Cleo. First, I agree with you that he was a man of erudition, and a very polite writer; he has displayed a copious imagination, and a fine turn of thinking, in courtly language and nervous expressions: But, as on the one hand, it must be confessed, that his sentiments on liberty and humanity are noble and sublime, and that there is nothing trite or vulgar in the Characteristics; so, on the other, it cannot be denied, that the ideas he had formed of the goodness and excellency of our nature, were as romantic and chimerical as they are beautiful and amiable; that he laboured hard to unite two contraries that can never be reconciled together, innocence of manners, and worldly greatness; that to compass this end, he favoured deism, and, under pretence of lashing priestcraft and superstition, attacked the Bible itself; and, lastly, that by ridiculing many passages of Holy Writ, he seems to have endeavoured to sap the foundation of all revealed religion, with design of establishing Heathen virtue on the ruins of Christianity.
FINIS.
INDEX.
Abelard, page [334].
Absurd, nothing is thought so that we have been used to, [367].
Absurdities in sacred matters not incompatible with politeness and worldly wisdom, [413], [414], [415], [422].
Acclamations made at church, [369].
Accomplishments. The foundation of them is laid in our youth, [508].