, and all this is true; but why, we have not yet discovered. Our author, if I understand him right, pursues the argument thus: the religion of man produces evils, because the morality of man is imperfect; his morality is imperfect, that he may be justly a subject of punishment; he is made subject to punishment because the pain of part is necessary to the happiness of the whole; pain is necessary to happiness, no mortal can tell why or how. Thus, after having clambered with great labour from one step of argumentation to another, instead of rising into the light of knowledge, we are devolved back into dark ignorance; and all our effort ends in belief, that for the Evils of life there is some good reason, and in confession, that the reason cannot be found. This is all that has been produced by the revival of Chrysippus's untractableness of matter, and the Arabian scale of existence. A system has been raised, which is so ready to fall to pieces of itself, that no great praise can be derived from its destruction. To object is always easy, and it has been well obscrved by a late writer, that the For improving of Natural Knowledge, from its first Rise. In which the most considerable Papers communicated to the Society, which have hitherto not been published, are inserted in their proper Order, as a supplement to the Philosophical Transactions. By THOMAS Birch, D.D. Secretary to the Society. 2 vols. 4to. THIS book might more properly have been entitled by the author a diary than a history, as it proceeds regularly from day to day so minutely as to number over the members present at each committee, and so slowly, that two large volumes contain only the transactions of the eleven first years from the institution of the Society. I am yet far from intending to represent this work as useless. Many particularities are of imrortance to one man, though they appear trifling to another, and it is always more safe to admit copiousness than to affect brevity. Many informations will be afforded by this book to the biographer. I know not where else it can be found, but here and in Ward, that Cowley was doctor in physic. And whenever any other institution of the same kind shall be attempted, the exact relation of the progress of the Royal Society may furnish precedents. These volumes consist of an exact journal of the Society; of some papers delivered to them, which though registered and preserved, had been never printed; and of short memoirs of the more eminent members, inserted at the end of the year in which each died. The original of the society is placed earlier in this history than in that of Dr. Sprat. Theodore Haak, a German of the Palatinate, in 1645, proposed to some inquisitive and learned men a weekly meeting for the cultivation of natural knowledge. The first Associates, whose names ought surely to be preserved, were Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Wallis, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Ent, Dr. Glisson, Dr. Merret, Mr. Foster of Gresham, and Mr. Haak. Sometime afterwards Wilkins, Wallis, and Goddard being removed to Oxford carried on the same design there by stated meetings, and adopted into their society Dr. Ward, Dr. Bathurst, Dr. Petty, and Dr. Willis. The Oxford Society coming to London in 1659, joined their friends, and augmented their number, and for some time met in GreshamCollege. After the restoration their number New Practice of Physic. was again increased, and on the 28th of November, 1660, a select party happening to retire for conversation to Mr. Rooke's apartment in Gresham-College, formed the first plan of a regular society. Here Dr. Sprat's history begins, and therefore from this period the proceedings are well known.* REVIEW OF THE GENERAL HIS- IN FIVE BOOKS, TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK, contribution of many hands, and printed by the encouragement of a numerous subscription, both which favours seem to be deserved by the modesty and piety of her on whom they were bestowed. The authors of the essays in prose seem generally to have imitated, or tried to imitate, the copiousness and luxuriance of Mrs. Rowe; this however is not all their praise: they have laboured to add to her brightness of imagery her purity of sentiments. The poets have had Dr. Watts before their eyes, a writer who, if he stood not in the first class of genius, compensated that defect by a ready application of his powers to the promotion of piety. The attempt to employ the ornaments of romance in the decoration of religion was, I think, first made by Mr. Boyle's Martyrdom of Theodora, but Boyle's philosophical studies did not allow him THIS appears to be one of the books which will long do honour to the present age. It has been by some remarker observed, that no man ever grew immortal by a translation: and undoubt-time for the cultivation of style, and the com. edly translations into the prose of a living language must be laid aside whenever the language changes, because the matter being always to be found in the original, contributes nothing to the preservation of the form superinduced by the translator. But such versions may last long, though they can scarcely last always; and there is reason to believe that this will grow in reputation while the English tongue continues in its present state. The great difficulty of a translator is to preserve the native form of his language, and the unconstrained manner of an original writer. This Mr. Hampton seems to have attained in a degree of which there are few examples. His book has the dignity of antiquity, and the easy| flow of a modern composition. It were, perhaps, to be desired that he had illustrated with notes an author which must have many difficulties to an English reader, and particularly that he had explained the ancient art of war; but these omissions may be easily supplied pletion of the great design was reserved for Mrs. Rowe. Dr. Watts was one of the first who taught the dissenters to write and speak like other men, by showing them that elegance might consist with piety. They would have both done honour to a better society, for they had that charity, which might well make their failings forgotten, and with which the whole Christian world might wish for communion. They were pure from all the heresies of an age, to which every opinion is become a favourite that the universal church has hitherto detested. This praise the general interest of mankind requires to be given to writers who please and do not corrupt, who instruct and do not weary. But to them all human eulogies are vain, whom I believe applauded by angels, and numbered with the just.