Imatges de pàgina
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their sentence for breach of prison, to
which crime they, attached a penalty
of one hundred pounds, and of course
imprisonment till the fine was paid.
His Lordship not paying the fine was
conveyed to prison, and his friends had
a meeting to raise it by subscription.
To this no objection can be made.
The subscribers may gratify themselves
in thus releasing his Lordship from
confinement; but it is evident that the
laws must be obeyed, and after a trial
by jury and commitment on that trial,
there cannot be a doubt that breach of
prison is a crime. If in the imprison-
ment there has been any injury sus
tained by the person confined, he has
his redress by law: but in this case as
far as the crime and penalty are con-
nected together, it will be generally
thought that his Lordship can have no
reason to complain of the severity of

his last sentence.

The moral world has been shocked by a transaction rendered too notorious between two barristers. A violent altercation it seems took place between them, and one of the parties thought it requisite to demand satisfaction according to the false principles of honour, against which they ought to have been the first to set themselves in opposition. Some demur took place in accepting the challenge, and in the mean time, the parties were prevented from putting their murderous intentions into execution, by being bound over by a magistrate

to keep the peace. After a lapse of
time, the party challenged became the
challenger, and in a very scurrilous let-
ter appointed Calais for the place of
settling their differences within a time
limited. Thither the parties resorted,
and fired each his pistol at the other
nearly instantaneously, and one of
them only was wounded. They then
returned to England, and the account
of these disgusting proceedings was set
Whe-
forth in all the public papers..
ther the last challenger has received
what is vulgarly called satisfaction, we
do not know, for no explanation took
place on the ground. He has returned
unhurt, and all that has been gained by
their attempts at murder, has been the
proof, that each can stand to be shot at.
The annals of duelling do not present
an instance, in which such vulgar
abuse and scurrilous language have
been used. It remains to be seen
what part the bar will take on this
transaction; but surely it cannot be
countenanced by a profession to which
we look up for peculiar attention to the
laws of our country. On the folly and
wickedness of this mode of settling dif-
ferences, it is not necessary for us to
expatiate. The characters of the par-
ties cannot be raised in our estimation
by such a paltry expedient; and, if
either of them had died, we should not.
have acquitted the other of the guilt of
murder.

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Heresies Considered in Connexion with the Character of the Approved : A Sermon preached at the Opening of the Unitarian Chapel, in Thorne, on Friday June 28, 1816. By Nathaniel Philipps, D. D. To which is added an Appendix, stating the Rise and Progress of Unitarianism in the above Place. 8vo. 1s. 6d.

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ERRATUM.

XI. p. 565-572, for Mr. William Mathews, read Mr. William Matthews,

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Estimate of the Philosophical Character of the Antagonists of Hobbes. (From Dissertation I. by Dugald Stewart, prefixed to Supplement to Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol I. p. 65-71.] YUDWORTH

CUD

was one of the first who successfully combated this new philosophy. As Hobbes, in the frenzy of his political zeal, had been led to sacrifice wantonly all the principles of religion and morality to the establishment of his conclusions, his works not only gave offence to the friends of liberty, but excited a general alarm among all sound moralists. His doctrine, in particular, that there is no natural distinction between right and wrong, and that these are dependent on the arbitrary will of the civil magistrate, was so obviously subversive of all the commonly received ideas concerning the moral constitution of human nature, that it became indispensably necessary, either to expose the sophistry of the attempt, or to adinit, with Hobbes, that man is a beast of prey, incapable of being governed by any motives but fear, and the desire of self-preservation.

Between some of these tenets of the courtly Hobbists, and those inculcated by the Cromwellian Antinomians, there was a very extraordinary and unfortunate coincidence; the latter insisting, that, in expectation of Christ's second coming, "the obligations of morality and natural law were suspended; and that the elect, guided by an internal principle, more perfect and divine, were superior to the beggarly elements of justice and humanity." It was the object of Cudworth to vindicate, against the assaults of both parties, the immutability of moral distinctions.

Born 1617, died 1688.

