Imatges de pàgina
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world, and that all our acquaintance were in the fecret, and concurred to favour the deception.

Now all the evidence of religious truths is of these kinds, being either general conclufions, by induction from a number of particular appearances, or founded on historical evidence.

If any perfon, like Lord Bolingbroke, call in queftion the good nefs of God, all that I can say to convince him of his mistake, is to fhew him that there are more marks of kind intention than of the contrary in the ftructure and government of the world; and, if he reply, that fome facts, fingly taken, are as evident marks of a malevolent intention, as others are of a good intention, and the particular inftances to which he alludes be fuch as I cannot deny or explain, fo that my proof is not complete, I frankly acknowledge that I have no other, or better. But this is sufficient to fatisfy me, and, I prefume, it will be abundantly fatisfactory to all who are candid and impartial; and with perfons who are otherwise difpofed, an appeal to their common fense will have no more effect.

In like manner, to prove the facts of the death and refurrection of Chrift, the early dates, and confequent authenticity of the gospel hiftories, or any other facts, from which the truth of what we call the gospel is inferred, it is fufficient, but it is necessary, to fhew that the credibility of these facts

has

has the fame foundation as that of those which constitute the body of all ancient history, and that the miraculous events have fuch additional evidence of an external and internal kind, as overbalances our backwardness to admit the truth of facts diffimilar to thofe in other hiftories, and those which have fallen within our own particular obfervation. And if any perfon will fay that this is not demonftration, I am filent; fatisfied with having alledged fuch evidence as the nature of the case admitted, and defpairing of producing conviction by any other means.

The thing that seems chiefly to have influenced the writers above-mentioned to defert the plain doctrine of Mr. Locke, concerning the fource of our ideas, is its infufficiency to demonftrate the reality of a material world; and, I readily acknowledge, it is infufficient for fuch a demonftration as fhall leave no room for cavil: because it may be faid that, it is poffible that the divine being may, by his own immediate agency, prefent every feparate train of ideas to every individual mind, without the medium of an external world. And if this appears to any perfon a more natural, and fimple hypothefis to account for our ideas, and therefore preferable to the fuppofition of a real external world; by means of which, and of a more general agency of the deity, the fame ideas may be prefented to thousands and millions of minds, I

leave him to his imagination, from which no evil, that I know, will refult.

Half the inhabitants of the globe, for inftance, may be looking towards the heavens at the fame time, and all their minds are impreffed in the fame manner: all fee the moon, ftars, and planets, in precifely the fame fituations; and even the observations of those who ufe telescopes, correfpond with the utmost exactness. To explain this, bishop Berkley fays, that the divine being, attending particularly to each individual mind, impreffes their fenforiums in the fame, or a correfponding manner, without the medium of any thing extérnal to them. On the other hand, I, without pretending that his fcheme is impoffible, where divine power is concerned, think, however, that it is more natural to suppose, that there really are such bodies as the moon, ftars, and planets, placed at certain distances from us, and moving in certain directions; by means of which, without fuch an agency of the deity as he fuppofes, all our minds are neceffarily impreffed in this correfponding

manner.

I am fatisfied that if fuch a representation as this (by which I exhibit to any person particular appearances as arifing from more general laws, which is agreeable to the analogy of every thing elfe that we obferve) does not please and convince him, it will fignify nothing to tell him, with Meffrs.

Meffrs. Reid, Beattie, and Ofwald, that the cafe is not to be argued at all, that he has fomething. within himself, called common fenfe, which tells him that there is an external world, and that, if he reflects a moment, he must know that all his objections are frivolous and abfurd.

'The hypothefis of there being no external world, is by no means fo fhocking to my understanding, or, to use the favourite phrase, my common sense, as the fuppofition that I am properly confcious of more than paffes within my own mind, or, as Dr. Reid expreffes it, that we really perceive things that are external to us, and do not judge of all things that are without ourfelves by notices perceived within, how mistaken foever we may be in our judgments concerning them.

It is not very easy to understand what it is, philofophically speaking, that Dr. Reid, Dr. Beattie, and Dr. Ofwald, always mean by their common sense; but how captivating foever their general description of it may be at the first hearing, they appear to me to be exceedingly vague and inconfiftent, upon a more attentive examination.

Sometimes one would imagine, that the human mind was fo effectually guarded with this internal defence, that no one of the human race could be in danger of falling into any error of confequence, and that even all revelation might have

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been spared. "The human mind," fays Dr. Ofwald, vol. i. p. 8, " has a power of pronoun"cing, at first fight on obvious truth, with a "quickness, clearness, and indubitable certainty, "fimilar, if not equal to the information con"veyed by the external organs of fenfe. Its ex"ercife begins in children with the first dawn "of rationality, and not till then; and is ever "after enjoyed, in fome degree, by learned and "unlearned, and by every individual of the hu(6 man kind, who is not an ideot, or fome how "difordered in his intellectuals, affording an "almost infallible direction in the whole con"duct of their lives; and was intended by the "author of our being for giving us intire fatis"faction concerning all primary truths, those of

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religion in particular; and our not having re"course to that power, is the true caufe of those

idle difputes which have been maintained of late "about the truth of religion. The feeling of "moral excellence," he fays, p. 120, " may be "loft, but, the cafe of madness excepted, a man "cannot lofe a perception of the difference between "obvious truth and palpable abfurdity."

At other times we are informed, that it is a moft difficult thing to attain to a right judgment on the principles of this fame common fenfe. "Good fenfe," Dr. Ofwald fays, vol. i. p. 16, "is a fpecies of knowledge, of difficult attain

ment.

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