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natural effect of believing that nothing is left to depend on ourselves, and that we can do nothing, must be concluding that we have nothing to do; and resolving to leave every thing to that Being who (as Dr. Priestley says, page 303, 314) works every thing in us, by us, and for us.

In giving his answer to these remarks Dr. Priestley proceeds thus. Dr. Price calls the doctrine of neceffity, according to which all events, moral as well as natural, are ultimately ascribed to God, a deadly potion; and yet he hesitates not to say' (in a preceding passage which we have omitted) ' that he believes "no event comes to pass which it would have been proper to exclude; and that, relatively to the divine plan and administration, all is right."-Now, between this doctrine, and those naked views of the doctrine of neceffity at which Dr. Price is fo much alarmed, I see no real difference. When a person can once bring himself to think that there is no wickedness of man which it would have been proper to exclude, and that the divine plan requires this wickedness, as well as every thing else that actually takes place (which is the purport of what Dr. Price advances, and very nearly his own words), I wonder much that he should hefitate to admit that the Divine Being might expressly appoint what it would have been improper to exclude, what his plan absolutely required, and that without which the scheme could not have been right, but must have been wrong.'

• May not this view of the subject, as given by Dr. Price, be represented as an apology for vice, and a thing to be shuddered at, and to be fled from, which is the language that he uses with respect to the doctrine of neceffity? If to make vice neceffary be deadly poison, can that doctrine be innocent which confiders it as a thing that is proper, and, relatively to the divine plan and administration, right? The two opinions, if not the fame, are certainly very near akin, and must have the same kind of operation and effect.'

• If Dr. Price will attend to falts, he may be fatisfied that it cannot require that great ftrength and foundness of constitution that he charitably ascribes to me, to convert the doctrine of necessity, poison as he thinks it to be, into wholesome nourishment; and that he must have seen it in some very unfair and injurious light. I am far from being fingular in my belief of this doctrine. There are thousands, I doubt not, who believe it as firmly as I do. A great majority of the more intelligent, serious, and virtuous of my acquaintance among men of letters, are necessarians (as, with respect to several of them, Dr. Price himself very well knows), and we all think ourselves the better for it. Can we all have this peculiar strength of constitution? It cannot surely be deadly poison which so many persons take, not only without injury,

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but with advantage; finding it to be, as Dr. Price acknowledges with respect to myself, even falutary.'

In answer to Dr. Price's remark, above given, that the belief of the doctrine of neceffity must break every afpiring effort, and produce univerfal abjectness; Dr. Priestley here too opposes to his theoretical inferences, a kind of an appeal ad hominem; and defires him to confider whether his theory has any correspondence with facts. Let him confider, says he, those of his acquaintance who are necessarians. To say nothing of myself, who certainly, however, am not the most torpid and lifeless of animals; where will he find greater ardour of mind, a stronger and more unremitted exertion, or a more strenuous and steady pursuit of the most important objects, than among those whom he knows to be neceffarians? I can say with truth (and meaning no disparagement to Dr. Price, and many others, who, I believe, unknown to themselves, derive much of the excellence of their characters from principles very near akin to those of the doctrine of neceffity) that I generally find Christian neceffarians the most distinguished for active and fublime virtues, and more so in proportion to their steady belief of the doctrine, and the attention they habitually give to it.'

The last particulars relative to this subject are contained in a Note from Dr. Price, and a short answer to it by Dr. Priestley. In the former Dr. Price observes that his sentiments have been undefignedly misrepresented, when Dr. Priestley suggests that he (Dr. Price) considers wickedness as a thing that is proper, and thinks the plan of the Deity abfolutely required it.'-He declares that he has never meant to say more, than that the PERMISSION of wickedness is proper, and that the divine plan required the communication of powers rendering beings capable of perversely making themselves wicked, by acting, not as the divine plan requires (for this, he thinks, would be too good an excuse for wickedness), but by acting in a manner that opposes the divine plan and will, and that would fubvert the order of nature; and to which, on this account, punishment has been annexed.'

To this last remark Dr. Priestley answers, that his friend can need no afsurance that his sentiments have not been knowingly misrepresented. He observes however that he cannot help confidering the voluntary permission of evil, or the certain cause of it, by a Being who forefees it, and has fufficient power to prevent it, as equivalent to the express appointment of it.'

From these last words of our two metaphyfical difputants on this subject, our Readers will perceive that, though they part friends, they still retain their respective opinions. Although we avoid taking a part in this controversy, still thinking it prudent to adhere to our former fafe and humble verdict *; we will how

See Monthly Review, vol. lviii. May 1778, P. 353.

ever go so far as to say, that we did expect to see Dr. Price yield
fomewhat to his friend's reasonings in this last point at least.
As to the main question-respecting liberty and neceffity-we do
not wonder that persons whose ideas on the subject have long
gone in a certain train, find even an infuperable difficulty in
adopting the opposite doctrine. There is scarce, perhaps, a
matter in the whole compass of human discussion, in which it
may more truly be faid-to borrow the apposite and emphatic
terms of Dr. Young on a different subject that
"One argument is balanced by another,
"And reason reason meets in doubtful fight,
"And proofs are countermined by equal proofs."

It is, in fact, the subject, κατ' εξοχην, in which
Reason knits the inextricable toil,

• In which herself is taken.'.

