about power and preferment; and the diffenting epifcopals, perhaps difcontented to fuch a degree, as, upon fome fair unhappy occafion, would be able to fhake the firmeft loyalty, which none can deny theirs to be.

Neither is it very difficult to conjecture, from fome late proceedings, at what a rate this faction is like to drive, where-ever it gets the whip and the feat. They have already fet up courts of fpiritual judicature in open contempt of the laws: they fend miffionaries every-where, without being invited, in order to convert the church of England folks to chriftianity. They are as vigilant as I know who, to attend perfons on their death-beds, and for purposes much alike. And what practices fuch principles as thefe (with many other that might be invidious to mention) may spawn, when they are laid out to the fun, you may determine at leifure.

Laftly, Whether we are fo intirely fare of their loyalty upon the prefent foot of government as you may imagine, their detractors make a question, which however does, I think, by no means affect the body of diffenters: but the inftance produced is of fome among their leading teachers in the north, who, having refufed the abjuration oath, yet continue their preaching, and have abundance of followers. The particulars are out of my head; but the fact is notorious enough, and I believe hath been published; I think it a pity, it hath not been remedied.

Thus

Thus I have fairly given you, fir, my own opinion, as well as that of a great majority in both houses here, relating to this weighty affair; upon which I am confident you may fecurely reckon. I will leave you to make what ufe of it you please.

I am with great respect,

A

TRITICAL ESSAY

B

UPON THE

FACULTIES of the MIND.

SIR,

Το

EING fo great a lover of antiquities, it was reasonable to fuppofe, you would be very much obliged with any thing, that was new. I have been of late offended with many writers of effays and moral discourses for running into fale topics and threadbare quotations, and not handling their fubject fully and clofely: all which errors I have carefully avoided in the following effay, which I have proposed as a pattern for young writers to imitate. thoughts and objervations being intirely new, the quotations untouched by others, the subject of mighty importance, and treated with much order and perfpicuity, it hath coft me a great deal of time; and I defire you will accept and confider it as the utmost effort of my genius.

The

Hilofophers fay, that man is a microcofm,

or little world, refembling in miniature every part of the great: and, in my opinion, the body natural may be compared to the body politic: and, if this be fo, how can the

epicurean's opinion be true, that the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms; which I will no more believe, than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet could fall by chance into a most ingenious and learned treatife of philofophy. Rijum teneatis amici ? [Hor.] This falle opinion muft needs create many more; it is like an error in the first concoction, which cannot be corrected in the fecond; the foundation is weak, and whatever fuperftructure you raise upon it, must of neceffity fall to the ground. Thus men are led from one error to another, until with Ixion they embrace a cloud instead of Juno: or, like the dog in the fable, lofe the substance in gaping at the shadow. For fuch opinions cannot cohere; but, like the iron and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image, muft feparate and break in pieces. I have read in a certain author, that Alexander wept, because he had no more worlds to conquer; which he needed not have done, if the fortuitous concourse of atoms could create one: but this is an opinion fitter for that many-headed beaft the vulgar to entertain, than for fo wife a man as Epicurus; the corrupt part of his fect only borrowed his name, as the monkey did the cat's claw to draw the chefnut out of the fire.

However, the first step to the cure is to know the disease; and though truth may be difficult to find, becaufe, as the philofopher obferves, the lives in the bottom of a well, yet we need not, like blind men, grope in M 6

open

open day-light. I hope I may be allowed among fo many far more learned men to offer my mite, fince a ftander-by may fome. times perhaps fee more of the game, than he that plays it. But I do not think a philofopher obliged to account for every phænomenon in nature, or drown himself with Ariftotle, for not being able to folve the ebbing and. flowing of the tide, in that fatal fentence he paft upon himself, Quia te non capio tu capies me. Wherein he was at once the judge and the criminal, the accufer and executioner. Socrates on the other hand, who faid he knew nothing, was pronounced by the oracle to be the wifeft man in the world.

But, to return from this digreffion, I think it as clear as any demonftration in Euclid, that nature does nothing in vain; if we were able to dive into her fecret receffes, we fhould find that the fmalleft blade of grafs, or most contemptib'e weed, has its particular ufe: but The is chiefly admirable in her minuteft com. pofitions, the leaft and most contemptible infect moft difcovers the art of nature, if I may fo call it, though nature, which delights in variety, will always triumph over art: and, as the poet obferves,

T

Naturam expellas furca licet, ufque recurret.

HOR.

But the various opinions of philofophers have fcattered through the world as many plagues of the mind, as Pandora's box did hofe of the body, only with this difference,

that