sehood be truth, though they may alter the property their goods as they please. Now if in flagrant cases : natural and essential difference between good and 1, right and wrong, cannot but be confessed to be inly and undeniably evident, the difference between m must be also essential and unalterable in all, even :smallest and nicest and most intricate cases, though be not so easy to be discerned and accurately distinished. For if, from the difficulty of determining ctly the bounds of right and wrong in many perext cases, it could truly be concluded that just and just were not essentially different by nature, but ly by positive constitution and custom, it would low equally that they were not really, essentially, d unalterably different, even in the most flagrant ses that can be supposed. Which is an assertion so y absurd that Mr Hobbes himself could hardly vent without blushing, and discovering plainly, by his fting expressions, his secret self-condemnation. There therefore certain necessary and eternal differences things, and certain fitnesses or unfitnesses of the plication of different things, or different relations one another, or depending on any positive constitutions,

founded unchangeably in the nature and reason of ngs, and unavoidably arising from the difference of things themselves.

ee the Life by Hoadly prefixed to his collected works (4 vols. 8-42), that by Whiston (1741), and a German one by R. Zimmeran (Vienna, 1870).

John Toland (1669-1722) was born of tholic parents near the village of Redcastle in unty Londonderry. He entered the University Glasgow in 1687, but removing to Edinburgh, andoned the Roman Catholic faith and passed A. in 1690. At Leyden, where he spent two ars, he studied theology under Spanheim, and de the acquaintance of the famous Le Clerc, emost and most accomplished of the 'advanced' cologians of Europe, and distinctly 'unsound' on inspiration of the Scriptures. He resided for a e at Oxford, and in the Bodleian collected the terials of more than one of his later publications. Christianity not Mysterions (1696) he expressly imed to accept all the essentials of Christianity, maintained that the value of religion could not in any unintelligible element, and that no part the truth could be contrary to reason. He chose 5 title with evident reference to Locke's Reasoneness of Christianity (1695), and professed to ve at heart the defence of revelation against sts and atheists. But the anti-supernatural and ethinking tendency-and disguised intention-of e work was obvious; it greatly perturbed the eological world, began the 'deistical controversy' at occupied so much of the early eighteenth tury, and led to several replies (as by Stillinget. Locke somewhat anxiously sought to disow community of thought. Prosecuted in Middle

Toland withdrew to Ireland; but when by vote the Irish House of Commons his book was ned publicly by the common hangman, and a secution decided on, he fled back to London. e annoyed Shaftesbury by surreptitiously pubhing his Inquiry in 1699.

In Amyntor (1699) and other works he fairly raised the question as to the comparative evidence for the canonical and apocryphal scriptures, with professed candour but unmistakably mischievous intent. A pamphlet entitled Anglia Libera, on the succession of the House of Brunswick, led to his being received with favour by the Princess Sophia when he accompanied the English ambassador to the court of Hanover; and from 1707 to 1710 he lived in Berlin and various Continental towns. His after-life was that of a literary adventurer, and fills a painful chapter in D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors. He was apparently employed as an agent by Harley, and he did some political pamphleteering-latterly against Jacobitism and High-Church views. In Nazarenus (1720) he insisted, somewhat on the lines developed by Semler and the Tübingen school, that there were two distinctly opposed parties in the early Christian Church-one Judaistic (which he identified with the Ebionites), and one Pauline or liberal. His Pantheisticon, a pantheistic liturgy for a hypothetical society of new light philosophers, was regarded as an offensive parody of the Anglican Prayer-book. He resided from the year 1718 at Putney, and there he died.

Besides the works named, and various defences, apologies, and pamphlets, he wrote a Life of Milton, prefixed to an edition of the prose works. (1698), which gave room for criticisms of Church polity and implicit commendation of unorthodoxy ; an Account of Prussia and Hanover (1705); Adeisidamon (1709); Origines Judaica (1709); and a History of the Druids. Hodegus explains that the pillar of cloud and fire was not meant by the author of the Pentateuch to be taken as miraculous, but was a portable fire or ambulatory beacon carried on a proper machine on a pole, such as we know were used by the ancient Persians; and in the twenty-two short chapters of Hypatia, written when Whiston was suffering for his heresies, he finds plenty of room for assailing the pride, malice, cruelty, and unscrupulousness of the Churchmen of all ages.

