After Bolingbroke's death, Mallet, to whom he had left all his manuscripts, published a complete edition of his works, in five volumes. A series of essays on religion and philosophy, first published in this collection, disclosed the noble author as an opponent of Christianity. Of lofty irregu lar views and character, vain, ambitious, and vindictive, yet eloquent and imaginative, we may admire, but can not love, Bolingbroke. The friendship of Pope was the brightest gem in his coronet; yet by one ungrateful and unfeeling act, he sullied its lustre, and

Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe.

The style of Bolingbroke is declamatory and impetuous; but the expres sion is often vivid and felicitous, with a power of moral painting that presents, with great distinctness, pictures to the eye of the mind. In the following letter to Swift, he thus finely moralizes:

My dear Dean,

We are both in the decline of life, and have been some years going down the hill; let us make the passage as smooth as we can. Let us fence against physical evil by care, and the use of those means which experience must have pointed out to us; let us fence against moral evil by philosophy. We may, nay (if we will fol low nature, and do not work up imagination against her plainest dictates) we shall, of course, grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interests of a system out of which we are soon to go. This is much better than stupidity. The decay of passion strengthens philosophy, for passion may decay, and stupidity not succeed. Passions (says Pope, our divine, as you will see one time or other) are the gales of life; let us not complain that they do not blow a storm. What hurt does age do us in subduing what we toil to subdue all our lives? It is now six in the morning; I recall the time (and am glad it is over) when about this hour I used to be going to bed surfeited with pleasure, or jaded with business; my head often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rise at this hour refreshed, serene, and calm; that the past and even the present affairs of life stand like objects at a distance from me, where I can keep off the disagreeable, so as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer to me? Passions, in their force, would bring all these, nay, even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and reason would ill defend me in the scuffle.

A much loftier spirit of philosophy pervades the following eloquent sentence, on the independence of the mind with respect to external circumstances and situations :

Believe me the Providence of God has established such an order in the world, that of all which belongs to us, the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest, lies most out of the reach of human power, can neither be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work of nature— the world. Such is the mind of man, which contemplates and admires the world, where it makes the noblest part. These are inseparably ours; and as long as we remain in one, we shall enjoy the other. Let us march, therefore, intrepidly, wherever we are led by the course of human accidents. Wherever they lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them, we shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers. We

shall meet with men and women, creatures of the same figure, endowed with tie same faculties, and born under the same laws of nature. We shall see the same virtues and vices flowing from the same general principles, but varied in a thousand different and contrary modes, according to that infinite variety of laws and customs which is established for the same universal end-the preservation of society. We shall feel the same revolutions of seasons; and the same sun and moon will guide the course of our year. The same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will be everywhere spread over our heads. There is no part of the world from whence we may not admire those planets, which roll, like ours, in different orbits round the same central sun; from whence we may not discover an object still more stupendous, that army of fixed stars hung up in the immense space of the universe, innumerable suns, whose beams enlighten and cherish the unknown worlds which roll around them; and whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst my soul is thus raised up to heaven, it imports me little what ground I tread upon.

SAMUEL CLARKE, one of the most distinguished divines, scholars, and metaphysicians of any age or country, was born at Norwich, on the eleventh of October, 1675. His mind was so remarkably premature that his powers of reflection and abstraction were developed when he was yet a mere boy. 'One of his parents,' says Whiston, his biographer, 'asked him, when he was very young, Whether God could do every thing? He answered Yes! He was asked again, Whether God could tell a lie? He answered No! And he understood the question to suppose that this was the only thing that God could not do; nor durst he say, so young was he then, that he thought there was any thing else which God could not do; while yet he well remembered, that he had even then a clear conviction in his own mind, that, there was one thing which God could not do-that he could not annihilate that space which was in the room where they were.' This opinion concerning the necessary existence of space became, thenceforth, a leading feature in the mind of the future philosopher.

After thorough preparation in classical learning at the free-school of his native town, Clarke entered Caius College, Cambridge, where his wonderful genius and great abilities soon began to display themselves. He devoted his especial attention to natural philosophy, and pursued that subject with such success, that in his twenty-second year he published an excellent translation of Rohault's Physics, with notes, in which he advocated the Newtonian system, although that of Descartes was taught by Rohault, whose work was, at that time, the text-book in the university. The work immediately became the standard text for lectures, and four editions of Clarke's translation were required before it ceased to be used in the university; but a length it was superseded by treatises in which the Newtonian philosophy was avowedly adopted.

