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Own therefore, says he, here, that,

From pride, from pride our very reasoning springs;
Account for moral as for natural things:

Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit?
In both to reason right, is to submit.

2. But secondly, to strengthen the foregoing analogical argument, and to make the wisdom and goodness of God still more apparent, he observes next [from 1.156 to 165] that moral evil is not only productive of good to the whole, but is even productive of good in our own system. It might, says he, perhaps appear better to us, that there were nothing in this world but peace and virtue,

That never air nor ocean felt the wind,

That never passion discompos'd the mind.

But then consider, that as our material system is supported by the strife of its elementary particles, so is our intellectual system by the conflict of our passions, which are the elements of human action.

Love, hope, and joy, fair pieasure's smiling train,
Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain,

These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind.

Ep. 2. 1. 107, et seq. For (as he says again in his second Epistle, where he illustrates this observation at large)

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What crops of wit and honesty appear

From spleen, from obstinacy, hate or fear! 1. 175.

In a word, as without the benefit of tempestuous winds, both air and ocean would stagnate, and corrupt, and spread universal contagion throughout all the ranks of animals that inhabit, or are supported, by them; so, without the benefit of the passions, that harmony, and virtue, the effects of the absence of those passions, would be a lifeless calm, a stoical apathy,

Contracted all, retiring to the breast:

But health of mind is exercise, not rest. Ep. 2. l. 93. Therefore, concludes the Poet, instead of regarding the conflict of elements, and the passions of the mind, as disVOL. XI.

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orders;

orders; you ought to consider them as what they are, part of the general order of Providence: and that they are so, appears from their always preserving the same unvaried course, throughout all ages, from the creation, to the present time:

The general order, since the whole began,

Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.

We see therefore it would be doing great injustice to our Author to suspect that he intended, by this, to give any encouragement to vice; or to insinuate the necessity of it to a happy life, on the equally execrable and absurd scheme of the Author of the Fable of the Bees. His system, as all his Ethic Epistles shew, is this, That the passions, for the reasons given above, are necessary to the support of virtue: That indeed the passions in excess, produce vice, which is, in its own nature, the greatest of all evils; and comes into the world from the abuse of Man's free-will; but that God, in his infinite wisdom, and goodness, deviously turns the natural bias of its malignity to the advancement of human happiness, and makes it productive of general good:

TH'ETERNAL ART EDUCES GOOD FROM ILL.

Ep. 2. 1. 165. This, set against what we have observed of the Poet's doctrine of a future state, will furnish us with an instance of his steering (as he well expresses it in his Preface) between doctrines seemingly opposite: If his Essay has any merit, he thinks it is in this. And doubtless it is uncommon merit to reject the extravagances of every system, and take in only what is rational and real. The Characteristics, and the Fable of the Bees, are two seemingly inconsistent systems: The extravagancy of the first is in giving a scheme of Virtue without Religion; and of the latter, in giving a scheme of Religion without Virtue. These our Poet leaves to any body that will take them up; but agrees however so far with the first, that virtue would be worth having, though itself was its only reward; and so far with the latter, that God makes evil, against its nature, productive of good.

The Poet having thus justified Providence in its permission of partial MORAL EVIL, employs the remaining

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part of this Epistle in vindicating it from the imputation of certain supposed NATURAL EVILS. For now he slews, that though the complaint of his Adversaries against Providence be on pretence of real morai evils, yet, at bottom, it all proceeds from their impatience under imaginary natural ones, the issue of a depraved appetite for visionary advantages, which if Man had, they would be either useless or pernicious to him, as unsuitable to his state, or repugnant to his condition [from l. 164 to 199.] “Though "God (says he) hath so bountifully bestowed on Man, "faculties little less than angelic, yet he ungratefully grasps at higher; and then, extravagant in another extreme, with a passion as ridiculous as that is impious, "envies even the peculiar accommodations of Brutes. "But here his own principles shew his folly." He supposes them all made for his use: Now what use could he have of them, when he had robbed them of all their qualities. Qualities, as they are at present divided, distributed with the highest wisdom: But which, if bestowed according to, the froward humour of these childish complainers, would be found to be every where either wanting or superfluous. But even with these brutal qualities Man would not only be no gainer, but a considerable loser, as the Poet shews, in explaining the consequences that would follow from his having his sensations in that exquisite degree in which this or that animal is observed to possess them.