+ Hume.For a more particular account of the English Antinomians, See Mosheim, Vol. IV. p. 534, et seq. VOL. XI. 4 U

In the prosecution of his very able argument on this subject, Cudworth displays a rich store of enlightened and choice erudition, penetrated throughout with a peculiar vein of sobered and subdued Platonism, from whence some German systems, which have attracted no small notice in our own times, will be found, when stripped of their deep neological disguise, to have borrowed their most valuable materials.‡

The mind (according to Cudworth) perceives, by occasion of outward objects, as much more than is represented to it by sense, as a learned man does in the best written book, than an illiterate person or brute. To the eyes of both, the same characters will appear; but the learned man, in those characters, will see heaven, earth, sun, and stars; read profound theorems of philosophy or geometry; learn a great deal of new knowledge from them, and admire the wisdom of the composer; while, to the other, nothing appears but black strokes drawn on white paper. The reason of which is, that the mind of the one is furnished with certain previous inward anticipations, ideas, and instruc tion, that the other wants."-" In the room of this book of human composition, let us now substitute the book of Nature, written all over with the characters and impressions of divine wisdom and goodness, but legible only to an intellectual eye. To the sense both of man and brute, there appears nothing else in it, but, as in the other, so many inky scrawls; that is, nothing but figures and colours. But the divine wisdom that made it, upon occa mind, which hath a participation of the sion of those sensible delineations, exerting its own inward activity, will have not only a wonderful scene, and large prospects of other thoughts laid open before its and variety of knowledge, logical, mathematical, and moral displayed; but also clearly read the divine wisdom and good... ness in every page of this great volume, as it were written in large and legible cha racters."

I do not pretend to be an adept in the

694 Estimate of the Philosophical Character of the Antagonists of Ilolles.

Another coincidence between the Hobbists and the Antinomians, may be remarked in their common zeal for the scheme of necessity; which both of them stated in such a way as to be equally inconsistent with the moral agency of man, and with the moral attributes of God. The strongest of all presumptions against this scheme is afforded by the other tenets with which it is almost universally combined; and accordingly, it was very shrewdly observed by Cudworth, that the licentious system which flourished in his time, (under which title, I presume, he comprehended the immoral tenets of the fanatics, as well as of the

philosophy of Kant; but I certainly think I pay it a very high compliment, when I suppose, that, in the Critic of pure Reason, the leading idea is somewhat analogous to what is so much better expressed in the foregoing passage. To Kant it was probably suggested by the following very acute and decisive remark of Leibnitz on

Locke's Essay: "Nempe, nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus."

Aristotle's words.

In justice to Aristotle, it may be here observed, that, although the general strain of his language is strictly conformable to the scholastic maxim just quoted, he does not seem to have altogether overlooked the important exception to it pointed out by Leibnitz. Indeed, this exception or limitation is very nearly a translation of Και αυτός δε νους νόητος εστιν, ώσπερ τα νοητα. επι μεν γαρ των ανευ ύλης, το αυτό Εστι то νοουν και TO VOOUμLEVOV. "And the mind itself is an object of knowledge, as well as other things which are intelligible. For, in immaterial beings, that which understands is the same with that which is understood." (Do Anima, Lib iii. cap. v.) I quote this very curious, and, I suspect, very little known sentence, in order to vindicata Aristotle against the misrepresentations of some of his present idolaters, who, in their anxiety to secure to him all the credit of Locke's doctrine concerning the Origin of our Ideas, have overlooked the occasional traces which occur in his works, of that higher and sounder philosophy in which he had been educated.

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"The doctrines of fate or destiny were deemed by the Independents essential to all religion. In these rigid opisions, the whole sectaries, amidst all their other differences, unanimously con curred." Hume's History, chap. Ivij.

