OF MR. ABERNETHY. 11 



llireatening, In tlie noise and alarm which preceded their 

 discovery, as well as in their utter insignificancy and harm- 

 lessness when discovered, to eclipse even the green-bag 

 conspiracy of another place. The foundations of morality 

 undermined, and religion endangered by a little discussion, 

 and a little ridicule of the electro-chemical hypothesis of 

 life ! Thus the possessor of a specific endeavours to frighten 

 people by the most lively pictures of their danger, that they 

 may receive, with a higher opinion of its virtues and im- 

 portance, his pretended infallible remedy. 



I shall not insult your understandings by formally prov- 

 ing that this physiological doctrine never has afforded, and 

 never can afford, any su})port to religion or morals ; and 

 that the great truths, so important to mankind, rest on a 

 perfectly different and far more solid foundation. If they 

 could be endangered at all by the discussions with which 

 we amuse ourselves, it would be by unsettling them from 

 their natural and firm establishment in the natural feelings 

 and propensities, in the common sense, in the mutual wants 

 and relations of mankind, and erecting them anew on the 

 artificial and rotten foundation of these unsubstantial spe- 

 culations, or on the equally unsafe ground of abstruse me- 

 taphysical researches *. 



* The profound, the virtuous, and fervently pious Pascal acknowledged, 

 what all sound theologians maintain, that the immortality of the soul, the 

 great truths of religion, and the fundamental principles of morals, cannot he 

 demonstrably proved by mere reason ; and that revelation alone is capable of 

 dissipating the uncertainties which perplex those who inquire too curiously 

 into the sources of these important principles. All w ill acknowledge, that, 

 as no other remedy can be so perfect and satisfactory as this, no other can be 

 necessary, if we resort to this with firm faith. How many persons could be 

 found, whose belief in a Deity rests on the chain of reasoning in Clark's 

 Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God; or in Kant's Einzig 

 mogUchc Bevoeisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyn Gotles ? How many 

 arc there who have had perseverance enough to go through the chain of argu- 

 ment in these works? If the close and profound reasoning and the metaphy- 

 sical acuteness of Clark and Kant have been employed to little purpose on 

 such a subject, what are we to expect from this pretended Hunterian theory 

 of life? 