He was an acute and audacious pioneer of freethought, versatile but vain, unseasonably aggressive in diffusing his new light, and widely read rather than really learned; and he wrote with point and vigour. His grasp of some of the problems of early Christian history was really remarkable, and seems to have had some influence on German rationalism. His precarious life cut him off from the chance of scholarly research, but he was quite unjustly despised by the orthodox. Defoe-not himself a model character-reflects the general attitude towards deists. Reporting the death of the late eminent or rather notorious Mr Toland,' he was sadly scandalised at Toland's character and history, 'how he has for many years employed the best parts and a great stock of reading to the worst purposes, namely, to shock the faith of Christians in the glorious person and divinity of their Redeemer, and to sap and under

mine the principles of the orthodox faith.' And he held that the premature death of one 'who has been so great an enemy of revealed religion, so open an opposer of orthodox principles, and had so often blasphemed the divinity of our blessed Redeemer,' confirms his own observation that 'he never knew an open blasphemer of God live to be an old man.'

From the Life of Milton.

He was never very healthy, nor too sickly; and the distemper that troubled him most of any other was the gout, of which he dyed without much pain in the year from the birth of Christ 1674, and in the six-and-sixtieth of his age. All his learned and great friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the vulgar, accompanied his body to the church of St Giles near Cripplegate, where he lies buried in the chancel; and where the piety of his admirers will shortly erect a monument becoming his worth, and the incouragement of letters in king William's reign.

Thus lived and died John Milton, a person of the best accomplishments, the happiest genius, and the vastest learning which this nation, so renowned for producing excellent writers, could ever yet shew: esteemed indeed at home, but much more honoured abroad, where almost in his childhood he made a considerable figure, and continues to be still reputed one of the brightest luminaries of the sciences. He was middle-sized and well proportioned, his deportment erect and manly, his hair of a light brown, his features exactly regular, his complexion wonderfully fair when a youth, and ruddy to the very last. He was affable in conversation, of an equal and cheerful temper, and highly delighted with all sorts of music, in which he was himself not meanly skilled. He was extraordinary temperat in his diet, which was any thing most in season or the easiest procured, and was no friend to sharp or strong liquors. His recreations, before his sight was gone, consisted much in feats of activity, particularly in the exercise of his arms, which he could handle with dexterity: but when blindness and age confined him, he played much upon an organ he kept in the house, and had a pully to swing and keep him in motion. other passions. In summer he would be stirring at four in the morning, and in winter at five; but at night he used to go to bed by nine, partly attributing the loss of his eys to his late watching when he was a student, and looking on this custom as very pernicious to health at any time: but when he was not disposed to rise at his usual hours, he always had one to read to him by his bedside. As he looked upon true and absolute freedom to be the greatest happiness of this life, whether to societies or single persons; so he thought constraint of any sort to be the utmost misery: for which reason he used to tell those about him the intire satisfaction of his mind, that he had constantly imployed his strength and faculties in the defence of liberty, and in a direct opposition to slavery. He ever exprest the profoundest reverence to the Deity as well in deeds as words; and would say to his friends, that the divine properties of goodness, justice, and mercy were the adequate rule of human actions, nor less the object of imitation for privat advantages, than of admiration or respect for their own excellence and perfection. In his early days he was a favorer of those Protestants

But the love of books exceeded all his

then opprobriously called by the name of Puritans: In his middle years he was best pleased with the Independents and Anabaptists, as allowing of more liberty than others, and coming nearest in his opinion to the primitive practice: but in the latter part of his life, he was not a profest member of any particular sect among Christians, he frequented none of their assemblies, nor made use of their particular rites in his family. Whether this proceeded from a dislike of their uncharitable and endless disputes, and that love of dominion, or inclination to persecution, which, he said, was a piece of Popery inseparable from all churches; or whether he thought one might be a good man without subscribing to any party, and that they had all in some things corrupted the institutions of Jesus Christ, I will by no means adventure to determine: for conjectures on such occasions are very uncertain, and I never met with any of his acquaintance who could be positive in assigning the true reasons of his conduct.

