that the spirit, or breath of God, which blew into the face of the first man, and made him a living creature,* might blow likewise on extraordinary occasions, and in an extraordinary manner, into the faces of some of his posterity, as into chosen vessels. They might be easily persuaded, that this breath was not only a principle of life to all, but an influencing, exciting, and enlightening principle to some. They might imagine without any great effort, that the effect of this occasional breath was to fan into a flame the latent sparks of a certain fire that had been kindled in the original constitution of man, and had been extinguished by the fall. They might imagine, that they knew really what all this meant, and on such reasonings, which would have been none of the worst they employed, they might have proved to themselves and others the inspiration of Christian saints, to whom sublime mysterious truths were revealed, and of Jewish prophets and seers, who foretold future events and recovered stolen goods; for even this, as low as it may seem, was a part of their employment, and one effect of their inspiration.

But this reign is well nigh over; or, if it continues in some of these parts of the world, it triumphs universally in none. He who pretends to instruct now must know first, and expect, if he uses any figure, to be called upon to explain his meaning; that is, to show this meaning without the veil of any figure. Inspiration was long understood in the literal sense of the word, not only whilst men imagined grossly that it was the effect of a subterranean wind or vapor, but when they had spiritualised it a little, and fancied it a breath that came from above, or a spirit that descended on one prophet, and passed from one to another with sensible effects. Since it could be received no longer in the literal sense, philosophers and divines have given up the literal sense, and kept the word that signified something, to serve as a figure that signifies nothing, and that can be translated into nothing but some other figure. Figures and types are indeed the strongest entrenchments of metaphysics and theology: and it is in them that the professors of these reputed sciences defend themselves the best.

An history of inspiration, like one of divination, would be a collection of such extravagances and absurdities, as might be sufficient to make our species forfeit the character of reasonable creatures, if it did not show at the same time that by a free use of their reason men have detected, one after another, most of the fallacies, the grossest at least, that had been imposed on them by Heathens, Jews, and Christians, for even of these it cannot be

Inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vitæ, et factus est homo in animam viventem, are the words of Moses.

denied. The fautors of inspiration are thus reduced to their last entrenchment; and having abandoned all their other posts as untenable, they endeavor to defend this by not explaining what has been refuted as often as any explanation of it has been attempted. Your friend, Atterbury, who knew more of classical learning, and even of divinity, than he did of politics, though he affected these the most, has sometimes lamented that any explanations of the real presence in the eucharisty had been given, and that the church had made any decisions about it. As long as it was held an inexplicable mystery, it was believed, he said; but as soon as divines had been so unskilful as to attempt to explain it, Berenger's recantation signified nothing, and it has been a disputed point ever since. If this be a right notion, as I incline to think it is, these two mysteries, that of the real presence, and that of inspiration, have had very different fates. The first set out a mystery, and was piously believed, till attempts to explain it showed that it implied contradiction. The other set out as a natural phenomenon, and was so far from being thought a real mystery, how much soever it might remain such to the vulgar, that prophecy and divination, the effects of it, were thought attainable by purifications, purgations, and other physical methods, and that they became arts which were taught in the schools by the Heathens and the colleges of the Jews. But the notion of inspiration has ended in mystery where the other began: and this expedient, the only one that can support it at all, would support it effectually, if these ages resembled a little better those wherein the belief of the real presence was first established.

It may be said, that an extraordinary action of God in the human mind, which the word inspiration is now used to denote, is not more inconceivable than the ordinary action of mind on body, and of body on mind; and I confess that it is not. But yet the cases are so widely different, that no argument can be drawn from one in favor of the other. It is impossible to doubt of an action which is an object of intuitive knowledge, and whereof we are conscious every moment; and it is impertinent to deny the existence of any phenomenon merely because we cannot account for it. But then this phenomenon must be apparent, and the proof that it exists, or has existed, must be such as no reasonable man can refuse to admit. Otherwise we shall be exposed to make frequently the ridiculous figure that philosophers have sometimes made, when it has been discovered after they had reasoned long about a thing, that there was no such thing. We must not assume for truth, what can be proved neither à priori nor à posteriori. A mystery cannot be proved à priori, it would be no mystery if it could; and inspiration is

become a mystery, since all we know of it is, that it is an inexplicable action of the divine on the human mind. It would be silly, therefore, to assume it to be true, because God can act mysteriously, that is, in ways unknown to us, on his creature man; for just so Asgyll did prove, or might have proved, that men do not die, but are translated, because God can translate them. There is then no possibility of proving inspiration à priori; and the proofs that are brought à posteriori, for Christian inspiration, are not more decisive to Christians, than those which the Stoicians brought in favor of vaticination and divination were to them, nor than those which the Mahometans and the worshipers of Foe bring of the same kind are to them.

This word inspiration, about which I have said so much more than I intended, belongs properly to you sons of Apollo; and to you it should be of right restored. Whilst you were at once poets, prophets, philosophers, and divines, and went about from house to house singing, as the Methodists do preaching sublime doctrines, the use of it might be a little confused: and what you assumed in the two first characters, you might ascribe to yourselves and others in the two last. But since they are become distinct professions, as well as characters, and one of them, that of prophets, is extinct, inspiration may have its place and use in poetry; but no where else. If philosophers and divines employ this word, which signifies a particular and determinate action, as a figure to signify some other action, they employ it improperly. It cannot serve to inform; but it may serve, and it actually does serve, to deceive. Our Quakers, our Methodists, and enthusiasts of every sort and in every religion, are confirmed, by the received use of this word, in the belief that the spirit of God descends upon them, is inspired into them, excites and enlightens their minds, and enables them by its powerful operation to utter all the extravagances, which are in their opinion so many divine truths.

