h his
influence small, is surely a happy circumstance for our
native country.

Should it be enquired, what has given occasion to this
flaming manifestation of popish zeal, the candid reader
would undoubtedly be surprized, should he be told, that one
article is, a random and incredible report, concerning Lord
Bolingbroke's expected posthumous works, that their design
is to prove, _there is no human soul, no deity, no spirit,
and nothing but matter in the universe_. Whoever is
acquainted with his lordship's writings, which have already
been published; whoever knows that Mr. Pope was indebted to
him for the plan of the noblest poem extant in any language,
I mean his Essay on Man, must at once be convinced, from
ocular demonstration, of the infamous falshood of this
assertion. That his lordship was a theist, and a disbeliever
in miracles and revelations, cannot and need not be denied.
But that he was no atheist, no materialist, his acknowledged
good sense is, alone, a sufficient proof. I do think
scepticism the best and truest philosophy; and I scruple not
to own, I have called in question, one time or other, the
truth of most things which cannot be demonstrated. But the
existence of spirit and deity was never one of those things.
Of this I am certain, from consciousness, from reason, from
demonstration. But I have often doubted the real existence
of matter; for this I have not even the testimony of my
senses, only prejudice and instinct. It is only such a
philosopher as our inspector, who believes animals are mere
machines, who can be an atheist and a materialist.

The other article which has given an opportunity to our
Jesuitical journalist to flame forth with the true spirit of
a popish inquisitor, is, the publication of proposals for
printing by subscription, Essays on Crucifixion; Syncopes,
or Fainting-Fits; the uncertainty of the signs of Death, and
the real nature and frequency of those Accidents which have
been called Resurrections from the Dead; and on Miracles,
their Nature, and the Evidence for them. There is surely
nothing, either in this title or the proposals themselves,
which appears to have a pernicious tendency against any
religious establishment whatsoever; and he, surely, must be
endued with a wonderful penetration, who can discover any
thing like it in them. They seem only to promise medical and
philosophical enquiries into medical and philosophical
subjects. Why may not an essay on Crucifixion b