He tells us next [from 1. 198 to 225] that the complying with such extravagant desires would not only be useless and pernicious to Man, but would be breaking the order, and deforming the beauty, of God's Creation. In which this animal is subject to that, and all to Man; who by his reason enjoys the benefit of all their powers; Far as Creation's ample range extends,

The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends:
Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected these to those, or all to thee?
The powers of all subdued by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all those powers in one?

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And

And farther [from 1. 224 to 259] that this breaking the order of things, which as a link or chain connects all beings from the highest to the lowest, would unavoidably be attended with the destruction of the Universe:

For if each system in gradation roll,
Alike essential to th' amazing whole ;
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let Earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and Suns rush lawless thro' the sky:
Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl'd,
Being on being wreck'd, and world on world,
Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And Nature tremble to the throne of God.

For that the several parts of the Universe must at least compose as entire and harmonious a whole, as the parts of an human body do, cannot be doubted: Yet we see what confusion it would make in our frame, if the members were set upon invading each other's office.

What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread,
Or hand to toil, aspir'd to be the head? &c.
Just as absurd, for any part to claim
To be another in this gen'ral frame:

Just as absurd, to mourn the task and pains
The great directing *MIND of ALL ordains.

Who will not acknowledge that so harmonious a con< nection in the disposition of things, as is here described, is transcendently beautiful? But the Fatalists suppose such a one. What then? Is the first great free Agent debarred from a contrivance so exquisite, because some men, to set up their idol, Fate, absurdly represent it as presiding over such a system?

Having thus given a representation of God's Creation, as one entire whole, where all the parts have a necessary dependance on and relation to each other, and where every particular works and concurs to the perfection of the whole; as such a system would be thought above the reach of vulgar ideas; to reconcile it to their conceptions,

*Veneramur autem et colimus ob Dominium. Deus enim sine Dominio, Providentia, et causis Finalibus, nihil aliud est quam FATUM et NATURA. Newtoni Princip. Schol. gener. sub fiuem.

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he shews [from 1. 258 to 273] that God is equally and intimately present to every sort of substance, to every particle of matter, and in every instant of being; which eases the labouring imagination, and makes it expect no less, from such a presence, than such a dispensation.

And now, the Poet, as he had promised, having vindicated the ways of God to Man, concludes [from I. 272 to the end] that from what had been said it appears, that the very things we blame contribute to our happiness, either as particulars, or as parts of the universal system; that our ignorance, in accounting for the ways of Providence, was allotted to us out of compassion; that yet we have as much knowledge as is sufficient to shew us, that we are, and always shall be, as blest as we can bear; for that NATURE is neither a stratonic chain of blind causes and effects,

(All nature is but art unknown to thee);

nor yet the fortuitous result of Epicurean atoms, (All chance, direction which thou canst not see); as these two species of atheism supposed it; but the wonderful art and direction (unknown indeed to man) of an all-powerful, all-wise, all-good, and free Being. And therefore we may be assured, that the arguments brought above, to prove partial moral evil productive of universal good, may be safely relied on; from whence one certain truth results, in spite of all the pride and cavils of vain reason, That WHATEVER IS, is RIGHT, WITH REGARD TO THE DISPOSITION OF GOD, AND TO ITS ULTIMATE TENDENCY. And this truth once owned, all complaints against Providence are secluded.

But that the reader may see, in one view, the exactness of the method, as well as force of the argument, I shall here draw up a short synopsis of this epistle. The Poet begins in telling us his subject is An Essay on ManHis end of writing is to vindicate Providence-Tells us against whom he wrote, the Atheists --From whence he intends to fetch his arguments, from the visible things of God seen in this system-Lays down this proposition as the foundation of his thesis, that of all possible systems, infinite Wisdom has formed the best-Draws from thence two consequences; 1, That there must needs be some

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where

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