that state: grief, pain, crime, all physical and moral evils, were then unknown. It is true, there was no pleasure felt; but that privation of good was not an evil; since it cannot be so, but as it is felt and lamented. You see therefore that it did not become a wise and good being to change the condition of matter, to transform it into such a world as this is. It contained in its bosom the seeds of all the crimes and miseries we now behold; but those were unfruitful seeds, and in that state they did no more harm than if they had not existed; nor were they pernicious and fatal, till after the animals were hatched out of them by the formation of the world. Thus, matter was a Camarina* which should not have been stirred; it should have been left in its eternal rest; well remembering, that the more one stirs a noxious matter, the more it spreads its infection round. We must not doubt that the divine nature has acted by this notion; and therefore it is not the divine nature which has made the world.

It could not be answered to this reasoning of Epicurus, that God did not foresee the malignity of the souls that should be hatched out of those seeds of matter: for he would presently reply, that thereby we should ascribe to God such an ignorance as would have had ill consequences; that at least God would have restored things to their former state, after he had seen the ill effects of his work; and so the world would not have lasted till the time when he, Epicurus, disputed with a Platonist about the doctrine of Providence.

His last objection would be the strongest: he would shew to his adversary, that the most intimate, general, and infallible notion we have of God is, that God enjoys perfect felicity. Now this is incompatible with the supposition of Providence: for if he

* See Erasmus upon thé proverb, Movere Camarinam. It is the sixty-fourth of the first century of the first Chiliad.

govern the world, he created it; if he created it, he has either foreseen all the disorders that are in it, or he has not foreseen them. If he have foreseen them, it cannot be said that he made the world out of a principle of goodness; which destroys the best answer of the Platonist. If he have not foreseen them, it is impossible that, seeing the ill success of his work, he should not have been extremely grieved at it: he would have been convinced that he had not known the quality of the materials, or had wanted power to overcome their resistance, as without doubt he hoped to have done. There is no workman that can see without grief his hopes baffled, that he has missed his aim, and that having designed to work for the public good, he had made a pernicious machine, &c. We have indeed some ideas, whereby we know that this can never be God's case; but we have none whereby to know, that, if by an impossibility it was his case, he were not to be pitied, and most unhappy.

If we suppose afterwards, that instead of destroying such a work, he obstinately resolves to preserve it, and continually to be employed either in mending its faults, or preventing their increase; we require an idea of the most unhappy nature that can be conceived. He designed to build a magnificent palace for the accommodation of animated creatures, which were to come out of the shapeless bosom of matter, and there to bestow felicity upon them; but it happens that those creatures devour one another, being incapable to continue alive, if the flesh of some did not serve as food to others. It happens that the most perfect of those animals do not spare even the flesh of those of his kind; there happen to be cannibals among them; and those who abstain from that brutality, do not forbear persecuting one another, and are a prey to envy, jealousy, fraud, avarice, cruelty, diseases, cold, heat, hunger, &c.

Their author struggling continually with the malignity of the matter productive of those disorders, and obliged to have always the thunderbolt in his hand, and to pour down upon the earth pestilence, war, and famine; which, with the wheels and gibbets with which highways abound, do not hinder evil from maintaining itself. Can the author of all this be looked upon as a happy being? Can he be happy, when at the end of four thousand years' labour he has made no farther progress in his work than the first day he undertook it, although he passionately desires to finish it? Is not this image of infelicity as lively as Ixion's wheel, the stone of Sisyphus, and the tub of the Danaides?

I say nothing but what is very likely, when I suppose that Epicurus persuaded himself that the gods would soon have repented the having made the world; and that the trouble of governing so indocile and refractory an animal as man, would disturb their felicity. Do we not see in the Scripture, that the true God, accommodating himself to our capacity, has revealed himself as a Being, who, having known the malice of man, repented and was sorry he had created him, and as a Being who is provoked, and complaining of the ill success of his labour? He says to Israel, "All the day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." I know well enough that the same book which teaches us all these things teaches us likewise how to rectify the idea they present to us at first sight; but Epicurus, destitute as he was of the light of revelation, could not rectify philosophy, and must of necessity follow the path which such a guide shewed him. Now, faithfully pursuing this track, and supported by these two principles; one, that matter was self-existent, and suffered not itself to be managed according to God's desire; the other, that the felicity of God cannot admit the least disturbance; he must have rested in this

conclusion, that there is no Divine Providence. We shall thence draw some consequences advantageous to the truth of the Christian religion. Epicurus's objections, which have been set forth in the preceding remark, and which were sufficient to nonplus the heathen philosophers, disappear and vanish away like smoke, with respect to those whom revelation has taught, "that God is the Creator of the World, both as to its matter and to its form." From God's being the creator of matter, it results, that with the most lawful authority that can be, he disposes of the universe as he thinks fit; that he needs only a single act of his will to do whatever he pleases; that nothing happens but what he has placed in the plan of his work. It follows also, that the conduct of the world is not an employment that can either fatigue or trouble God, and that no events whatsoever can disturb his felicity. If some things happen which he has forbidden, and which he punishes, they do not however happen contrary to his decrees, and they are subservient to the ends he has proposed to himself from all eternity, and which are the greatest mysteries of the gospel. But the better to know the importance of the doctrine of the creation, we must also cast our eyes upon the inextricable difficulties in which they involve themselves who deny it. Consider therefore what Epicurus might have objected to the Platonist, as we have seen before, and what may be said now-adays against the Socinians. They have rejected the Evangelical mysteries, because they could not reconcile them with the light of reason. They would have contradicted themselves, if they had agreed that God created matter: for this philosophical axiom, nihilo nihil fit-nothing is made out of nothing," is as evident as the principles by virtue of which they have denied the Trinity and the Hypostatic union. They have therefore denied the creation; but what have they got by it? Why, the falling into one abyss

"Ex

by avoiding another; having been obliged to acknowledge the independent existence of matter, and at the same time to submit it to the authority of another being. They have been forced to own, that necessary existence may belong to a substance which is besides full of defects and imperfections; and this destroys a most evident notion, to wit, that what is eternally and independently self-existent, ought to be infinitely perfect; for what could have set bounds to the power and attributes of such a being? In short, they must answer most of the difficulties, which I have supposed Epicurus might have proposed to the philosophers who admitted the eternity of matter. Hence we may infer, that it is very advantageous to the Christian religion, to shew that the eternity of matter draws after it the destruction of Divine Providence. By this means we imply the necessity, truth, and certainty of the creation."

I am sure that one of the greatest philosophers of this age, and at the same time one of the most zealous writers for the doctrines of the gospel, will agree, that by making an apology for Epicurus, such as we have seen it ex hypothesi in the preceding remark, we do the true faith no small service. He teaches not only that there would be no providence, if God had not created matter, but even that God would not know that there is matter, if it were uncreated. I shall cite his words at large, wherein the Socinians will find their condemnation: "How stupid and ridiculous philosophers are! They imagine the creation to be impossible, because they do not perceive the power of God to be so great as to make something out of nothing. But can they conceive how God's power is able to move a straw? If they consider it well, they conceive not the one more clearly than the other, since they have no clear idea of efficacy or power; insomuch that if they followed their false principle, they ought to affirm, that God wants even the power to give