Now dispute, choleric arguers: present your petitions against each
other; proffer your insults, pronounce your sentences, you who do not
know one word about the matter.

SECTION V

OF WARBURTON'S PARADOX ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

Warburton, editor and commentator of Shakespeare and Bishop of
Gloucester, making use of English freedom, and abuse of the custom of
hurling insults at one's adversaries, has composed four volumes to prove
that the immortality of the soul was never announced in the Pentateuch,
and to conclude from this same proof that Moses' mission is divine. Here
is the precis of his book, which he himself gives, pages 7 and 8 of the
first volume.

"1. The doctrine of a life to come, of rewards and punishments after
death, is necessary to all civil society.

"2. The whole human race (_and this is where he is mistaken_), and
especially the wisest and most learned nations of antiquity, concurred
in believing and teaching this doctrine.

"3. It cannot be found in any passage of the law of Moses; therefore the
law of Moses is of divine origin. Which I am going to prove by the two
following syllogisms:

_First Syllogism_

"Every religion, every society that has not the immortality of the soul
for its basis, can be maintained only by an extraordinary providence;
the Jewish religion had not the immortality of the soul for basis;
therefore the Jewish religion was maintained by an extraordinary
providence.

_Second Syllogism_

"All the ancient legislators have said that a religion which did not
teach the immortality of the soul could not be maintained but by an
extraordinary providence; Moses founded a religion which is not founded
on the immortality of the soul; therefore Moses believed his religion
maintained by an extraordinary providence."

What is much more extraordinary is this assertion of Warburton's, which
he has put in big letters at the beginning of his book. He has often
been reproached with the extreme rashness and bad faith with which he
dares to say that all the ancient legislators believed that a religion
which is not founded on pains and recompenses after death, can be
maintained only by an extraordinary providence; not one of them ever
said it. He does not undertake even to give any example in his huge book
stuffed with a vast number of quotations, all of which are foreign to
his subject. He has buried himself beneath a pile of Greek and Latin
authors, ancient and modern, f