Hobbists), "grew up from the doetrine of the fatal necessity of all actions and events, as from its proper root." The unsettled, and, at the same time, disputatious period during which Cudworth lived, afforded him peculiarly favourable opportunities of judging from experience, of the practical tendency of this metaphysical dogma; and the result of his observations deserves the serious attention of those who may be disposed to regard it in the light of a fair and harmless theme for the display of controversial subtilty. To argue, in this manner, against a speculative principle from its palpable effects, is not always so illogical as some authors have supposed. "You repeat to me incessantly," says Rousseau to one of his correspondents, “that truth can never be injurious to the world. I myself believe so as firmly as you do, and it is for this very reason I am satisfied that your proposition is false."+

But the principal importance of Cudworth, as an ethical writer, arises from the influence of his argument concerning the immutability of right and wrong on the various theories of morals which appeared in the course of the eighteenth century. To this argument may, more particularly, be traced the origin of the celebrated question, Whether the principle of moral approbation is to be ultimately resolved into reason, or into sentinished the thief ground of differenee ment?-a question, which has fur between the systems of Cudworth aud of Clarke, on the one hand; and those of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, ou the other.

The Intellectual System of Cudworth, embraces a field much wider than his treatise of Immutable Morality. The latter is particularly directed against the ethical doctrines of Hobbes, and of the Antinomians; but the former aspires to tear up by the roots all the principles, both physical and metaphysical, of the Epicurean philosophy. It is a work, certainly which reflects much honour on the talents of the author, and still more on the boundless extent of his learn

+ "Vous répétez sans cesse que la vérité ne peut jamais faire de mal aux hommes; je le crois, et c'est pour moi la preuve que ce que vous dites n'est pas la vérité."

Estimate of the Philosophical Character of the Antagonists of Holbes. 695

ng; but it is so ill suited to the taste of the present age, that, since the time of Mr. Harris and Dr. Price, I scarcely recollect the slightest reference to it in the writings of our British metaphysicians. Of its faults (beside the general disposition of the author to discuss questions placed altogether beyond the reach of our faculties), the most prominent is the wild hypothesis of a plastic nature; or, in other words, “of a vital and spiritual, but unintelligent and necessary agent, created by the Deity for the execution of his purposes." Notwithstanding, however, these, and many other abatements of its merits, the Intellectual System will for ever remain a precious mine of information to those whose curiosity may lead them to study the spirit of the ancient theories; and to it we may justly apply what Leibnitz has somewhere said, with far less reason, of the works of the schoolmen, "Scholasticos agnosco abundare ineptiis; sed aurum est in illo cœno.”*

Before dismissing the doctrines of Hobbes, it may be worth while to remark, that all his leading principles are traced by Cudworth to the remains of the ancient sceptics, by some of whom, as well as by Hobbes, they seem to have been adopted from a wish to flatter the uncontrolled passions of sovereigns. Not that I am disposed to call in question the originality of Hobbes; for it appears, from the testimony of all his friends, that he had much less pleasure in reading than in thinking. "If I had read," he was accustomed to say, " as much as some others, I should have been as ignorant as they are." But similar political circumstances invariably reproduce similar philosophical theories; and it is one of the numerous disadvantages attending an inventive mind, not properly furnished with acquired information, to be continnally liable to a waste of its powers on subjects previously exhausted.

The sudden tide of licentiousness, both in principles and in practice, which burst into this island at the moment of the Restoration, conspired

• The Intellectual System was published in 1678. The Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality did not appear till a considerable number of years after the author's death.

with the paradoxes of Hobbes, and with the no less dangerous errors recently propagated among the people by their religious instructors, to turn the thoughts of sober and speculative men towards ethical disquisitions. The established clergy assumed a higher tone than before in their sermons; sometimes employing them in combating that Epicurean and Machiavellian philosophy which was then fashionable at court, and which may be always suspected to form the secret creed of the enemies of civil and religious liberty;-on other occasions, to overwhelm, with the united force of argument and learning, the extravagancies by which the ignorant enthusiasts of the preceding period had exposed Christianity itself to the scoffs of their libertine opponents. Among the divines who appeared at this era, it is impossible to pass over in silence the name of BARROW, whose theological works (adorned throughout by classical erudition, and by a vigorous, though unpolished eloquence), exhibit, in every page, marks of the same inventive genius which, in mathematics, has secured to him a rank second alone to that of Newton. As a writer, he is equally distinguished by the redundancy of his matter, and by the pregnant brevity of his expression; but what more peculiarly characterizes his manner, is a certain air of powerful and of conscious facility in the execution of whatever he undertakes. Whether the subject, be mathematical, metaphysical, or theological, he seems always to bring to it a mind which feels itself superior to the occasion; and which, in contending with the greatest difficulties,