I shall now conclude this discourse with a character given of him by a man of unparalleled diligence and industry, who has disobliged all sides merely for telling the truth either intirely or without disguise, and who, since most men have the frailty of ingaging in factions, cannot be suspected of partiality in favor of Milton. He was a person, says Anthony Wood in the first volume of his Athene Oxonienses, of wonderful parts, of a very sharp, biting, and satyrical wit; he was a good philosopher and historian; an excellent poet, Latinist, Grecian, and Hebrician; a good mathematician and musician; and so rarely endowed by nature, that had he bin but honestly principled, he might have bin highly useful to that party against which he all along appeared with much malice and bitterness.

There is a Life by Des Maizeaux prefixed to two vols. of Toland's posthumous works (1747), and a monograph by Berthold, John Toland und der Monismus der Gegenwart (Heidelb. 1876). For Toland's partial anticipation of Semler and Baur, see an article in the Theological Review, 1877.

Matthew Tindal (1656–1733), deistical writer, born at Beerferris rectory, South Devon, was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. A Roman Catholic under James II., he reverted to Protestantism of a freethinking type, and wrote An Essay of Obedience to the Supreme Powers (1693) and Rights of the Christian Church asserted against the Romish and all other Priests (1706). The latter raised a storm of opposition; but even a prosecution failed to prevent a fourth edition in 1709. In 1730 Tindal published his Christianity as old as the Creation, which was soon known as 'The Deist's Bible;' its aim is not merely to state the case in favour of natural religion, but, less directly, to infer the superfluousness of any other. He seems to admit an actual revelation confirming natural religion, but, seeing that in this case there was nothing new revealed, the result is to eliminate the supernatural element from Christianity, and to prove that its morality is its only claim to the reverence of mankind. 'Answers' were innumerable, and the deistical controversy was an outstanding topic of interest to all educated men, to laymen as much as to those theologically educated. The note of the deistical writers was their reliance on common-sense argument rather

than on theological learning, though they freely availed themselves of all arguments they had access to. And they addressed not theologians but the general public. The form of the argument is a dialogue between A and B; it is plainly a very one-sided discussion.

From The Deist's Bible.'

A. I desire no more than to be allowed, that there's a religion of nature and reason written in the hearts of every one of us from the first creation; by which all mankind must judge of the truth of any instituted religion whatever; and if it varies from the religion of nature and reason in any one particular, nay, in the minutest circumstance, that alone is an argument which makes all things else that can be said for its support totally ineffectual. If so, must not natural religion and external revelation, like two tallies, exactly answer one another; without any other difference between them but as to the manner of their being delivered? And how can it be otherwise? Can laws be imperfect, where a legislator is absolutely perfect? Can time discover any thing to him which he did not foresee from eternity? And as his wisdom is always the same, so is his goodness; and consequently from the consideration of both these, his laws must always be the same.-Is it not from the infinite wisdom and goodness of God, that you suppose the gospel a most perfect law, incapable of being repealed, or altered, or of having additions; and must not you own the law of nature as perfect a law, except you will say, that God did not arrive to the perfection of wisdom and goodness till about seventeen hundred years since?

To plead that the gospel is incapable of any additions, because the will of God is immutable, and his law too perfect to need them, is an argument, was Christianity a new religion, which destroys itself; since from the time it commenced, you must own God is mutable; and that such additions have been made to the all-perfect laws of infinite wisdom as constitute a new religion. The reason why the law of nature is immutable is because it is founded on the unalterable reason of things; but if God is an arbitrary Being, and can command things meerly from will and pleasure; some things to-day, and others to-morrow; there is nothing either in the nature of God or in the things themselves to hinder him from perpetually changing his mind. If he once commanded things without reason, there can be no reason why he may not endlessly change such commands.

Anthony Collins (1676-1729), deist, born near Hounslow, passed from Eton to King's College, Cambridge, and became the disciple and friend of John Locke. In 1707 he published his Essay concerning the Use of Reason; in 1709 Priestcraft in Perfection. In Holland he made the friendship of Le Clerc; in 1713 his Discourse on Free-thinking, that to which Bentley replied in his famous Remarks, attracted much attention, and explicitly insisted on the value and necessity of unprejudiced inquiry in religious matters. One great argument for it is the mutually destructive dogmas of priests throughout the world, in all faiths and Churches. While there is no direct polemic against the truths of revealed religion,

the way the 'ever blessed Trinity' is referred to manifestly does not suggest faith in it; and there is an obvious aim to shake confidence in the canon of Scripture and its infallibility. In his Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, published in 1724, Collins argues that Christianity is founded on Judaism, and that its main support is the argument for the fulfilment of the prophecies. And yet no interpretation of them will stand a strict and non-allegorical fulfilment in the New Testament. The inference is not directly drawn, but is patent enough. In the course of the book he gives most of the arguments now held to prove that Daniel deals with past or contemporaneous events and dates from the Maccabean period.

