r, in which,
if the author could succeed, he is obliged to own, that nothing could be
more fatal to mankind than his success?
I cannot conceive how this sort of writers propose to compass the
designs they pretend to have in view, by the instruments which they
employ. Do they pretend to exalt the mind of man, by proving him no
better than a beast? Do they think to enforce the practice of virtue, by
denying that vice and virtue are distinguished by good or ill fortune
here, or by happiness or misery hereafter? Do they imagine they shall
increase our piety, and our reliance on God, by exploding his
providence, and insisting that he is neither just nor good? Such are the
doctrines which, sometimes concealed, sometimes openly and fully avowed,
are found to prevail throughout the writings of Lord Bolingbroke; and
such are the reasonings which this noble writer and several others have
been pleased to dignify with the name of philosophy. If these are
delivered in a specious manner, and in a style above the common, they
cannot want a number of admirers of as much docility as can be wished
for in disciples. To these the editor of the following little piece has
addressed it: there is no reason to conceal the design of it any longer.
The design was to show that, without the exertion of any considerable
forces, the same engines which were employed for the destruction of
religion, might be employed with equal success for the subversion of
government; and that specious arguments might be used against those
things which they, who doubt of everything else, will never permit to be
questioned. It is an observation which I think Isocrates makes in one of
his orations against the sophists, that it is far more easy to maintain
a wrong cause, and to support paradoxical opinions to the satisfaction
of a common auditory, than to establish a doubtful truth by solid and
conclusive arguments. When men find that something can be said in favor
of what, on the very proposal, they have thought utterly indefensible,
they grow doubtful of their own reason; they are thrown into a sort of
pleasing surprise; they run along with the speaker, charmed and
captivated to find such a plentiful harvest of reasoning, where all
seemed barren and unpromising. This is the fairy land of philosophy. And
it very frequently happens, that those pleasing impressions on the
imagination subsist and produce their effect, even after the
understanding has been satisfied of t
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