fore, rather admit the necessity of matter, generations, and eternal vicissitudes, than a God, the free author of miserable creatures. To this, it is answered, The words, good, comfort, and hap piness, are equivocal: what is evil with regard to you, is good in the general plan. Will you deny a God, because you have been afflicted with a fever? You say he owed you happiness: but what reason have you to think so? Why did he owe you this happiness? Was you in any treaty with him? Therefore to be only happy in this life, you need only acknowledge a God. You who cannot pretend to be perfect in any one thing, how can you expect to be perfectly happy? But suppose that in a continual happiness for one hundred years, you may have a fit of the head-ach, shall this short interval induce you to deny a Creator? Surely no. If, therefore, you do not startle at a quarter of an hour's suffering, why at two hours? why at a day? Why should a year of torment prevail on you to reject the belief of a supreme universal Artisan?

It is proved, that there is in this world more good than evil; for, after all, few men are to be found who really wish for death.

Men are fond of murmuring; there is a pleasure in complaining, but more in living. We delight in viewing only evil, and exaggerating it. Read history, it is replied; what is it more than a continual series of crimes and misfortunes? Agreed; but histories are only the repositories of great events: tempests only are recorded; calms are overlooked.

After examining the relations between the springs and organs of an animal, and the designs which display themselves in every part, the manner by which this animal receives life, by which he sustains it, and by which he gives it; you readily acknowledge the supreme Artist. Will you then change your opinion, because wolves eat the sheep, and spiders catch flies? Do not you, on the contrary, perceive, that these continual generations, ever devoured, and ever reproduced, are a part of the plan of the universe? Wisdom and power, you say, are perceivable in them, but goodness is still wanting.

In fine, if you may be happy to all eternity, can any pains and afflictions in this life be worth mentioning?

You cannot think the Creator good, because there is some evil in this world. But if necessity supply the place of a Supreme Being, will affairs be mended? In the system which admits a God, some difficulties only are to be removed; in all the other systems, we must encounter absurdities.

Philosophy, indeed, plainly shows us, that there is a God; but it cannot teach us what he is, what he is doing, how and wherefore he does it; whether he exists in time or in space; whether he has commanded once, or whether he is always acting; whether he be in matter, or whether he be not there, &c. To himself only these things are known.

VOLTAIRE.

MIRACLES.

I HAVE seen the birth of many miracles of my time, which, although they were still-born, yet have we not fa led to foresee what they would have come to had they lived. It is but finding the end of the clue, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater distance betwixt nothing and the minutest thing in the world, than there is betwixt that and the greatest. Now, the first that are tinctured with the beginning of novelty, when they set out their history, find, by the opposition they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and caulk that place with some false piece. Besides that, "men having a natural lust to propagate reports," we naturally make a conscience of restoring what has been lent us, without some usury and addition of our own invention. Private error first creates public error; and afterwards, in turn, public error causes a particular Thus all this fabric rises by patch-work from hand to hand; so that the remotest witness knows more than the nearest, and the last informed is more certain than the first. It is a natural progress; for whoever believes any thing, thinks it a work of charity to persuade another into the same opinion: which the better to do, he will make no difficulty of adding as much of his own invention as he conceives necessary to obviate the resistance or want of conception he supposes in others. There is nothing

one.