From the 'Discourse on Free-thinking.'

The priests throughout the world differ about Scriptures, and the authority of Scriptures. The Bramins have a book of Scripture called the Shasters. The Persees have their Zundavastaw [Zend-avesta]. The Bonzes of China have books written by the disciples of Fo-he [Buddha], whom they call the God and Saviour of the world, who was born to teach the way of salvation, and to give satisfaction for all mens sins. The Talapoins of Siam have a book of Scripture written by Sommonocodom [Sakya-muni, Buddha], who, the Siamese say, was born of a virgin, and was the God expected by the universe. Dervizes have their Alchoran. The rabbis among the Samaritans, who now live at Sichem in Palestine, receive the five books of Moses (the copy whereof is very different from ours) as their Scripture; together with a Chronicon, or history of themselves from Moses's time, quite different from that contained in the historical books of the Old Testament. This Chronicon is lodged in the publick library of Leyden, and has never been published in print. The rabbis among the common herd of Jews received for Scripture the fourand-twenty books of the Old Testament. The priests of the Roman Church, of the English and other Protestant Churches, receive for Scripture the four-and-twenty books of the Old Testament, and all the books of the New Testament: but the Roman receives several other books, called Apocrypha, as canonical, which all the Protestant churches utterly reject, except the Church of England, which differently from all other Christian churches, receives them as half canonical, reading some parts of them in their churches, and thereby excluding some chapters of canonical Scripture from being read. . . . The priests of all Christian churches differ among themselves in each church about the copies of the same books of Scripture; some reading them according to one manuscript, and others according to another. But the great dispute of all is concerning the Hebrew and Septuagint, between which two there is a great difference; (the latter making the world 1500 years older than the former :) to name no other differences of greater or less importance.

Lastly, As the most ancient Christian churches and priests received several gospels and books of Scripture which are now lost, such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the Traditions of Matthias, &c., and as not one father in the two first centuries (whose works now remain) but received books of Scripture which are either lost to us, or that we

reject as Apocryphal : so the several sects of Christians in the East and in Africa receive at this day some books of Scripture, which are so far lost to us, that we know only their names, and others which we have and reject. As for instance, the Reverend Dr Grabe tells us of a book received by the Copticks, called the Secrets of Peter, of which we have no copy; and Ludolphus tells us that the Abyssinian Christians receive the Apostolick Constitutions; and Postellus brought from the East, where it was in use, the Gospel of James: both which we reject as Apocryphal.

The same books of Scripture have, among those priests who receive them, a very different degree of authority; some attributing more, and others less authority to them. The Popish priests contend that the text of Scripture is so corrupted, precarious, and unintelligible, that we are to depend on the authority of their church for the true particulars of the Christian religion. Others, who contend for a greater perfection in the text of Scripture, differ about the inspiration of those books; some contending that every thought and word are inspired; some that the thoughts are inspired, and not the words; some that those thoughts only are inspired which relate to fundamentals; and others that the books were written by honest men with great care and faithfulness, without any inspiration either with respect to the thoughts or words. In like manner, the Bramins, Persees, Bonzes, Talapoins, Dervizes, Rabbis, and all other priests who build their religion on books, must from the nature of things vary about books in the same religion, about the inspiration, and copies of those books.

