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latter are as adventitious as the other, and as little concern the effence of the foul. They are all laudable in the man who poffefses them only for the just application of them. A bright imagination, while it is subservient to an honest and noble foul, is a faculty which makes a man justly admired by mankind, and furnishes him with reflection upon his own actions, which add delicacies to the feast of a good confcience: But when wit defcends to wait upon fenfual pleasures, or promotes the base purposes of ambition, it is then to be contemned in pro portion to its excellence. If a man will not refolve to place the foundation of his happiness in his own mind, life is a bewildered and unhappy state, incapable of rest or tranquility. For to fuch a one the general applause of valour, wit, nay of honefty itself, can give but a very feeble comfort, fince it is capable of being interrupted by any one who wants either understanding or good-nature to fee or acknowledge fuch excellencies. This rule is so neceffary, that one may very fafely say, it is impossible to know any true relish of our being without it. about you in common life among the ordinary race of mankind, and you will find merit in every kind is allowed only to those who are in peculiar districts or fets of company: But fince men can have little pleafure in these faculties which denominate them perfons of distinction, let them give up such an empty purfuit, and think nothing eflential to happiness but what is in their power, the capacity of reflecting with pleafure on their own actions, however they are interpret

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It is fo evident a truth, that it is only in our own bofoms we are to fearch for any thing to make us happy, that it is, methinks, a disgrace to our nature to talk of the taking our measures from thence only as a matter of fortitude. When all is well there, the viciffitudes and distinctions of life are the mere scenes of a drama, and he will never act his part well who has his thoughts more fixed upon the applause of the audience than the defign of his part.

The life of a man who acts with a steady integrity, without valuing the interpretations of his actions, has but one uniform regular path to move in, where he cannot meet opposition, or fear ambuscade. On the other fide, the least deviation from the rules of hon-. our introduces a train of numberless evils, and involves him in inexplicable mazes. He who has entered into guilt has bid adieu to rest, and every criminal has his share of the misery expressed so emphati-cally in the tragedian

Macbeth ball sleep no more!

It was with deteftation of any other grandeur but the calm command of his own passion, that the excellent Mr. Cowley cries out with so much justice :

If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat,
With any thought so mean as to be great,
Continae, Heav'n, ftill from me to remove,
The humble blessings of that life I love.

TATLER, Vol. IV. No. 251.

FREE-THINKERS.

Tis indeed a melancholy reflection to confider, that the British nation which isnow at agreater height: of glory for its councils and conquests, than it ever was before, should diftinguish itself by a certain loofenefs of principles, and a falling off from those schemes of thinking, which conduce to the happiness and perfection of human nature. This evil comes upon us from the works of a few folemn blockheads, that meet together with the zeal and feriousness of Apoffles, to extirpate common fenfe, and propagate infidelity. These are wretches, who, without any show of wit, learning or reason, publish their crude conceptions with an ambition of appearing more wife than the rest of mankind, upon no other pretence than that of diffenting from them. One gets by heart a catalogue of title-pages and editions; and immediately to become confpicuous, declares that he is an unbeliever. Another knows how to write a receipt, VOL. II.

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or cut up a dog, and forthwith argues against the immortality of the foul. I have known many a little wit, in the oftentation of his parts, rally the truth of the scripture, who was not able to read a chapter in it. These poor wretches talk blafphemy for want of difcourse, and are rather the objects of scorn or pity, than of our indignation; but the grave difputant, who reads and writes, and spends all his time in convincing himself and the world, that he is no better than a brute, ought to be whipped out of a government, as a blot to civil fociety, and a defamer of mankind. I love to confider an infidel, whether diftinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, in three different lights, in his folitudes, his afflictions, and his last moments..

