Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree Secure to be as bleft as thou canst bear : All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; 285 All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not fee; 290 All Discord, Harmony not understood; All partial Evil, univerfal Good: NOTES. And, : vol. ii. p. 473. folio, 1620, and to the noble lines of Euripides. there quoted and would be gratified still more by attentively perufing the short treatife of Ariftotle, Пpi Korua, concerning the' beauty and concord of the Universe arifing from Contrarieties; which treatise, notwithstanding the different form of its compofition, ought to be ascribed to this philofopher, for the reasons affigned by Petit in his Obfervations, b. ii.; and by a differtation of Daniel Heinfius, as well as the opinion of our truly learned Bishop Berkeley. VER. 287. Safe in the hand]" Be there two worlds, or be there twenty, the fame God is the God of all; and wherever we are, we are equally in his power. Far from fearing my Creator, that all-perfect Being whom I adore, I should fear to be no longer his creature." Bolingbroke. Si fic omnia dixiffet! VER. 289. All Nature is but Art,] Cudworth obferves, upon Lucretius's having faid, 46 Ufque adeo res humanas vis abdita quædam that here he reeled and staggered in his atheism; or was indeed a Theift, and knew it not. "Nature is the art whereby God governs the world," fays Hobbes. VER. 291. All Difcord, Harmony] The words of Plato, in the Thæot. are, καὶ τολο μεγίσης τέχνης ἀγαθο ποιεῖν τα κακα. This muft And, fpite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite, One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT. NOTES. must be acknowledged to be the greatest of all arts, to be able to bonifie evils, or tincture them with good." Cudworth, p. 221. Intellectual System. I was furprised to fee this philofophical doctrine amply illuftrated in one of our quaint old writers, Feltham, in his Resolves, p. 130. 1633. "The whole world is kept in order by Discord; and every part of it is but a more particular compofed jarre. Not a man, not a beast, not a creature, but have fomething to ballaft their lightneffe. One fcale is not alwaies in depreffion, nor the other lifted ever high, but the alternate wave of the beame keepes it ever in the play of motion. From the pifinire on the tufted hill, to the monarch in the raised throne, nothing but hath somewhat to awe it. Wee are all here like birds that boyes let flye in ftrings: when we mount too high, wee have that which puls us downe againe. What man is it which lives so happily, which feares not something that would fadden his foule if it fell? Nor is there any whom calamity doth fo much triftitiate, as that hee never fees the flashes of fome warming joy. Beafts with beafts are terrified and delighted. Man with man is awed and defended. States with states are bounded and upholded. And, in all these, it makes greatly for the Maker's glory that fuch an admirable harmony fhould bee produced out of fuch an infinite discord. The world is both a perpetuall warre, and a wedding. Heraclitus call'd a Dif cord and Concord the univerfall Parents. And to raile on Difcord," faies the Father of the Poets, "is to speake ill of Nature.. As in muficke fometimes one ftring is lowder, fometimes another; yet never one long, nor never all at once. So fometimes one state gets a monarchy, fometimes another: fometimes one element is, violent, now another: yet never was the whole world under one long; nor were all the elements raging together. Every ftring has his ufe, and his tune, and his turne." Feltham, we may imagine, did not know that this was a doctrine fo old as Heraclitus, who fpeaks of Παλίντροπος αρμονια κόσμε, a verfatile harmony of the world, whereby things reciprocate backwards and forwards, &c. ; quoted by Cudworth, chap. iv. b. i. from Plutarch, De Ifide & Ofiride, of two principles, a good God and an evil Dæmon; the Manichean doctrine. BAYLE was the person who, by stating the difficulties concerning the Origin of Evil, in his Dictionary, 1695, with much acuteness and ability, revived the Manichean controversy that had been long dormant. He was soon answered by Le Clerc in his Parrhafiana, and by many articles in his Bibliotheques. But by no writer was Bayle fo powerfully attacked, as by the excellent Archbishop King, in his Treatise de Origine Meli, 1702. About 1705, Lord Shaftesbury frequently visited Bayle at Rotterdam, whose wit and learning