r It is pro ideas that father had in his own mind. $4. The Doctor obferves, pag. 94. & feqq. That the reasons of Plato and others, for the immortality of the foul, were of fuch a nature, that they could never have ferved as fteps to lead them to the knowledge of that truth. But has our author never heard of conjectures having been framed upon very flight grounds, with respect to the existence and properties of things unknown, which time and further care have at last verified? Has not falfhood often been used by others, to conduct us to the knowledge of truth, and difpose us the better for its reception? And why may not we ourselves deduce a truth, as a confequence from a doctrine, which is either falfe, or if true, does not prove it? If very weak reafons will lead a perfon to believe an error he never before heard of, Why may they not be capable to perfuade him of a truth alfo? Is there fome unaccountable averfion in the human mind to truth, and propensity to error, that influences it to receive the latter on the moft trifling account, while nothing fhort of demonftration can prevail with it to embrace the former? As to the argument Plato draws in his Phado, p. 245. from the foul's felf-motion, and being always in motion, to prove its immortality, let me offer a conjecture, which feveral circumftances render not improbable. improbable. Plato, in the profecution of his ftudies, one day hears an Ionick philofopher reafoning for the foul's immortality, on the principles mentioned in the former paragraph. Plato forgets the argument of the Ionick fage, and only retains a confufed idea in his mind, that the medium from which it was drawn was motion. This fets him a-working, to hammer out an argument from that topick; and he falls upon that one cited by the Doctor, p. 96. which, however abftrufe, confufed, and mixed with error, contains in it plain veftiges of the reafoning juft now mentioned. The fame may be faid of another of Plato's arguments mentioned by the Doctor, p. 104. However, I cannot but obferve, that it does not look over-ingenuous, to cull out a few weak arguments to an author's difadvantage, who, every one knows, has reafoned admirably well, in other parts of his writings, on these very fubjects. § 5. The Doctor remarks, p. 102. that all thefe philofophers, who held the immortality of the foul, did likewife hold its pre-existence, and inferred the former from the latter. How far this is true, I fhall not pretend to judge, tho' I have good ground to think, that thofe of the lonick school, who held the foul's immortality, did it upon quite different principles; and the Doctor has given us no evidence of their believing the foul's pre-existence; but, however this be, the fcheme of the pre-existence of fouls was very univerfally believed. Though this might in part be occafioned from the tradition of all things being created in the fpace of fix days, which it feemed hard to reconcile with the fuppofing fouls every day creating; yet I am apt to think, that the the fitness of this fcheme to refolve feveral difficulties about the mifery of infants, &c. which, to the ancients feemed otherwife unanfwerable, was the circumftance that contributed moft to spread it; at leaft it is far from being fo wild a delufion, or extravagant a conceit, as the Doctor is pleased to reprefent it. § 6. The Doctor, p. 112. & feqq. makes fome reflections on the opinion Plato and others had of the tranfmigration of fouls. The truth of the cafe seems to be this: Thefe philofophers faw that the foul was immortal, and would be rewarded or punished in another life proportionably to its conduct here; but being deftitute of a revelation to inform them of the nature and duration of the rewards and punishments of another life, they fell on different schemes as their fancies directed them. Most of their fchemes were monftrous and inconfiftent, as being the offspring, not of a folid judgment, but of a roving imagination. That which Virgil reprefents, notwithftanding all its blemishes and defects, is one of the best and most diftinct. Mean time, the doctrine of the tranfmigration does not prove that reafon could not lead the Heathens to their notion of the foul's immortality, but only that they advanced things relating to that notion which reafon could not fupport; and we find fome, who maintained the foul's immortality, feemed, at the fame time, convinced of the whimficalness of thefe opinions, which the generality of its afferters embraced. And Xenophon fharply taxes Plato for having deferted Socrates, and embraced Pythagoras's monftrous doctrine of the tranfmigration. Xenoph. epift. ad finem, p. 1000. A proof, proof, that the genuine difciples of Socrates difbelieved the tranfmigration. 7. So much for the immortality of the foul. A few remarks will fuffice as to what the Doctor has advanced on the notions of the ancients about the divine existence. It has been already obferved, that the imagining the fun and ftars animate bodies, will be but a poor plea for idolatry, as it had no fuch tendency to excite it as the Doctor imagines. But what the Doctor alledges, § 6. “ That "none of the ancient philofophers, in their "fearches into the firft caufe and origin of 66 things, were led to discover the being and at"tributes of God; but that, on the contrary, "they accounted air, fire, &c. the first principles "of all things," will deserve some confideration. Three folutions may be given of this difficulty, which I fhall juft mention, leaving it to the reader to chufe which he likes beft. The First is that of Thomaffin, viz. That the first Ionick philofophers, fupposing a first efficient cause, as what had never been called in queftion, fpoke only of the second causes, which hitherto had been unknown, and but little fearched into; imagining, that had they introduced a God in accounting for every particular effect, the fearch of fecond caufes would be again laid afide, and men would content themselves with the knowledge of the firft caufe. But Bayle disapproves of this folution, and rather inclines to think, that the philofophers, defpifing the poets who were the most ancient heathen divines, as having maintained a variety of opinions without foundation in reafon, carried their prejudices against them to such a pitch, as often to oppose an opinion, for no other reason than that the poets defended it. He refers us, for confirmation of this, to Ariftotle's Metaphificks, lib. 3. cap. 4. p. 662. The laft folution is, That indeed thefe philofophers foolishly reckoned God a material being; nay, that fomet of them even proceeded fo far, as to determine that the deity was fuch or fuch a particular kind of matter: But though in this they erred, yet, as they acknowledged in general a firft caufe of all things, fo in particular they afcribed to it moft of the properties we do to the true God, except unity and fpirituality. But even in thefe points Thales might poffibly have been orthodox. Laertius informs us, p. 23. That he ftiled the world, The most beautiful of all things, because it was the work of God. And is not this plainly enough afcribing its formation to one fupreme caufe? As to the divine fpirituality, Velleius exprefly afferts, in Cicero's first book on the nature of the Gods, that he faid, God was the mind who had framed all things out of nature. But Dr. Campbell won't allow the paffage genuine, because immediately after Velleius afferts, that Anaxagoras was the first who afcribed to a mind the formation of the universe; and it is not to be fuppofed Cicero would make him contradict himfelf in the space of two or three lines. I fhall not obferve how dangerous it is to reckon a paffage fuppofititious, which muft have been in thefe copies of Cicero that Minucius Fælix and Lactantius ufed, but rather refolve the difficulty, by propofing an alteration of two letters in the paffage about Anaxagoras. Cicero's words are, Inde Anaxagoras, qui accepit ab Anaximine difciplinam, pri mus |