There are several topics used against atheism and idolatry; such as the visible marks of divine wisdom and goodness in the works of the creation, the vital union of souls with matter, and the admirable structure of animate bodies. BENTLEY.

The mechanical atheist, though you grant him his laws of mechanism, is inextricably puzzled and baffled with the first formation of animals. BENTLEY.

We may proceed yet further, with the atheist; and convince him that not only his principle is absurd, but his consequences also as absurdly deduced from it. BENTLEY.

Whatsoever atheists think on, or whatsoever they look on, all do administer some reasons for suspicion and diffidence, lest possibly they may be in the wrong; and then it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!

BENTLEY.

All creatures ignorant of their own natures, could not universally in the whole kind, and in every climate and country, without any difference in the whole world, tend to a certain end, if some overruling wisdom did not preside over the world and guide them: and if the creatures have a Conductor, they have a Creator; all things are "turned round about by his counsel, that they may do whatsoever he commands | them, upon the face of the world in the earth." So that in this respect the folly of atheism appears. Without the owning a God, no account can be given of those actions of creatures, that are an imitation of reason.

CHARNOCK: Attributes.

A secret atheism, or a partial atheism, is the spring of all the wicked practices in the world: the disorders of the life spring from the ill dispositions of the heart.

For the first, every atheist is a grand fool. If he were not a fool, he would not imagine a thing so contrary to the stream of the universal reason of the world, contrary to the rational dictates of his own soul, and contrary to the testimony of every creature, and link, in the chain of creation: if he were not a fool, he would not strip himself of humanity, and degrade himself lower than the most despicable brute. CHARNOCK: Attributes.

As when a man comes into a palace, built according to the exactest rule of art, and with an unexceptionable conveniency for the inhabitants, he would acknowledge both the being and skill of the builder; so whosoever shall observe the disposition of all the parts of the of seasons, the swarms of different creatures, world, their connection, comeliness, the variety and the mutual offices they render to one an

other, cannot conclude less, than it was contrived by an infinite skill, effected by infinite power, and governed by infinite wisdom. None can imagine a ship to be orderly conducted without a pilot; nor the parts of the world to perform their several functions without a wise guide; considering the members of the body cannot perform theirs, without the active presence of the soul. The atheist, then, is a fool to deny that which every creature in his constitution asserts, and thereby renders himself unable to give a satisfactory account of that constant uniformity in the motions of the creaCHARNOCK: Attributes.

tures.

History doth not reckon twenty professed atheists in all ages in the compass of the whole world: and we have not the name of any one absolute atheist upon record in Scripture: yet it is questioned, whether any of them, noted in history with that infamous name, were downright deniers of the existence of God, but rather because they disparaged the deities commonly worshipped by the nations where they lived, as being of a clearer reason to discern that those qualities, vulgarly attributed to their gods, as lust and luxury, wantonness and quarrels, were unworthy of the nature of a god.

CHARNOCK: Attributes.

Beyond all credulity is the credulousness of atheists, who believe that chance could make the world, when it cannot build a house.

DR. S. CLARKE.

A blind or deaf man has infinitely more reason to deny the being, or the possibility of the being, of light or sounds than an atheist can have to deny or doubt of the existence of God. DR. S. CLARKE.

An atheist, if you take his word for it, is a very despicable mortal. Let us describe him by his tenet, and copy him a little from his own original. He is, then, no better than a heap of organized dust, a stalking machine, a speaking head without a soul in it. His thoughts are bound by the laws of motion, his actions are all prescribed. He has no more liberty than the current of a stream or the blast of a tempest; and where there is no choice there can be no merit. JEREMY COLLIER,

Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good eating and ill living.

It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property. JEREMY COLLIer.

It is a fine observation of Plato in his Laws that atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of the understanding. FLEMING.

Atheists are confounded with Pantheists, such as Xenophanes among the ancients, or Spinoza and Schelling among the moderns, who, instead of denying God, absorb everything into him. FLEMING.