he admired, and made him a present of an elegant watch by a delicate ftratagem; and offered him a fine collection of books, which that philofopher declined to accept. He had many conversations and disputes with Bayle on the Manichæan controversy; and in 1709 wrote the famous Dialogue intitled, The Moralifts, as a direct confutation of the opinions of Bayle; though he had before touched on this subject, 1699, when the first edition of the Enquiry concerning Virtue and Merit was publifhed: as did his difciple Hutchefon, 1725. In 1710, Leibnitz wrote his famous Theodicée; without entering into the metaphyfical refinements of that piece, it may be more amusing to our reader just to mention the agreeable fiction with which he ends his philosophical disquisition. He feigns, (in continuance of a Dialogue of Laurentius Valla,) that Sextus the fon of Tarquin goes to Dodona to complain to Jupiter of the crime which he was destined to commit, the rape of Lucretia. Jupiter answers him, that he had nothing to do but to abstain from going to Rome: but Sextus declares pofitively, that he could not renounce the hope of being a king, and accordingly to Rome he goes. After his departure, the high priest, Theodorus, afks Jupiter, why he did not give another will to Sextus? Jupiter fends Theodorus to Athens to confult Minerva; she fhews to Theodorus the great palace of the Destinies, in which were placed all the pictures and representations of all poffible worlds, from the worst model to the beft. Theodorus beholds, in the latter, the crime which Sextus was doomed to commit; from which crime arose the liberty of Rome, and a mighty empire; an event fo interefting to a great part of the human race. Theodorus was filenced. In 1720 Dr. John Clarke published his Enquiry into the Cause and Origin of Evil, a work full of found reafoning; but almoft every argument on this most difficult of all fubjects had been urged many years before any of the above-mentioned treatises ap 3 peared, peared, namely, 1678, by that truly great scholar and divine Cudworth, in that ineftimable treafury of learning and philofophy his Intellectual Syftem, to which fo many authors have been indebted, without owning their obligations. I thought this little account of the writers who had preceded Pope, on the subject of this Effay, not improper to be fubjoined in this place. Voltaire wrote his Candide with the profeffed defign of ridiculing the fundamental doctrine of this Effay; and in his Philosophical Dictionary; in his poem on the Destruction of Lisbon; in his Additions to the Encyclopedie; and in many parts of his Works and Letters; he feized every opportunity of combating and expofing the opinion of Optimism. And he joined with Hume in saying, "That the only folid method of accounting for the Origin of Evil, confiftently with the other attributes of God, is not to allow that his power is infinite." "Sa puiffance eft très grande; mais qui nous a dit qu'elle eft infinie, quand fes ouvrages nous montrent le contraire? Certes, j'aime mieux l'adorer borné que mechant. Il ne refte que d'avouer que Dieu ayant agi pour le mieux, n'a pu agir mieux. Cette neceffité tranche toutes les difficultés & finit toutes les difputes. Nous n'avons pas le front de dire, Tout eft bien; nous disons tout est le moins mal qu'il se pouvait." "We ought," fays Hume, "to allow that the Creator of the universe poffeffes that precife degree of power, intelligence, and benevolence which actually appears in his workmanship; nothing farther can ever be justly proved; and the fuppofition of farther attributes is mere hypothefis." Thus endeavouring to deprive us of our most comfortable hopes, and most falutary expectations. But he should remember, that, if this be all that reafon and philosophy can be able to prove, life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel. Notwithstanding these loose principles of Voltaire, yet one is glad to find, from the fame hand, a full confutation of the impious tenets advanced in the Systeme de la Nature. Tom. iv. of Questions fur l'Encyclopedie, page 285. And in the beginning of this article, in the fame volume, he has confuted Spinoza, and pointed out his many contradictions, fophifms, and obfcurities; proving clearly that he did not understand his own opinions. In vol. vii. of the fame work, page 283. he has demolished the artful arguments of Bayle, who endeavoured to prove that atheism was a tenet lefs mifchievous to the happiness of man than idolatry. |