Thomas Woolston (1669–1731), the son of a Northampton currier, became a Fellow of Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, took orders, and was in 1697 elected ecclesiastical lecturer in the university. An enthusiastic student of Origen, in 1705 he published the Old Apology for the Truth of t Christian Religion, affirming that the Mosaic story was allegorical, a prophetic parable of Christ. But from being a sound and dignified scholar and a popular preacher, he became gradually se aggressive in his criticism on the clergy and those who abode by the literal interpretation of Scrip ture that his friends thought him a little crazed The Moderator between the Infidel and the Apostat (developed in a second series, 1721-23) was to show that the gospel miracles could not prove Christ to be the Messiah; he disputed the reality of the incarnation in a virgin and of the resurrec tion, and developed a facetious vein that was a offensive as his thesis; and in 1721 his colleg deprived him of his fellowship. In his famous si Discourses on the Miracles of Christ (1727–29, wit two Defences) he maintained that the gospel nama tives taken literally were a tissue of absurdities Sixty answers were made to the Discourses; an an indictment for blasphemy was brought agains Woolston. He was sentenced to a year's imprison ment and a fine of 100; and unable to pay s considerable a sum, this partial anticipator of th

This is evident

from the great number of sects in each religion, founded on the diversity of senses put on their several Scriptures. And tho the books of the Old and New Testament are the immediate dictates of God himself, and all other Scriptures are the books of imposters; yet are the priests of the Christian church (like the priests of all other churches) not only divided into numberless sects, on account of their different interpretations of them, but even the priests of the same sect differ endlessly in opinion about their sense and meaning.

To set this matter before you in the clearest manner, and to possess you with the justest idea of the differences among priests about the sense and meaning of their Scriptures, and to make my argument the stronger for the duty and necessity of free-thinking; I will confine myself to the most divine of all books, and by consequence the best adapted of any to prevent diversity of opinion; and will take the following method. First, I will give you an idea of the nature of our holy books; whereby you'll see the foundation therein laid for a diversity of opinions among the priests of the Christian church. And, Secondly, I will give you a specimen of the diversity of opinions among the priests of the Church of England, pretended to be deduced from them: for all their differences are too great to be enumerated. From whence you'll easily infer, that there must be an infinite number of opinions among all other sorts of priests as to the meaning of their Scriptures; since the most divine of all books lays such a foundation for difference of opinion, that priests of the same sect are not able to agree, tho neither art, nor force, nor interest are wanting to compel them to an agreement of opinion.

convictions, within the rules of King's Bench. H works were collected in 1733 with a Life.

From the 'Defence.'

I have promised the world, what, by the assistance God, and the leave of the Government, shall be publishe a Discourse on the mischiefs and inconveniencies of hired and established priesthood: in which it shali shewn (I.) That the preachers of Christianity in the 5 ages of the church (when the gospel was far and a spread, and triumphed over all opposition of Jews a Gentiles) neither received nor insisted on any wages their pains, but were against preaching for hire; and if they had been endewed with the spirit of proție before an hireling priesthood was established, predic their abolition and ejection out of Christ's chur (II.) That since the establishment of an hire for priesthood, the progress of Christianity has not been stopt, but lost ground; the avarice, ambition, power of the clergy having been of such unspeak mischief to the world, as is enough to make a m heart ake to think, read, or write of; (III.) That t an abolition of our present established priesthood, on God's call of his own ministers, the professio the gospel will again spread; and virtue, religion, learning will more than ever flourish and abo The clergy are forewarned of my design to p such a Discourse; and this is the secret reason, w ever openly they may pretend, of their accuss against me for blasphemy and infidelity. Their and industry will be never wanting to prevent the lication of this Discourse; neither need I dou persecution, if they can excite the Government to i that end.

In my first Discourse on Miracles, I happened to treat on that of Jesus's driving the buyers and sellers out of he Temple; which, upon the authority of the Fathers, shewed to be a figure of his future ejection of bishops, priests, and deacons out of his church for making merchandise of the gospel. The Bishop has taken me nd that miracle to task; and if ever any man smiled t another's impertinence, I then heartily laughed when read him. I begged of the Bishop before-hand not to meddle with that miracle, because it was a hot one, and would burn his fingers. But for all my caution, he has een so fool-hardy as to venture upon it, but has really ouched and handled it as if it was a burning coal. He takes it up, and as soon drops it again to blow his ngers; then endeavours to throw a little water on this nd that part of it to cool it, but all would not do. The host fiery part of it, viz. that of its being a type of esus's future ejection of mercenary preachers out of the Church, he has not, I may say it, at all touched, except y calling it my allegorical invective against the Mainnance of the Clergy; which is such a piece of Corinhian effrontery in the Bishop, that was he not resolved

