I COME hither, O ye ATHENIANS, to juftify in your affembly what I maintained in my fchool, and find myself impeached by furious antagonists, inftead of reasoning with calm and difpaffionate inquirers. Your deliberations, which of right should be directed to questions of public good, and the intereft of the commonwealth, are diverted to the difquifitions of fpeculative philofophy; and thefe magnificent, but perhaps fruitless inquiries, take place of your more familiar but more ufeful occupations. But fo far as in me lies, I will prevent this abuse. We fhall not here dispute concerning the origin and government of worlds. We fhall only inquire how far fuch questions concern the public interest. And if I can perfuade you, that they are intirely indifferent to the peace of fociety and fecurity of government, I hope that you will presently send us back to our schools, there to examine at leisure the question the most sublime, but, at the fame time, the most speculative of all philofophy.

THE religious philofophers, not fatisfied with the traditions of your forefathers, and doctrines of your priests (in which I willingly acquiefce) indulge a rash. curiofity, in trying how far they can establish religion upon the principles of reafon; and they thereby excite, instead of fatisfying, the doubts, which naturally arife from a diligent and fcrutinous inquiry. They paint, in the most magnificent colours, the order,: beauty, and wife arrangement of the univerfe; and

then

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3

then afk, if fuch a glorious display of intelligence could proceed from the fortuitous concourfe of atoms, or if chance could produce what the higheft genius can never fufficiently admire, I fhall not examine the juftness of this argument. I fhall allow it to be as folid as my antagonists and accufers can defire. 'Tis fufficient, if I can prove, from this very reasoning, that the queftion is intirely fpeculative, and that when, in my philosophical disquisitions, I deny a providence and a future ftate, I undermine not the foundations of fociety, but advance principles, which they themselves, upon their own topics, if they argue confiftently, must allow to be folid and fatisfactory.

You then, who are my accufers, have acknowleged, that the chief fole argument for a divine existence (which I never queftioned) is derived from the order of nature; where there appear fuch marks of intelligence and defign, that you think it extravagant to affign for its cause, either chance, or the blind and unguided force of matter. You allow, that this is an argument drawn from effects to caufes. From the order of the work you infer, that there must have been project and forethought in the workman. If you cannot make out this point, you allow, that your conclufion fails; and you pretend not to establish the conclufion in a greater latitude than the phænomena of nature will justify. These are your conceffions. I defire you to mark the confequences.

WHEN

WHEN we infer any particular cause from an effect, we must proportion the one to the other, and can never be allowed to afcribe to the cause any qua. lities, but what are exactly fufficient to produce the effect. A body of ten ounces raised in any scale may ferve as a proof, that the counterbalancing weight ex.. ceeds ten ounces; but can never afford a reason that! it exceeds a hundred. If the caufe, affigned for any effect, be not fufficient to produce it, we muft either reject that cause, or add to it fuch qualities as will give it a juft proportion to the effect. But if we ascribe to it farther qualities, or affirm it capable of producing other effects, we can only indulge the licence of conjecture, and arbitrarily fuppofe the exiftence of qualities and energies, without reason or authority.

THE fame rule holds, whether the cause affigned be brute unconscious matter, or a rational intelligent being. If the cause be known only by the effect, we never ought to affign to it any qualities, beyond what are precifely requifite to produce the effect: Nor can we, by any rules of juft reafoning, return back from the caufe, and infer other effects from it, beyond those by which alone it is known to us. No one, merely from the fight of one of ZEUXIs's pictures, could know, that he was also a statuary or architect, and was an artist no lefs fkilful in ftone and marble than in colours. The talents and tafte difplayed in the par

ticular

ticular work before us; these we may safely conclude the workman to be poffeffed of. The cause muft be proportioned to the effect: And if we exactly and precifely proportion it, we fhall never find in it any qualities that point farther, or afford an inference concerning any other defign.or performance. Such qua lities must be somewhat beyond what is merely requifite to produce the effect which we examine.

ALLOWING, therefore, the gods to be the authors of the existence or order of the univerfe; it follows, that they poffefs that precife degree of power, intelligence, and benevolence, which appears in their workmanfhip; but nothing farther can ever be proved, except we call in the affiftance of exaggeration and flattery to fupply the defects of argument and reafoning. So far as the traces of any attributes, at present, appear, fo far may we conclude thefe attributes to exift. The fuppofition of farther attributes is mere hypothefis ; much more, the fuppofition, that, in diftant periods of place and time, there has been, or will be, a more magnificent difplay of thefe attributes, and a scheme of administration more fuitable to fuch imaginary virtires. We can never be allowed to mount up from the universe, the effect, to JUPITER, the caufe; and then defcend downwards, to infer any new effect from that cause; as if the prefent effects alone were not intirely worthy of the glorious attributes which we af cribe to that deity. The knowlege of the caufe being

derived

derived folely from the effect, they must be exactly adjusted to each other, and the one can never refer to any thing farther, or be the foundation of any new in.

ference and conclufion.

You find certain phænomena in nature. You seek a cause or author. You imagine that you have found him. You afterwards become fo enamoured of this offspring of your brain, that you imagine it impoffible but he muft produce fomething greater and more perfect, than the prefent fcene of things, which is fo full of ill and diforder. You forget, that this fuperlative intelligence and benevolence are intirely imaginary, or, at least, without any foundation in reafon; and that you have no ground to afcribe to him any qualities, but what you, fee he has actually exerted. and difplayed in his productions. Let your gods, therefore, O philofophers, be fuited to the prefent appearances of nature: And prefume not to alter these appearances by arbitrary fuppofitions, in order to fuit them to the attributes, which you fo fondly afcribe to your deities.

WHEN priests and poets, fupported by your authority, O ATHENIANS, talk of a golden or a filver age, which preceded the present scene of vice and mifery, I hear them with attention and with reverence. But when philofophers, who pretend to neglect authority, and to cultivate reafon, hold the fame difcourfe, I pay

them