Mother of Arrogance and source of pride!

We nobly take the high priori road,

And reason downward, till we doubt of God.”

Pope’s Dunciad, b. IV. l. 455.

The following observation, in the form of a note, is referred to, from the lines above quoted, in a work which contains that extract, viz. “Those, who, from the effects in this visible world, deduce the eternal power and Godhead of the first cause, though they cannot attain to an adequate idea of the Deity, yet discover so much of him, as enables them to see the end of their creation and the means of their happiness: whereas they who take “the high priori road,” as Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, and some better reasoners, for one that goes right, ten lose themselves in “mists,” or ramble after visions, which deprive them of all sight of their end, and mislead them in the choice of wrong means.”

Mr. Pope had put the above poetical lines into the mouth of one of his Dunces, when addressing himself to the goddess Dullness. And as the great Dr. Samuel Clarke had previously endeavoured to shew,[[358a]] that the Being of a God may be demonstrated by arguments deduced â priori, the Doctor conceived himself to be struck at, among those “better reasoners” alluded to, in the note above mentioned.

[358a]. In his work entitled, “A Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of a God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the truth and certainty of the Christian Revelation; in answer to Mr. Hobbes, Spinoza, the Author of the Oracles of Reason, and other deniers of natural and revealed Religion.”

[359]. See Ritt. Orat.

[360]. Ibid.

[361]. “Other systems of Philosophy have ever found it necessary to conceal their weakness and inconsistency, under the veil of unintelligible terms and phrases, to which no two mortals, perhaps, ever affixed the same meaning. But the philosophy of Newton disdains to make use of such subterfuges; it is not reduced to the necessity of using them, because it pretends not to be of nature’s privy council, or to have access to her most inscrutable mysteries; but, to attend carefully to her works, to discover the immediate causes of visible effects, to trace those causes to others more general and simple, advancing by slow and sure steps towards the Great First Cause of all things.” Ritt. Orat.