Having taken orders, Clarke found a friend and patron in Dr. Moore, bishop of Norwich, who appointed him, in 1698, his chaplain. In the early part of his ministerial career he published three practical essays, one on Baptism, one on Confirmation, and one on Repentance; and also wrote pharaphrases of the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The

bishop now bestowed upon him a living at Norwich; and his reputation was so high that, in 1704, he was appointed to preach the Boyle lecture. He selected as the subject of his first course of lectures, the Being and Attributes of God; and the second year he chose the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. The lectures were soon afterwards published, and immediately attracted notice and controversy, from their containing the author's celebrated argument a priori for the existence of God, the germ of which is comprised in a Scholium annexed to Newton's 'Principia.' According to Sir Isaac Newton and his scholar, as immensity and eternity are not substances, but attributes, the immense and eternal Being, whose attributes they are, must also, of necessity, exist. The existence of God, therefore, is a truth that follows with demonstrative evidence from those conceptions of space and time which are inseparable from the human mind. Dugald Stewart, though considering that Clarke, in pursuing this lofty argument, soared into regions where he was lost in the clouds, admits the grandness of the conception, and its connection with the principles of natural religion.

The next subject that engaged the attention of Clarke, was a Defence of the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul. He also translated Newton's Optics into Latin, for which he received, from the author, five hundred pounds. In 1709, he obtained the rectory of St. James, Westminster, took the degree of doctor of divinity, and was made chaplain in ordinary to the Queen. In 1712, he edited a splendid edition of Cæsar's Commentaries, with corrections and emendations, and also gave to the world an elaborate treatise on the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity. In 1724, he published a series of seventeen sermons; many of which are excellent, while others are tinctured with his metaphysical predilections. In 1729, Clarke published the first twelve books of the 'Illiad,' with a Latin version and copious annotations; and Homer has, perhaps, never had a more judicious or acute commentator. The last literary efforts of this indefatigable scholar were devoted to drawing up an Exposition of the Church Catechism, and preparing several volumes of sermons for the press. These were not published till after his death, which occurred on the seventeenth of May, 1729.

The various talents and learning of Dr. Clarke, and his easy, cheerful disposition, attracted the highest admiration and esteem of his contemporaries. As a metaphysician, he was inferior to Locke in comprehensiveness and originality, but possessed more skill and logical foresight; and he is justly celebrated for the boldness and ability with which he placed himself in the breach against the Necessitarians and Fatalists of his age. His speculations on moral doctrines are over-refined, being colored by his fondness for mathematical studies, in forgetfulness that mental philosophy can not, like physical, be demonstrated by axioms and definitions in the manner o. the exact sciences. His style, of which we give the following specimen, is easy and perspicuous, but not remarkable for its elegance :— VOL. II.-S

NATURAL AND ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE OF RIGHT AND WRONG.