Some Illustrations are subjoined, in this volume, in addition to those which the Author formerly gave at the end of his Difquisitions. In these we meet with a general historical view of the origin and progress of opinions relating to the Effence of the Soul, with some confiderations on the notion of its being an extended, though an immaterial, substance. In the course of this historical deduction, the Author shews that, among the Heathen philosophers, the foul was supposed to be what we should now call an attenuated kind of matter, capable of division, as all other matter is; that this notion was adopted by the Christian Fathers, many of whom did not fcruple to affert that the soul, though conceived to be a thing diftinct from the body, was nevertheless properly corporeal, and even naturally mortal; that af terwards, however, the opinion of its being naturally immortal gained ground; and matter being then considered as neceffarily perishable as well as impure, the doctrine of the immateriality as well as of the immortality of the foul was pretty firmly established. The idea of its being immaterial soon led to the notion of its having no property whatever in common with matter; of its having neither length, breadth, nor thickness; of its being indivisible also; and, finally, of its not existing in Space. The schoolmen added various other refinements: but the doctrine of pure fpiritualism was not firmly established before Descartes.

He, says the Author, 'confidering extension as the essence of matter, made the want of extension the distinguishing property of mind or spirit. Upon this idea was built the immaterial system in its state of greatest refinement; when the soul was defined to be immaterial, indivisible, indifcerptible, unextended, and to have nothing to do with locality or motion, but to be a substance poffefsed of the simple powers of thought, and to have nothing more than an arbitrary connection with an organized system of matter.'

Mr.

Mr. Locke contributed greatly to lower this idea of mind or

spirit, by contending that whatever exifts must exist somewhere, or in some place; and by shewing that, for any thing that we know to the contrary, the power of thought may be fuperadded by the Divine Being to an organized system of mere matter; though at the same time declaring himself in favour of the notion of a separate foul. From this time, the doctrine of the nature of the foul has been fluctuating and various; some still maintaining that it has no property whatever in common with matter, and bears no relation to space; whereas others say that it exists in space, and occupies a portion of it, so as to be properly extended, but not to have folidity, which they make to be the property that diftinguishes it from matter.'

The Author proceeds to observe, that the object of his late work was to prove that the doctrine of a foul is altogether unphilosophical, and unfcriptural; and that the refined and proper spiritualism, above described, is peculiarly chimerical and abfurd. Abfurd, however, as is the notion of a substance which has no property in common with matter, which bears no relation to Space, and yet both acts upon body, and is acted upon by it; it is the doctrine that, in the course of gradual refinement, philosophers and divines were necessarily brought to, and is the only consistent immaterialism. For every other opinion concerning spirit makes it to be, in fact, the same thing with matter: at least, every other opinion is liable to objections similar to those which lie against the notion of a foul properly material.'

As the Author had not been thought to have given sufficient attention to the doctrine of a spirit's having extension, he here makes some shrewd remarks on that hypothefis, for which we are forry we have not room. All the embarassments attending this system, as well as that of pure fpiritualism above-mentioned, are, he affirms, at once removed by his fimple theory on this subject. According to this, 'the power of thinking belongs to the brain of a man, as that of walking, to his feet, or that of speaking, to his tongue.'-Man, therefore, ' who is one being, is composed of one kind of substance, made of the dust of the earth; -when he dies, he, of course, ceases to think; but when his fleeping dust shall be reanimated at the refurrection, his power of thinking, and his consciousness, will be restored to him.'-This system likewise gives a real value to the doctrine of a refurrection from the dead, which is peculiar to revelation, on which alone the facred writers build all our hope of a future life.' In his last letter to Dr. Price, the Author thus expresses the grounds of his zeal with respect to this subject. So long,' says he, ' as I conceive the doctrine of a separate foul to have been the true source of the grossest corruptions in the Christian system, of that very antichristian system which sprung up in the times

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times of the apostles, concerning which they entertained the strongest apprehenfions, and delivered, and left upon record, the most solemn warnings, I must think myself a very lukewarm and disaffected Christian if I do not bear my feeble teftimony against it.'

After declaring that he does not lay any stress on any merely theoretical opinion, he affirms that, with respect to the general plan of Chriftianity, the importance of the doctrines he contends for can hardly be rated too high. - What I contend for leaves nothing for the manifold corruptions and abuses of Popery to fasten on. Other doctrinal reformations are partial things, while this goes to the very root of almost all the mischief we complain of; and, for my part, I shall not date the proper and complete downfal of what is called Antichrist, but from the general prevalence of the doctrine of materialifm.

• This, I cannot help faying, appears to me to be that fundamental principle in true philosophy, which is alone perfectly confonant to the doctrine of the scriptures; and being at the fame time the only proper deduction from natural appearances, it must, in the progress of inquiry, foon appear to be fo; and then, should it be found that an unquestionably true philosophy teaches one thing, and revelation another, the latter could not stand its ground, but must inevitably be exploded, as contrary to truth and fact. I therefore deem it to be of particular confequence, that philofophical unbelievers should be apprised in time, that there are Christians, who confider the doctrine of a foul as a tenet that is so far from being effential to the Christian scheme, that it is a thing quite foreign to it, derived originally from heathenism, discordant with the general principles of revealed religion, and ultimately fubversive of them."

In the foregoing extracts from the controverfial part of this work, we have confined ourselves to a particular question, and to what may be called the last and mature results of each of the difputants on that particular fubject. We must not however terminate our account of this work without observing, that these are preceded by many reciprocal communications, not only on that intricate question, but on the nature of matter, personal identity, confciousness, &c. on which our two philosophical difputants exhibit many proofs of their metaphysical acumen, and frankness.

ART. VIII. Continuation of the Account of the Bishop of London's New Translation of Ifaiab. Vid. last Month's Review. Cadell.

UR learned Prelate, having confidered the nature of the alphabetical poems of andere

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larger and more minute explication of the circumstances which difcriminate the parts of the Hebrew scriptures that are written

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