to which men commonly are more inclined than to give way to their own opinions. Where the ordinary means fail us, we add command and force, fire and sword. It is a misfortune to be at that pass, that the best touchstone of the truth must be the multitude of believers, in a crowd where the number of fools so much exceed the wise. "As if any thing were so common as ignorance." "The mob of fools is a protection to the wise." It is hard for a man to form his judgment against the common opinions. The first persuasion taken of the very subject itself possesses the simple; and from that it spreads to the wise, by the authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses. For my part, what I would not believe from one, I would not believe from a hundred; and I do not judge of opinions by the years. It is not long since one of our princes, in whom the gout has spoiled an excellent natural genius and sprightly disposition, suffered himself to be so far persuaded with the report of the wonderful operations of a certain priest, who by words and gestures cured all sorts of diseases, as to go a long journey to seek him out; and, by the force of his apprehension, for some time so persuaded and laid his legs asleep for several hours, as to obtain that service from them which they had a long time left off. Had fortune packed together five or six such accidents, it had been enough to have brought this miracle into nature. There was after this discovered so much simplicity, and so little art, in the architect of such operations, that he was thought too contemptible to be punished; as would be the case of most such things, were they examined to the bottom. "We admire at things that deceive by their distance." So does our sight often represent to us strange things at a distance, that vanish in approaching them near. "Fame never reports things in their true light." It is to be wondered at from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such famous impressions commonly proceed. This it is that obstructs the information; for whilst we seek out the causes, and the great and weighty ends worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones. They escape our sight by their littleness: and, in truth, a prudent, diligent, and subtle inquirer is necessary in such researches; one who is indifferent, and not prepossessed.

MONTAIGNE.

A MIRACLE

Destroys the Testimony for it, and the Testimony destroys itself.

IN matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary; and it is impossible the religion of ancient Rome, of Turkey, of Siam, and of China, should all of them be true. Every miracle, therefore, pretended to have been wrought in any of these reli gions (and all of them abound in miracles), as its direct scope is to establish the particular system to which it is attributed; so has it the same force, though more indirectly, to overthrow every other system. In destroying a rival system, it likewise destroys the credit of those miracles on which that system was established: So that all the prodigies of different religions are to be regarded as contrary facts; and the evidence to these prodigies, whether weak or strong, as opposite to each other. When we believe any miracle of Mahomet, &c. we have for our warrant the testimony of a few barbarous Arabians; and, on the other hand, we are to regard the testimony of all the witnesses, Grecian, Chinese, and Roman Catholic, in the same light as if they had mentioned that Mahometan miracle, and had in express terms contradicted it, with the same certainty as they have for the miracle they relate. This argument is not different from the reasoning of a judge, who supposes, that the credit of two witnesses, maintaining a crime against any one, is destroyed by the testimony of two others, who affirm him to have been 200 miles distant at the same instant when the crime is said to have been committed.

ON EVIL IN GENERAL.
[Continued from page 33.]

THAT there is a Supreme Being infinitely powerful, wise and benevolent, the great Creator and Preserver of all things, is a truth so clearly demonstrated, that it shall be here taken for granted. That there is also in the universal system of things, the works of his almighty hand, much misery and wickedness, that is, much natural and moral evil, is another truth, of which

every hour's fatal experience cannot fail to convince us. How these two undoubted, yet seeming contradictory truths can be reconciled, that is, how evils of any sort could have place in the works of an omnipotent and good Being, is very difficult to account for. If we assert that he could not prevent them, we destroy his power; if that he would not, we arraign his goodness; and therefore his power and goodness cannot both be infinite.

But however conclusive this argument may seem, there is somewhere or other an error in it; and this error I take to arise from our wrong notions of omnipotence. Omnipotence cannot work contradictions, it can only effect all possible things. But so little are we acquainted with the whole system of nature, that we know not what are possible, and what are not: but if we may judge from that constant mixture of pain with pleasure, and of inconvenience with advantage, which we must observe in every thing around us, we have reason to conclude, that to endue created beings with perfection, that is, to produce good exclusive of evil, is one of those impossibilities which even infinite power cannot accomplish.

The true solution then of this incomprehensible paradox must be this, that all evils owe their existence solely to the necessity of their own natures, by which I mean they could not possibly have been prevented, without the loss of some superior good, or the permission of some greater evil than themselves; or that many evils will unavoidably insinuate themselves by the natural relations and circumstances of things into the most perfect system of created beings, even in opposition to the will of an almighty Creator, by reason they cannot be excluded without working contradictions; which not being proper objects of power, it is no diminution of omnipotence to affirm that it cannot effect them.

And here it will be proper to make a previous apology for an expression, which will frequently occur in the following pages, which is, that God cannot do such and such things: by which is always to be understood not any retrenchment of the divine omnipotence, but only that such things are in their own natures impracticable, and impossible to be performed.