The principal thing that can, with any colour of reason, seem to countenance the opinion of those who deny the natural and eternal difference of good and evil, is the difficulty there may sometimes be to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong; the variety of opinions that have obtained even among understanding and learned men, concerning certain questions of just and unjust, especially in political matters; and the many contrary laws that have been made in divers ages and in different countries concerning these matters. But as, in painting, two very different colours, by diluting each other very slowly and gradually, may, from the highest intenseness in either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, and so run one into the other, that it shall not be possible even for a skillful eye to determine exactly where the one ends and the other begins; and yet the colours may really differ as much as can be, not in degrees only, but entirely in kind, as red and blue, or white and black; so, though it may perhaps be very difficult in some nice and perplexed cases (which yet are very far from occurring frequently) to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong, just and unjust (and there may be some latitude in the judgment of different men, and the laws of divers nations), yet right and wrong are nevertheless in themselves totally and essentially different; even altogether as much as white and black, light and darkness. The Spartan law, perhaps, which permitted their youth to steal, may, as absurd as it was, bear much dispute whether it was absolutely unjust or no; because every man, having an absolute right in his own goods, it may seem that the members of any society may agree to transfer or alter their own properties upon what conditions thay shall think fit. But if it could be supposed that a law had been made at Sparta, or at Rome, or in India, or in any other part of the world, whereby it had been commanded or allowed that every man might rob by violence, and murder whomsoever he met with, or that no faith should be kept with any man, nor any equitable compacts performed, no man, with any tolerable use of his reason, whatever diversity of judgment might be among them, in other matters, would have thought that such a law could have authorized or excused, much less have justified such actions, and have made them become good: because 'tis plainly not in men's power to make falschood be truth, though they may alter the property of their goods as they please. Now if, in flagrant cases, the natural and essential difference between good and evil, right and wrong, can not but be confessed to be plainly and undeniably evident, the difference between them must be also essential and unalterable in all, even the smallest, and nicest, and most intricate cases, though it be not so easy to be discerned and accurately distinguished. For if, from the difficulty of determining exactly the bounds of right and wrong in many perplexed cases, it could truly be concluded that just and unjust were not essentially different by nature, but only by positive constitution and custom, it would follow equally, that they were not really, essentially, and unalterably different, even in the most flagrant cases that can be supposed; which is an assertion so very absurd, that Mr. Hobbes himself could hardly vent it without blushing, and discovering plainly, by his shifting expressions, his secret self-condemnation. There are, therefore, certain necessary and eternal differences of things, and certain fitnesses or unfitnesses of the application of different things, or different relations one to another, not depending on any positive constitutions, but founded unchangeably in the nature and reason of things, and unavoidably arising from the differences of the things themselves.

BENJAMIN HOADLY, successively bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, was the son of the Rev. Samuel Hoadly, master of the public grammar-school of Norwich, and was born at Westerham, in Kent, on the fourteenth of November, 1676. He was educated at Catherine Hall,

Cambridge, and afterward became fellow of his college. Having taken orders, he was preferred, in 1704, to the rectory of St. Peter-le-Poor, London, and two years after attacked a sermon by Atterbury, and thus incurred the enmity of Swift and Pope. He defended the revolution of 1688, and attacked the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience with such vigor and perseverance, that, in 1709, the House of Commons recommended him to the favor of the queen. Her majesty did not, however, comply with their request; but her successor, George the First, elevated him to the see of Bangor. Shortly after his elevation, Hoadly published a work against the nonjurors, and a sermon preached before the king at St. James's, on the Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ. The latter excited a long and vehement dispute, known as the Bangorian Controversy, in which many tracts were published. The Lower House of Convocation took up Hoadly's works with warmth, and passed a censure upon them, as calculated to subvert the government and discipline of the church, and to impugn and impeach the royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical. The controversy was conducted with unbecoming violence, and several bishops and other grave divines forgot the dignity of their station, and the spirit of Christian charity, in the heat of party warfare.

This controversy seems the more singular, as there was nothing whatever in Bishop Hoadly's sermon injurious to the established endowments and privileges, nor to the discipline and government of the English church, even in theory. This controversy embraced also the question of religious liberty as a civil right, which the convocation explicitly denied; and the much debated idea of the right to the exercise of private judgment in religious matters. The style of Hoadly's controversial treatises is strong and logical, but without any of the graces of composition; and hence they have fallen intc comparative oblivion. There can be no doubt, however, that the independent and liberal position that he maintained, aided by his station in the church, tended materially to stem the torrent of slavish submission which at that time, prevailed in the church of England.

Besides the writings already alluded to, bishop Hoadly produced several other works, as Terms of Acceptance, Reasonableness of Conformity, Treatise on the Sacrament, and numerous sermons. He lived to the advanced age of eighty-five, and died on the seventeenth of April, 1761. Of his sermons the following extract is a fair specimen :—

THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST NOT OF THIS WORLD.

If, therefore, the church of Christ be the kingdom of Christ, it is essential to it that Christ himself be the sole lawgiver and sole judge of his subjects, in all points relating to the favour or displeasure of Almighty God; and that all his subjects, in what station soever they may be, are equally subjects to him; and that no one of them, any more than another, hath authority either to make new laws for Christ's subjects, or to impose a sense upon the old ones, which is the same thing; or to judge, censure, or punish the servants of another master, in matters relating purely to conscience or salvation. If any person hath any other notion, either through a