lye and defame at all rates, for the support of their terests, he could never have had the face to have ttered. If the Bishop had proved that that miracle which literally was such a—, as I dare not now call :) neither was nor could be a shadow and resemblance of esus's ejection of hired priests out of the church at his econd Advent, and that the Fathers were not of this pinion, he had knocked me down at once. As he has one nothing of this, so he might have spared his pains a support of the letter of this story. But I shall have great deal of diversion with the Bishop when I come, 1 a proper place, to defend my exposition of that iracle. In the mean time, as the Bishop has published ne of the Articles of my Christian Faith, thinking to nder me odious for it; so here I will insert another, iz. ‘I believe upon the authority of the Fathers, that the pirit and power of Jesus will soon enter the church, and spel hireling priests, who make merchandise of the spel, out of her, after the manner he is supposed to ave driven the buyers and sellers out of the Temple.'

Thomas Chubb (1679–1747), deist, was born : East-Harnham near Salisbury. His father, a altster, died early, so that the children were poorly lucated and early sent to work. Thomas was first >prenticed to a glover in Salisbury, but his eyeght failing, in 1705 he became a tallow-chandler. e had already contrived to do a good deal of ading, when a perusal of the 'historical preface' Whiston's Primitive Christianity Revived imlled him to write his own tract, The Supremacy the Father Asserted, which Whiston helped him publish in 1715. Encouraged by several patrons, e of whom sent him suits of clothes which had en little worn, while another gave him a money bsidy, the wonderful phenomenon of Wiltshire,' Pope called him, continued to write; and a arto volume of his tracts, published in 1730, ide his name widely known. Enquiries conrning sin, justification, prayer, the justice of ›d; A Discourse concerning Reason; and The ue Gospel of Jesus Christ Asserted, were among principal publications. His opinions drifted

from Arianism of Clarke's type nearer and nearer to deism, yet he went regularly to church, and regarded the mission of Jesus as divine, though he did not regard Christ as God. Most of his views were common to him and the other deists. He attacks the common theory of inspiration, though his own view, quoted below, does not go far beyond what is held consistent with modern orthodoxy-as is the case with many of the contentions once accounted alarmingly deistical. He denounces such Old Testament stories as the proposed human sacrifice by Abraham, insists on the sufficiency of reason and the needlessness of miracles, and argues that the true gospel of Christ consisted mainly in the necessity of morality and repentance for sin to secure the mercy of God here and hereafter. He was a modest and estimable

man.

From 'Remarks on the Scriptures.'

Amongst the many complaints made against me, occasioned by the publication of my dissertations, this I apprehend to be the principal; namely, that I have fallen foul of the Bible, and have not paid it the deference which I ought; and that, in consequence thereof, I have dug up foundations, and greatly unsettled the minds of men. So that the present questions are, how, or in what respect, have I fallen foul of the Bible? What foundations have I dug up? And what minds have I unsettled thereby? And first, how, or in what respect, have I fallen foul of the Bible? And wherein have I fallen short of paying it the deference it has a right to claim? Why, truly, I have taken the liberty to enquire into the conduct and behaviour of some of our Old-Testament saints, which stand upon record in it. I have also withheld my assent from such facts therein related, and from such propositions therein contained, as have the marks of incredibility upon them, when having no other evidence to support them than the bare authority of the writer. And is this all? To which it may, perhaps, be thought sufficient to answer, that this ministers just ground for complaint. Upon which I observe, that the Bible is held forth, and recommended to us, as a proper guide, by way of example, doctrine, and precept, to our understandings, our affections and actions; and therefore, most assuredly, the Bible of all other books ought strictly to be examined, and most carefully to be enquired into; and we ought to lend each other all the assistance we can in making the inquisition, because otherwise we are in great danger of being misled. As I am required to follow the examples of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises, and as the characters of those I am required to imitate are compounded of good actions and bad; so the very nature of the thing calls upon me and obliges me diligently to examine, and carefully to distinguish and separate those men's virtues from their vices; because otherwise I am in danger of following them, as well in their bad deeds as in their good; which must render the case, without such inquisition, most hazardous to me, and to all others who have the Bible put into their hands. The Bible is a collection of books, wrote at different, and, some parts of it, at very distant times, by a variety of persons, upon many subjects; whose authors, as they plainly appear to have had very different sentiments, and sometimes, perhaps, to have differed from themselves, so it is not unlikely but