* by an inferior hand, from the antiquaries and ACCOUNT OF A BOOK entitled, commentators. To note omissions where there is so much performed, would be invidious, and to commend is unnecessary where the excellence of the work may be more easily and effectually shown by exhibiting a specimen.* REVIEW OF MISCELLANIES ON IN PROSE AND VERSE, BY ELIZABETH HARRISON. THIS volume, though only one name appears upon the first page, has been produced by the From the Literary Magazine, 1756. AN HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL With an Examination of the Rev. Dr. ROBERTSON's Dis- We live in an age in which there is much talk of independence, of private judgment, of liberty of thought, and liberty of press. Our clamorous The third contains an examination of the arpraises of liberty sufficiently prove that we en-guments of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume, in Joy it; and if by liberty nothing else be meant, support of the authenticity of the letters. than security from the persecutions of power, it is so fully possessed by us, that little more is to be desired, except that one should talk of it less, and use it better. The fourth contains an examination of the confession of Nicholas Hubert, commonly called French Paris, with observations showing the same to be a forgery. The fifth contains a short recapitulation or summary of the arguments on both sides of the question. And, The author apologises for the length of this book, by observing, that it necessarily comprises But a social being can scarcely rise to complete independence; he that has any wants, which others can supply, must study the gratification of them whose assistance he expects; The last is an historical collection of the direct this is equally true, whether his wants be wants or positive evidence still on record, tending to of nature or of vanity. The writers of the pre-show what part the earls of Murray and Morton, sent time are not always candidates for prefer-and secretary Lethington, had in the murder of ment, nor often the hirelings of a patron. They the lord Darnley. profess to serve no interest, and speak with loud contempt of sycophants and slaves. There is, however, a power, from whose in-a great number of particulars, which could not fluence neither they nor their predecessors have ever been free. Those who have set greatness at defiance, have yet been the slaves of fashion. When an opinion has once become popular, very few are willing to oppose it. Idleness is more willing to credit than inquire; cowardice is afraid of controversy, and vanity of answer; and he that writes merely for sale, is tempted to court purchasers by flattering the prejudices of the public. easily be contracted: the same plea may be made for the imperfection of our extract, which will naturally fall below the force of the book, because we can only select parts of that evidence, which owes its strength to its concatenation, and which will be weakened whenever it is disjoined. The account of the seizure of these controverted letters is thus given by the queen's enemies : "That in the castell of Edinburgh thair was left be the Erle of Bothwell, before his fleeing away, and was send for be ane George Dalgleish, his servand, who was taken be the Erle of Mortoun, ane small gylt coffer, not fully ane fute letter F. under ane king's crowne: wharin were certane letteris and writings weel knawin, and be aithis to be affirmit to have been written with the Quene of Scottis awn hand to the Erle." It has now been fashionable for near half a century, to defame and vilify the house of Stuart, and to exalt and magnify the reign of Elizabeth. The Stuarts have found few apologists, for the dead cannot pay for praise; and who will, with-lang, garnisht in sindrie places with the Roman out reward, oppose the tide of popularity? Yet there remains still among us, not wholly extinguished, a zeal for truth, a desire of establishing right, in opposition to fashion. The author, whose work is now before us, has attempted a vindication of Mary of Scotland, whose name has for some years been generally resigned to infamy, and who has been considered as the murderer of her husband, and condemned by her own letters. Of these letters, the author of this vindication confesses the importance to be such, that if they be genuine, the queen was guilty; and if they be spurious, she was innocent. He has, therefore, undertaken to prove them spurious, and divided his treatise into six parts. In the first is contained the history of the letters, from their discovery by the earl of Morton, their being produced against queen Mary, and their several appearances in England before Queen Elizabeth and her commissioners, until they were finally delivered back again to the earl of Morton. The second contains a short abstract of Mr. | Goodall's arguments for proving the letters to be spurious and forged; and of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume's objections by way of answer to Mr. Goodall, with critical observations on these authors. The papers in the box were said to be eight letters in French, some love sonnets in French also, and a promise of marriage by the Queen to Bothwell. To the reality of these letters our author makes some considerable objections, from the nature of things; but as such arguments do not always convince, we will pass to the evidence of facts. On June 15th, 1567, the queen delivered herself to Morton, and his party, who imprisoned her. June 20th, 1567, Dalgleish was seized, and six days after was examined by Morton; his examination is still extant, and there is no mention of this fatal box. December 4th, 1567, Murray's secret council published an act, in which is the first mention of these letters, and in which they are said to be written and subscrivit with her awin hand. Ten days after Murray's first parliament met, and passed an act, in which they mention previe letters written halelie [wholly] with her awin hand. The difference between written and subscribed, and wholly written, gives the author just reason |