94 MEMOIRS OF 



could have no vice which might juflly 

 render hirri amenable to punifliment in a 

 future ftate ; neither could he have any 

 virtue for wh'ofe cultivation he might 

 hope eternal reward. But^ fmce his ra- 

 tional faculty is choice, not impul/e, capable, 

 at wilt, of refinement or degradation ; 

 whether it mall be his pole-ftar to virtue 

 and piety, or his ignis-fafeuus to vice and 

 ir religion, it inevitably follows that man is 

 accountable to God for his conduct ; that 

 there is a future and retributory flate. 



If this brilliant and dazzling philofopher 

 had not clofed the lynx's eye of his under- 

 ftanding on that clear emanation from the 

 fburce of intellectual as well as of planetary 

 light, he had indeed been great and illu- 

 minated above the fons of men. Then 

 had he difdained to have mingled that art 

 in his wifdom, which was fometimes found 

 in his common-life actions, and of which 

 he not unfrequently boafted. 



that 



