s not only a co-partner but coadjutor with Pope, it
is found in the opening of the poem, where the poet uses the plural in
speaking of Bolingbroke--

"Awake, my St. John, leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Laugh when we must, be candid when you can,
And vindicate the ways of God to man."

* Cook's Life of Bolingbroke, 2nd vol., p. 97..

This is sufficient to prove the partnership in the poem, and from the
generally acknowledged fact of his connection, we have no hesitation in
declaring that this poem is the grand epic of Deism, and is as much the
offspring of Bolingbroke, as his own ideas when enunciated by others.
There is not a single argument in the Essay but what is much more
elaborated in the works of Bolingbroke, while every positive argument
is reduced to a few poetic maxims in the Essay. We may as well look here
for Bolingbroke's creed, rather than amongst his prose works. There
is, however, this difference, that in the Essay there is laid down an
ethical scheme of positivism--_i.e._, of everything in morals which
can be duly tested and nothing more: while in the prose writings of
Bolingbroke, the negative side of theology is discussed with an amount
of erudition which has never been surpassed by any of the great leaders
of Freethought. The first proposition of the Essay is based on a
postulate, upon which the whole reasoning is built. Overthrow this
substratum, and the philosophy of the Essay is overturned--admit it, and
its truth is evident; it is--

"What can we reason but from what we know?"

This is equivalent to saying that we can only reason concerning man as
a finite part of an infinite existence, and we can only predicate
respecting what comes under the _category of positive knowledge _; we
are therefore disabled from speculating in any theories which have for
a basis opposition to the collected experience of mankind. This was a
position laid down by Bolingbroke to escape all the historical arguments
which some men deduce from alleged miraculous agency in the past, or
problematical prophecy in the future. It _likewise_ shows the untenable
nature of all analogy, which presumes to trace an hypothetical first
cause or personal intelligence, to account for a supposed origin of
primeval existence, by which nature was caused, or forms of being first
evolved. Although it may be deemed inconsistent with the philosophy of
Bolingbroke to admit a God in