Those that would be genteelly learned need not purchase it at the dear rate of being atheists. GLANVILL.

Those the impiety of whose lives makes them regret a deity, and secretly wish there were none, will greedily listen to atheistical notions.

GLANVILL.

Settle it therefore in your minds, as a maxim never to be effaced or forgotten, that atheism is an inhuman, bloody, ferocious system, equally hostile to every useful restraint and to every virtuous affection; that leaving nothing above us to excite awe, nor round us to awaken tenderness, it wages war with heaven and with earth its first object is to dethrone God, its next to destroy man.

ROBERT HALL: Modern Infidelity.

The atheists taken notice of among the ancients are left branded upon the records of history. LOCKE.

Men are atheistical because they are first vicious; and question the truth of Christianity because they hate the practice.

SOUTH.

The system, then, of reasoning from our own conjectures as to the necessity of the Most High doing so and so, tends to lead a man to proceed from the rejection of his own form of Christianity to a rejection of revelation altogether. But does it stop here? Does not the same system lead naturally to Atheism also? Experience shows that that consequence, which reason might have anticipated, does often actually take place. WHATELY:

Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Atheism.

ATHENS.

Of remote countries and past times he [Johnson] talked with wild and ignorant presumption. "The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, " were a people of brutes, Adam Ferguson he used similar language. a barbarous people." In conversation with Sir

"The boasted Athenians," he said, "were barbarians. The mass of every people must be barbarous where there is no printing." The fact was this: he saw that a Londoner who could not read was a very stupid and brutal fellow; he saw that great refinement of taste and activity of intellect were rarely found in a Londoner who had not read much; and, because it was by means of books that people acquired almost all their knowledge in the society with which he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of human mind can be cultivated by means of the strongest and clearest evidence, that the books alone. An Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes; and the largest library to which he had access might be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every morning in conversation with Socrates, and might hear Pericles speak four or five times every month. phanes: he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristo

and the paintings of Zeuxis: he knew by heart the choruses of Eschylus: he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the street reciting the shield of Achilles or the death of Argus; he was a legislator, conversant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and war: he was a soldier, trained under a liberal and generous discipline: he was a judge, compelled every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. These things were in themselves an education; an education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, but to give quickness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression, and politeness to the manners. this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who made his mark; much such a person as black Frank before he went to school; and far inferior to a parish clerk or a printer's devil.

All

LORD MACAULAY: Croker's Edition of Boswell's Johnson, Sept. 1831.

fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the circula

tion of the blood, and that those views were suggested by Davy which laid the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies. SIR B. BROdie.

In the power of fixing the attention, the most precious of the intellectual habits, mankind differ greatly; but every man possesses some, and it will increase the more it is exerted. He who exercises no discipline over himself in this respect acquires such a volatility of mind, such a vagrancy of imagination, as dooms him to be the sport of every mental vanity: it is impossible such a man should attain to true wisdom. If we cultivate, on the contrary, a habit of attention, it will become natural; thought will strike its roots deep, and we shall, by degrees, experience no difficulty in following the track of the longest connected discourse.

ROBERT HALL: On Hearing the Word. To view attention as a special state of intelligence, and to distinguish it from consciousness, is utterly inept. SIR W. HAMILTON,

It is a way of calling a man a fool when no heed is given to what he says.

L'ESTRANGE.

AUTHORITY.

by the prejudice of education, or by a deference Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either to the judgment of those who, perhaps, in their own hearts, disapprove the opinions which they industriously spread among the multitude. ADDISON.

The practice of all ages and all countries hath been to do honour to those who are invested with public authority. ATTERBURY.

Three means to fortify belief are experience, reason, and authority: of these the more potent is authority; for belief upon reason, or experience, will stagger. LORD BACON,

With regard to authority, it is the greatest weakness to attribute infinite credit to particular authors, and to refuse his own judgment to Time, the author of all authors, and therefore of all authority. LORD BACON.

