CHAP. IV.

a storm, a convulsion—but all will be calm again?"—Does Dr. Priestley think that the British will part more easily than their neighbours in France with their property and honours, secured by ages of peaceable possession, protected by law, and acquiesced in by all who wish and hope that their own descendants may reap the fruits of their honest industry?—Will they make a less manly struggle?—Are they less numerous?—Must his friends, his patrons, whom he has thanked, and praised, and flattered, yield up all peaceably, or fall in the general struggle? This writer has already given the most promising specimens of his own docility in the principles of Illuminatism, and has already passed through several degrees of initiation. He has refined and refined on Christianity, and boasts, like another Spartacus, that he has, at last, hit on the true secret.—Has he not been preparing the minds of his readers for Atheism by his theory of mind, and by his commentary on the unmeaning jargon of Dr. Hartley? I call it unmeaning jargon, that I may avoid giving it a more apposite and disgraceful name. For, if intelligence and design be nothing but a certain modification of the vibratiunculæ or undulations of any kind, what is supreme intelligence, but a more extensive, and (perhaps they will call it) refined undulation, pervading or mixing with all others? Indeed it is in this very manner that the universal operation of intelligence is pretended to be explained. As any new or partial undulation may be superinduced on any other already existing, and this without the least disturbance or confusion, so may the inferior intelligences in the universe be only superinductions on the operations of this supreme intelligence which pervades them all,—And thus an undulation (of what? surely of something prior to and independent of this modification) is the cause of all the beings in the universe, and of all the harmony and beauty that we observe,—And this undulation is the object of love, and gratitude, and confidence (that is, of other kinds of undulations.)—Fortunately all this has no meaning.—But surely, if any thing can tend to diminish the force of our religious sentiments, and make all Dr. Priestley's discoveries in Christianity insignificant, this will do it.