as that of Aristotle had been by his, what answer do you suppose he would have retu ned?

Locke. Come, come. you yourself know the difference between the foundations on which the credit of those systems and that of Newton is pla ced. Your scepticism is more affected than real.— You found it a shorter way to a great reputation, (the only wish of your heart,) to object, than to defend; to pull down, than to set up. And your ta lents were admirable for that kind of work. Then your huddling together in a Critical Dictionary, a pleasant tale, or obscene jest, and a grave argument against the Christian religion, a witty confutation of some absurd author, and an artful sophism to impeach some respectable truth, was particularly commodious to all our young smarts and smatter. ers in free thinking. But what mischief have you not done to human society? You have endeavored, and with some degree of success, to shake those foundations, on which the whole moral world, and the great fabric of social happiness, entirely rest How could you, as a philisopher, in the sober hours of reflection, answer for this to your corscience; even supposing you had doubts of the truth of a sys. tem, which gives to virtue its sweetest hopes, to impenitent vice its greatest fears, and to true peni-. tence its best consolations; which restrains even the least approaches to guilt, and yet makes those allowances for the infirmities of our nature, which the Stoic, pride denied to it but which its real imperfection, and the goodness of its infinitely benevolent Creator, so evidently require?

Bayle. The mind is free; and it loves to exert its freedom. Any restraint upon it is a violence done to its nature,and a tyranny against which it has a right to rebel.

Locke. The mind, though free, has a governor within itself, which may and ought to limit the exercise of its fredom. That governor is reason.

Bayle. Yes:—but reason, like other govern rs, has a policy more dependent upon uncertain caprice, than upon any fixed laws. And if that reason, which rules my mind or yours, has happened to set up a favorite notion, it not only submits implicitly to it, but desires that the same respect should be paid to it by all the rest of mankind. Now I hold that any man may lawfully oppose this desire in another; and that if he is wise, he will use his utmostendeavours to check it in himself.

Locke. Is there not also a weakness of a contrary nature to this you are now ridiculing? Do we not often take a pleasure in showing our own pow. er, and gratifying our own pride, by degrading the notions set up by other men, and generally respected?

Bayle. I believe we do; and by this

means it

often happens, that, if one man builds and consecrates a temple to folly, another pulls it down.

Locke.

Do you think it beneficial to human society, to have all temples pulled down? Bayle. I canot say that I do.

Locke. Yet I find not in your writings any mark of distinction, to show us which you mean to save. Bayle. A true philosopher,like an impartial historian, must be of no sect.

Locke. Is there no medium between the blind zeal of a sectary, and a total indifference to all religion?

Bayle. With regard to morality, I was not indifferent.

Locke. How could you then be indifferent with regard to the sanctions religion gives to morality?How could you publish what tends so directly and apparently to weaken in mankind the belief of those sanctions? Was not this sacrificing the great interests of virtue to the little motives of vanity?

Bayle. A man may act indiscreetly, but he cannot do wrong, by declaring that which,on a full dis

cussion of the question, he sincerely thinks to be

true.

Locke. An enthusiast, who advances doctrines prejudicial to society, or opposes any that are useful to it, has the strength of opinion, and the heat of a disturbed imagination, to plead in alleviation of bis fault. But your cool head and sound judgment, can have no such excuse. I know very well there are passages in all your works, and those nota few, where you talk like a rigid moralist. I have also heard that your character was irreproachably good. But when, in the most laboured parts of your writ ings. vou sap the surest foundations of all moral duties; what avails it that in others, or in the conduct of your life, you appeared to respect them?How many who have stronger passions than you bad, and are desirous to get rid of the cuṛo that restrains them. will lay hold of your scepticism, to set. themselves loose from all obligations of virue! What a misfortune it is to have made such a use of such talents! I would have been better for you and for mankind, if you had been net the dullest of Dutch theologians, or the most credulous monk in a Portuguese convent. The riches of the mind,like those of fortune, may be employed so perversely, as to become a nuisance and pest, instead of an ornament and support, to society.

Bayle. You are very severe upon me.-But do you count it no merit, no service to mankind, to deliver them from the frauds and fetters of priest. craft, from the deliriums of fanaticism, and from the terrors and follies of superstition? Consider how much mischief these have done in the world! Even in the last age, what massacres, what civil wars, what convulsions of government, what confusion in society, did they produce! Nay, in that we both lived in though much more enlightened than the former, did I not see them occasion a violent

persecution in my own country? and can you blame me for striking at the root of these evils?

Locke. The root of these evils, you well know, was false religion: but you struck at the true. Heaven and hell are not more different, than the system of faith I defended,and that which produced the horrors of which you speak Why would you so fallaciously confound them together in some of your writings, that it requires much more judgement,and a more diligent attention, than ordinary readers have, to seperate them again, and to make the prop. er distinctions? This, indeed, is the great art of the most celebrated free-thinkers. They recom. mend themselves to warm and ingenious minds, by lively strokes of wit and by arguments really strong, against superstition, enthusi sm, and priestcraft.But, at the same time, they insidiously throw the colours of these upon the fair face of true religion; and dress her out in their garb, with a malignant intention to render her odious or despicable to those who have not penetration enough to discern the impious fraud. Some of them may have thus deceived themselves, as well as others. Yet it is certain, no book that ever was written by the most acute of these gentlemen, is so repugnant to priestcraft, to spiritual tyranny, to absurd superstitions, to all that can tend to disturb or injure society, as that gospel they so much effect to dispise.

Bayle. Mankind are so made, that when they heve been over heated, they cannot be brought to a proper temper again, till they have been over-cooled. My scepticism might be nesessary,to abate the fever and phrenzy of false religion.

Locke. A wise prescription, indeed, to bring on a paralytical state of the mind,(for such a scepticism as yours is a palsy; which deprives the mind of all vigour, and deadens its natural and vital powers,) in order to take off a fever, which temperance, and

the milk of the evangelical doctrines, would prob

ably cure.

Bayle. I acknowledge that those medicines have a great power. But few doctors apply them untainted with the mixture of some harsher drugs, or some unsafe and ridiculous nostrums of their

Own

Locke. What you now say is too true. God has given us a most excellent physician for the soul in all its diseases; but bad and interested physicians, or ignorant and conceited quacks, administer it so ill to nerest of mankind, that much of the benefit of it is unhappily lost.

LORD LITTLETON.