PREFACE. V 



impious, if poflible, according to my information, than any that 

 he publifhed during his life *. When an author of fo great repu- 

 tation among certain perfons, and whofe tenets, I am forry to fay, 

 have got a very faft hold of many, ignorant of antient learning, and 

 knowing nothing of philofophy but what they have learned from 

 fome late French and Englifh books — when fuch an author, 1 fay, that 

 has been fo much celebrated and praifed, both alive and dead, fhows 

 fo much zeal in the caufe of Atheifm, I (hould have been thought to 

 have betrayed the caufe of Theifm, if I had not taken particular 



notice 



* Since writing the above, I have feen two fpccimens of his pofthumous im- 

 piety ; at lead, they were put into my hands as virrittea by him, though I have 

 been told finee, that his friends deny them to be his ; which indeed I am 

 not furpriled at j but I am convinced that they belong to him, not only from 

 the matter, but the ftyle, which is dry, inanimate, and without the leaft co* 

 louring of claflical elegance. One of them is a treatife upon Suicide, which 

 was printed many years ago, but not then publifhed, for reafons that arc 

 pretty well known. The other is a Difcourfe on the mortality of the Sou!. 

 In both thefe, the author throws off the mafk of fcepticifm, and, in the firfl mentioned, 

 he dogmatically maintains, that ^ man is at liberty to go out of this world whenever 

 he thinks proper ; and, in the oiher^ with as little ceremony, and as pofitively, main- 

 tains, that the human foul is as mortal as the body that it inhabits : For proof 

 of which, his chief argument arifes from confounding fenfat.ons and ideas, the 

 fundamental prmciple, as I have obferved, of his whole philofophy ; for he there af- 

 ferts, that the mind operates only by the organs of the body, that is, the fenfts, and 

 that it cannot aO; but in conjunction with the body : And, indeed, were that true, 

 it would be impofTible, as I have faid, (p. 200. and 227 ) that philofophy could fur- 

 nifi-i any convincing proof of the feparate exiftence of the foul. And, in general, I 

 obferve, that the foundation of all Atheifm is a total ignorance of the philofophy of 

 Mind, foa« to be unable to diftinguifli betwixt the operations of Mind in ccnjunc- 

 tion with body, and its operations by itfelf. There is a third work of his, not ytt 

 printed, at leafl that I know, but which has been feen in manufcript by feveral, ani 

 which, I have been told, is worfe, if polTible, than any of the other two, or than any 

 thing he publifhed during his life ; for there the being of a God is denied more ex. 

 plicitly than by Spinofa, or any Atheifl of modern times, except it be the author of thf 

 Syfleme de la Nature. 