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puts forth but half its strength." He has somewhere spoken of his Lectiones Mathematica (which it may, in passing, be remarked, display metaphysical talents of the highest order), as extemporaneous effusions of his pen; and I have no doubt that the same epithet is still more literally applicable to his pulpit discourses. It is, indeed, only thus we can account for the variety and extent of his volu minous remains, when we recollect that the author died at the age of forty-six

In a note annexed to an English translation of the Cardinal Maury's Prin ciples of Eloquence, it is stated, upon the

696 Estimate of the Philosophical Character of the Antagonists of Hobbes.

To the extreme rapidity with which Barrow committed his thoughts to writing, I am inclined to ascribe the hasty and not altogether consistent opinions which he has hazarded on Some important topics. I shall confine myself to a single example, which I select in preference to others, as it bears directly on the most interesting of all questions connected with the theory of morals. "If we scan," says he, "the particular nature, and search into the original causes of the several kinds of naughty dispositions in our souls, and of miscarriages in our lives, we shall find inordinate self-love to be a main ingredient, and a common source of them all; so that a divine of great name had some reason to affirm, that original sin (or that innate distemper from which men generally become so very prone to evil, and averse to good), doth consist in selflove, disposing us to all kinds of irregularity and excess." In another pas sage, the same author expresses himself thus: "Reason dictateth and prescribeth to us, that we should have a sober regard to our true good and welfare; to our best interests and solid content; to that which (all things being rightly stated, considered and computed) will, in the final event, prove most beneficial and satisfactory to us: a self-love working in prosecution of such things, common sense cannot but allow and approve."

Of these two opposite and irreconcilable opinions, the latter is incomparably the least wide of the truth; and accordingly Mr. Locke, and his innumerable followers, both in England and on the Continent, have maintained, that virtue and an enlightened self-love are one and the same. I have quoted the two pas

authority of a manuscript of Dr. Doddridge, that most of Barrow's sermons were transcribed three times, and some much oftener. They seem to me to contain very strong intrinsic evidence of the incorrectness of this anecdote.-Mr. Abraham Hill, (in his Account of the Life of

Barrow, addressed to Dr. Tillotson), contents himself with saying, that "Some of his sermons were written four or five times over;"-mentioning, at the same time, a circumstance which may account for this fact, in perfect consistency with what I have stated above, that " Barrow was very ready to lend his sermons as often as desired."

sages here, merely to shew the very little attention that had been paid, at the era in question, to ethical science, by one of the most learned and profound divines of his age. This is the more remarkable, as his works every where inculcate the purest lessons of practical morality, and evince a singular acuteness and justness of eye in the observation of human character. Whoever compares the views of Barrow, when he touches on the theory of morals, with those opened about fifty years afterwards by Dr. Butler, in his Discourses on Human Nature, will be abundantly satisfied, that, in this science, as well as in others, the progress of the philosophical spirit during the intervening period was not inconsiderable.

The name of WILKINS, (although he too wrote with some reputation against the Epicureans of his day), is now remembered chiefly in conse quence of his treatises concerning a universal language and a real character. With all the ingenuity displayed in them, they cannot be considered as accessions of much value to science: and the long period since elapsed, during which no attempt has been made to turn them to any practical use, affords of itself no slight presumption against the solidity of the project.

A few years before the death of Hobbes, Dr. CUMBERLAND (afterwards Bishop of Peterborough) published a book; entitled, De Legibus Nature, Disquisitio Philosophica; the principal aim of which was to confirm and illustrate, in opposition to Hobbes, the conclusions of Grotius, concerning Natural Law. The work is executed with ability, and discovers juster views of the object of moral science, than any modern system that had yet appeared; the author resting the strength of his argument, not, as Grotius had done, on an accumulation of authorities, but on the principles of the human frame, and the mutual relations of the human race. The circumstance, however, which chiefly entitles this publication to our notice is, that it seems to have been the earliest on the subject which attracted, in any considerable degree, the attention of English scholars. From this time, the writings of Grotius and of Puffendorff began to be generally studied, and soon after made their way into the Universities In

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