plying imperfection, all imperfection evil, and "and all evil some kind of inconveniency or suf fering so that there must be particular incon❝veniencies and sufferings annexed to every parti"cular rank of created beings by the circum"stances of things, and their modes of existence. "God indeed might have made us quite other "creatures, and placed us in a world quite differently constituted; but then we had been no longer men, and whatever beings had occupied "our stations in the universal system, they must "have been liable to the same inconveniences." 66 In all this there is nothing that can silence the inquiries of curiosity, or calm the perturbations of doubt. Whether subordination implies imperfection may be disputed. The means respecting themselves may be as perfect as the end. The weed as a weed is no less perfect than the oak as an oak. That imperfection implies evil, and evil suffering, is by no means evident. Imperfection may imply privative evil, or the absence of some good, but this privation produces no suffering, but by the help of knowledge. An infant at the breast is yet an imperfect man, but there is no reason for belief that he is unhappy by his immaturity, unless some positive pain be superadded. When this author presumes to speak of the universe, I would advise him a little to distrust his own faculties, however large and comprehensive. Many words easily understood on common occasion, become uncertain and figurative when applied to the works of Omnipotence. Subordination in human affairs is well understood; but when it is attributed to the universal system, its meaning grows less cer tain, like the petty distinctions of locality, which are of good use upon our own globe, but have no meaning with regard to infinite space, in which nothing is high or low. That if man, by exaltation to a higher nature, were exempted from the evils which he now suffers, some other being must suffer them; that if man were not man, some other being must be man, is a position arising from his established notion of the scale of being. A notion to which Pope has given some importance by adopting it, and of which I have therefore endeavoured to shew the uncertainty and inconsistency. This scale of being I have demonstrated to be raised by presumptuous imagination, to rest on nothing at the bottom, to lean on nothing at the top, and to have vacuities from step to step, through which any order of being may sink into nihility without any inconvenience, so far as we can judge, to the next rank above or below it. We are therefore little enlightened by a writer who tells us, that any being in the state of man must suffer what man suffers, when the only question that requires to be resolved is, Why any being is in this state? Of poverty and labour he gives just and elegant representations, which yet do not remove the difficulty of the first and fundamental question, though supposing the present state of man necessary, they may supply some motives to content. "Poverty is what all could not possibly have "been exempted from, not only by reason of the fluctuating nature of human possessions, but be"cause the world could not subsist without it; VOL. IX. 46 L for had all been rich, none could have submitted "to the commands of another, or the necessary "drudgeries of life; thence all governments must "have been dissolved, arts neglected, and lands « uncultivated, and so an universal penury have "overwhelmed all, instead of now and then pinch ing a few. Hence, by the by, appears the "great excellence of charity, by which men are "enabled by a particular distribution of the bless"ings and enjoyments of life, on proper occasions, "to prevent that poverty which by a general one "Omnipotence itself could never have prevented: "so that, by inforcing this duty, God as it were «demands our assistance to promote universal hap"piness, and to shut out misery at every door " where it strives to intrude itself. "Labour, indeed, God might easily have ex"cused us from, since at his command the earth "would readily have poured forth all her treasures "without our inconsiderable assistance: but if the "severest labour cannot sufficiently subdue the malignity of human nature, what plots and machinations, what wars, rapine, and devastation, "what profligacy and licentiousness, must have "been the consequences of universal idleness! so "that labour ought only to be looked upon as "a task kindly imposed upon us by our indulgent "Creator, necessary to preserve our health, our "safety, and our innocence." I am afraid that the latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning. If God could easily have excused us from labour, I do not comprehend why he could not possibly have exempted all from poverty. For poverty, in its easier and more tolerable degree, is little more than necessity of labour; and in its more severe and deplorable state, little more than inability for labour. To be poor is to work for others, or to want the succour of others without work. And the same exuberant fertility which would make work unnecessary, might make pover. ty impossible. Surely a man who seems not completely master of his own opinion, should have spoken more cautiously of Omnipotence, nor have presumed to say what it could perform, or what it could prevent. I am in doubt whether those who stand highest in the scale of being speak thus confidently of the dispensations of their Maker: For fools rush in, where angels fear to tread. Of our inquietudes of mind his account is still less reasonable. "Whilst men are injured, they must "be inflamed with anger; and whilst they see "cruelties, they must be melted with pity; whilst "they perceive danger, they must be sensible of "fear." This is to give a reason for all evil, by shewing that one evil produces another. If there is danger there ought to be fear; but if fear is an evil, why should there be danger? His vindication of pain is of the same kind : pain is useful to alarm us that we may shun greater evils, but those greater evils must be presupposed, that the fitness of pain may appear., Treating on death, he has expressed the known. and true doctrine with sprightliness of fancy, and neatness of diction. I shall therefore insert it. There are truths which, as they are always neces sary, do not grow stale by repetition. 66 Death, the last and most dreadful of all evils, "is so far from being one, that it is the infallible cure for all others. 66 To die, is landing on some silent shore, • Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar. GARTH. "For, abstracted from the sickness and sufferings usually attending it, it is no more than the ex"piration of that term of life God was pleased "to bestow on us, without any claim or merit on our part. But was it an evil ever so great, it "could not be remedied but by one much greater, "which is by living for ever; by which means our "wickedness, unrestrained by the prospect of a "future state, would grow so insupportable, our sufferings so intolerable by perseverance, and our pleasures so tiresome by repetition, that no "being in the universe could be so completely mi"serable as a species of immortal men. We have no reason, therefore, to look upon death as an " evil, or to fear it as a punishment, even without "any supposition of a future life: but if we con"sider it as a passage to a more perfect state, or a remove only in an eternal succession of stillimproving states, (for which we have the strongest "reasons) it will then appear a new favour from "the divine munificence; and a man must be as "absurd to repine at dying, as a traveller would "be, who proposed to himself a delightful tour 46 |