The vices of authority are chiefly four: delays, corruption, roughness, and facility. For delays give easy access; keep times appointed; go through with that which is in hand, and interlace not business but of necessity. For corruption doth not only bind thine own hands or thy servants from taking, but bind the hands of suitors also from offering: for integrity used doth the one; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation of bribery, doth the other; and avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion. Whosoever is found variable, and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion of corruption: therefore, always, when thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to change, and do not think to steal it. A servant or a favourite, if he be inward, and no other apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought but a by-way to close corruption. For roughness, it is a needless cause of discontent: severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate. Even reproofs from authority ought to be grave, and not taunting. As for facility, it is worse than bribery; for bribes come but now and then; but if importunity or idle respects lead a man, he shall never be without; as Solomon saith, "To respect persons it is not good, for such a man will transgress for a piece

of bread."

LORD BACON :

Essay XI., Of Great Place.

An argument from authority is but a weaker kind of proof; it being but a topical probation, and an inartificial argument, depending on naked asseveration. SIR T. BROWNE.

Reasons of things are rather to be taken by JEREMY COLLIER. weight than tale.

With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight or influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon

of common minds; who, standing, like Socrates, on the apex of wisdom, has removed from his eyes all film of earthly dross, and has foreseen a purer law, a nobler system, a brighter order of things; in short, a promised land! which, like Moses on the top of Pisgah, he is permitted to survey, and anticipate for others, without being himself allowed either to enter or to enjoy. COLTON: Lacon.

Mankind are apt to be strongly prejudiced in favour of whatever is countenanced by antiquity, enforced by authority, and recommended by custom. The pleasure of acquiescing in the decision of others is by most men so much preferred to the toil and hazard of inquiry, and so few are either able or disposed to examine for themselves, that the voice of law will generally be taken for the dictates of justice.

The constraint of receiving and holding opin ions by authority was rightly called imposition. LOCKE.

We cannot expect that any one should readily

quit his own opinion and embrace ours, with a blind resignation to an authority which the understanding acknowledges not. LOCKE.

It is conceit rather than understanding if it must be under the restraint of receiving and holding opinions by the authority of anything but their own perceived evidence. LOCKE.

If the opinions of others whom we think well of be a ground of assent, men have reason to be Heathens in Japan, Mahometans in Turkey, Papists in Spain, and Protestants in England.

LOCKE.

There is nothing sooner overthrows a weak head than opinion of authority; like too strong a liquor for a frail glass. SIR P. SIDNEY.

An evil mind in authority doth not follow the sway of the desires already within it, but frames to itself new diseases not before thought of. SIR P. SIDNEY.

Among the mutilated poets of antiquity there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho. They give us a taste of her way of writing, which is perfectly conformable with that extraordinary character we find of her in the remarks of those great critics who were conversant with her works when they were entire. One may see by what is left of them that she followed nature in all her thoughts, without descending to those little points, conceits, and turns of wit with which many of our modern lyrics are so miserably infected. Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry. She felt the passion in all its warmth, and described it in all its symptoms. She is called by ancient authors the tenth muse; and by Plutarch is compared to Cacus, the son of Vulcan, who breathed out nothing but flame. I do not know by the character that is given of her works, whether it is not for the benefit of mankind that they are lost. They are filled with such bewitching tenderness and rapture, them a reading. that it might have been dangerous to have given

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 223.

parably excelled all others. That noble extravaAmong the English, Shakspeare has incomgance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this weak superstitious part of his reader's imagination; and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius. There is something so wild, and yet so solemn, in the speeches of his ghosts, fairies, witches, and the like im

aginary persons, that we cannot forbear thinking them natural, though we have no rule by which to judge of them, and must confess, if there are such beings in the world, it looks highly probable they should talk and act as he has represented them.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 419.

It is a fine simile in one of Mr. Congreve's prologues which compares a writer to a buttering gamester that stakes all his winning upon one cast; so that if he loses the last throw he is sure to be undone. ADDISON.