A wife man who lives up to the principles of reafon and virtue, if one confiders him in his folitude, as taking in the system of the universe, obferving the mutual dependence and harmony, by which the whole frame of it hangs together, bearing down his paflions, or Iwelling his thoughts with magnificent ideas of Providence, makes a nobler figure in the eye of an intelligent being, than the greatest conqueror amid all the pomps and folemnities of a triumph. On the contrary, there is not a more ridiculous animal than an atheilt in his retirement. His mind is incapable of rapture or elevation: He can only confider himself as an infignificant figure in a land-fkip, and wandering up and down in a field or meadow, under the fame terms. as the meanest of animals about him, and as fubject. to as total a mortality as they, with this aggravation, that he is the only one amongst them who lies under: the apprehenfion of it.

In distresses, he must be of all creatures the most helpless and forlorn; he feels the whole preffure of a present calamity, without being relieved by the mem-ory of any thing that is paft, or the profpect of any thing that is to come. Annihilation is the greatest. bleffing that he proposes to himself; and an halter or a piftol the only refuge he can fly to. But if you would. behold one of those gloomy mifereants in his pooreft

figure, you must confider him under the terrors, or at the approach of death.

About thirty years ago I was on shipboard with one of these vermin, when there arose a brisk gale, which could frighten no body but himself. Upon the rolling of the ship, he fell upon his knees, and confefied to the chaplain, that he had been a vile atheist, and had denied the Supreme Being ever fince he came to his estate. The good man was astonished, and a report immediately run through the ship, that there was an atheist upon the upper deck. Several of the common feamen, who had never heard the word before, thought it had been fome strange fish; but they were more furprised when they saw it was a man, and heard out of his own mouth, that he never believed till that day that there was a God. As he lay in the agonies of confeffion, one of the honest tars whispered to the boatswain, that it would be a good deed to heave him overboard. But we were now within fight of port, when of a fudden the wind fell, and the penitent relapfed, begging all of us who were present, as we were gentlemen, not to say any thing of what had paffed.

He had not been ashore above two days, when one of the company began to rally him upon his devotion on shipboard, which the other denied in so high terms, that it produced the lie on both fides, and ended in a duel. The atheist was run through the body, and after fome lofs of blood became as good a chriftian as he was at sea, till he found that his wound was not mortal. He is at present one of the free-thinkers of the age, and now writing a pamphlet against several received opinions concerning the existence of fai

ries.

As I have taken upon me to censure the faults of the age and country in which I live, I should have thought myself inexcufable to have passed over this crying one, which is the subject of my present difcourse. I shall therefore from time to time give my countrymen particular cautions against this distemper of the mind, that is almost become fashionable, and by that means more likely to spread. I have fomewhere read or heard a very memorable sentence, that a man would be a most insupportable moniter, should he have the faults that are incident to his years, contitution, profeffion, family, religion, age, and country; and yet every man is in danger of them all. For this reason, as I am an old man, I take particular care to avoid being covetous, and telling long stories: As I'am choleric, I forbear not only swearing, but all interjections of fretting, as pugh! or pith! and the like. As I am a layman, I refolve not to conceive an aversion for a wife and good man, because his coat is of a different colour from mine. As I am defcended from the ancient family of the Bickerstaffs, I never call a man of merit an upstart. As a protestant, I do not fuffer my zeal fo far to transport me, as to name the pope and the devil together. As I am fallen into this degenerate age, I guard myself particularly against the folly I have been now speaking of. And as I am an Englishman, I am very cautious not to hate a stranger, or defpife a poor Palatine.

TATLER, Vol. II. No. 11.

Several letters which I have lately received, give me information, that fome well-difpofed perfons have taken offence at my ufing the word free-thinker as a term of reproach. To set therefore this matter in a clear light, I must declare, that no one can have a greater veneration than myself for the free-thinkers of antiquity, who acted the fame part in those times, as the great men of the reformation did in several nations of Europe, by exerting themselves against the idolatry and fuperftition of the times in which they lived. It was by this noble impulse that Socrates and his disciples, as well as all-the philofophers of note in Greece, and Cicero, Seneca, with all the learned men of Rome, endeavoured to enlighten their cotemporaries amid the darkness and ignorance in which the world was then funk and buried.

- The great points which these free-thinkers endeav oured to establish and inculcate into the minds of men, were the formation of the universe, the superin

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