It is the more reasonable to guard against every thing of this kind, because the hypothesis of some of our finest modern writers on the subject of the human mind, though they do not pretend directly to be inspired, seem to renew and improve the reveries, or waking dreams of ancient philosophers, in such a manner as to lay again the foundations of superstition, by supposing an immediate and constant communication between the divine and the human natures. That Malebranche supposed such a communication, is evident in all his writings: and his Christian and metaphysical meditations are nothing less than a dialogue between the Word and him. The conference was not held indeed in the terms and form of the dialogue; but the language he makes

the Word to hold in it, he affirms to be conformable to the answers which he thinks he received when he interrogated the Word on the same subjects.

I have sometimes wondered that divines and metaphysicians, who have borrowed so many fantastical notions from Plato, have neglected one which they might have found in the Apology of Socrates, and by which they might have accounted more probably, and more decently than they have done, for divine inspirations, revelations, and communications. They might have learned there to distinguish between the ethereal and elementary body. We may compare the first to a shirt, since the same Plato compares the second in the Phædro to a suit of clothes, and since it is worn under the other, "sub manifesto hoc corpore latens." Now it was by this medium that Socrates was inspired by his demon, or guardian angel. He saw visions, and he heard voices, but how? Not by his elementary, but by his ethereal senses. Thus an inferior spirit, and not the Supreme Being, is the immediate actor; and inspiration is no longer an unmeaning figure of speech. But this is not enough for metaphysical divines. Our notions of humanity must be raised higher, even at the expense of debasing (for such it appears to me) our notions of the divinity. God and man must be more intimately joined, though by endeavoring so to join them, they renew, in some sort, the grossest absurdities of paganism.

*

Many instances might be produced of this sort, and some very flagrant. I will content myself in this place with the mention of one. Bayle observes, that the notion of seeing all things in the infinite Being, which father Malebranche advanced on this assumption, that our ideas must be in God, because they cannot be modifications of any created mind, differs little from the doctrine of Democritus, who taught, that the images of objects, which present themselves to our senses, are emanations of God, nay that they are God, and that the idea in our minds is God likewise. The observation is certainly just, and I need not enlarge upon it to show you that it is so. Instead of that, I will ask you whether the different hypothesis of a philosopher, whom you and I love and honor, has not some, though a more remote resemblance to the same doctrine? Both of them at least have, in

The words of Tully are these: "Democritus, qui tum imagines earumque circuitus in deorum numero refert: tum illam naturam quæ imagines fundit ac mittat: tum scientiam intelligentiamque." They will be better translated thus: Democritus, who places among the gods not only the images of the objects that surround and strike us, but that nature which pours forth and sends these images to us, and knowledge and intelligence. Cotta mentions the same notions afterwards, not in the same words as Velleius, but to the same effect.-TULLY de Nat. Deor. 1. 1.

my opinion, one common tendency, that which I have just now mentioned. If I was perfectly persuaded, as I am very much of the contrary, that we perceive all our ideas in the divine mind, I could account for all that is attributed to inspiration by a figure, that would have a sort of metaphysical meaning. I could represent the soul as a mirror, and it has been so represented, I think, by some, and then suppose, that images received from the presence of God to it, are reflected by it, which would be like the reflected light of the sun, a secondary and fainter, but a divine illumination. Again, could I comprehend that visual language in which "the Author of nature constantly speaks to the eyes of all mankind;" I might be able perhaps to comprehend how God may speak to prophets and apostles in visions, or else I might deduce by analogy, that as we think we see when we do not really see, but only receive ideas through the eye from an immediate action of God, so prophets and apostles might think that they employed the faculties of their own excited and illuminated minds, and signified their own thoughts by the words they pronounced, when they neither thought nor spoke, but when the breath of God articulated in their organs. I might be able to comprehend such sublime notions, and I should be glad, no doubt, to find how happily these doctrines coincide with that ancient opinion, that prophets prophesied often without knowing that they did so. But, I confess, that I comprehend as little our friend's hypothesis as I do that of the father of the oratory; though I comprehend very clearly how we may be said in some sort, and in some particular cases, to learn to see; that is, by the ordinary course of experience, and not by any divine agency.

Shall I own it? I cannot be mortified at my want of comprehension in this case. When philosophers employ clear and determinate ideas, such as are real not fantastic, and when they reason on principles that are evidently true, instead of such as are doubtful at best, I comprehend them without any extreme labor of mind. When they do otherwise, I misspend no time in making unprofitable efforts to comprehend them. Cotta treats the notions of Democritus that have been mentioned with the utmost contempt, and even Velleius had entered into no refutation of them. Bayle thinks a little genius could never form them, and that in order to form them a man must comprehend the whole extent of power, which belongs to a nature capable of painting in our minds the images of objects. I will imitate in all similar cases the old academician, not the modern sceptic, who seems a dogmatist on this occasion. I will follow no man out of the high road of plain common sense. In that, the philosopher may lead me to all real knowledge; for common sense does not exclude uncommon discoveries in the search of truth. But the philoso