Polites. 'Well then, Aerius, it is agreed that we have no government, no laws."

Aerius. Ay, agreed, agreed, man. Come, shake hands on it. How you and I shall love one another in a state of nature !'

Polites. 'Stay, not so fast. No shaking of hands, no combining, for you say we are to lay aside all society. As for loving each other, that is as your submission to my commands shall render you agreeable to me.'

Aerius. 'Your commands! what does the man mean? why, I tell thee, we are now in a state of nature, in which there is no authority, no sovereignty, no laws.'

Polites. That is what I say; and now that I am just about twice as strong as you, I will force you to do what I please. Your coat is better than mine, I will have that in the first place. You have about forty guineas in your pocket, come, deliver them up to me quickly. If you make any resistance; by all the rights and privileges of nature, I will dash out your brains against the pavement. Why, I like this state of nature hugely. If we are to have no courts of justice, no executioners nor gallows, I shall live most deliciously. I do not know whether there be a man in the nation, whom I could not get the better of at pulling, and hauling, and drubbing; if you turned us out naked, do you see, et in Puris naturalibus.'

Aerius. I mean, that in a state of nature, there are no laws, but those of nature, which will secure my rights though I be the weaker.'

Polites. Do not trust to them, for I assure you, now that we are in a state of nature, and utterly unaccountable for all we do, I find the law of self-love stronger than all the rest, and with the assistance of these hands, I shall gratify it to the full, let it cost you or others what it will.'

'Do you hear this, gentlemen (said Aerius, turning to the rest of the company), do you hear the threats of this unreasonable and imperious monster? You are concerned as well as me. Stand by me therefore, and do not suffer the weaker to be oppressed, since it must be your own turns next.'

Upon this, they were all preparing to lend Aerius their assistance, when Polites cried out;

'Look ye, gentlemen, you are now deciding this question fairly in favour of me, without knowing it; and Aerius himself, in having implored your aid, has given up the possibility of subsisting out of a society. My strength, too great for any one of you, has forced you into a society, a necessity that must ever change a state of nature, if there could be such a state, into government, and clearly evince the absolute want of laws and penalties, and public administration of justice. The wall that keeps us out of that garden, would be but a weak defence for the fruit within, were they not surrounded with a stronger fortification; I mean the statutes against felony and petty larceny, which can keep out those who would easily climb over the wall. You may leap these ditches too without much difficulty, but you won't so easily get over the laws against trespass, that fortify those ditches to better purpose than any quickset. Be advised by me. Mount your horses again, and pursue the king's highway, like honest men, who dare keep the crown of the causeway. There is no slavery in so doing. The king himself, God bless his majesty, must be satisfied with it, when he travels.' Here he stopped, and a sudden shame seized the whole company. They sneaked to their horses, and galloped forward, as fast as they could, to make amends for the time they had lost.

So ended this contest, in which, for once, sober sense and reason got the better of that specious kind of madness, which under the pretence of liberty, would turn us wild into the fields, a kind of beast more savage than any other, as not sparing its own species, and whilst it is misled by a false notion of nature, committing things that nature abhors.

ALLUSION VI.

SCIAGENES AND SELAS.

Sciagenes. SAY what you will, and magnify the good that is done by the Christian religion, at what rate you please; I say, it doth more harm than good in the world. There are two things in which a man may be rendered better or worse,

by the doctrines he hears, and the principles he embraces; to wit, his mind and his actions. Now in both, your religion hath greatly injured us. As to our minds did they ever shew such extravagance under the influence of any system of doctrines that has obtained in the world, as under the Christian? To illustrate this by a recital of all the strange and senseless opinions that your several sects have contended for, would be a very odious and tedious undertaking. As to our actions, which it should be the business of religion to regulate, how miserably they have been perverted by the Christian religion, any one may perceive, who reads the history of the Christians. The author of your religion has told us, that we are to know a tree by its fruit; by this rule his must have been a very corrupt tree, for its fruits have always been very unwholesome, as well as distasteful, ever since the first planting. Christianity has affected the actions of its professors in two different ways. It has furnished some with a hypocritical covering for such enormities as cannot bear the public inspection, it has tempted them to put on the appearance of virtue, and make that serve instead of the thing; whilst it hath supplied others with pretences, for openly committing the most horrid crimes. Persecution, rebellion, tyranny, and bloodshed, hang in clusters, on the gospel vine, and weigh it down, in spite of the support afforded it by priestcraft, and the power of the church.

Selas. You judge most unfairly, Sciagenes, in ascribing those ill effects, to the Christian religion, which are directly contrary to its doctrines, its precepts, and the examples it recommends to our imitation. The absurd opinions, that some, who called themselves Christians, have broached and abetted, were the produce of their own extravagant imaginations. Our Saviour sowed wheat, but the folly and wild enthusiasm of mankind, have sown tares among it. Nor, can wicked actions be attributed, with any justice, to principles, altogether rational and virtuous, although they may be committed, by the professors of those principles. You are a lawyer; must we burn our statutes, and the whole Corpus Jurum, because you secretly take fees on one side of a cause, and openly plead on the other? Must physic and surgery be prohibited, because an ignorant quack shall mis

take and give hemlock for a cordial; or, because a murdering physician shall take a fee, from a young libertine heir to send his sickly father out of the world? Christ planted a vine, and its fruits are meekness, and charity, and obedience to the higher powers, and self-denial; which, as they are virtues, much against the grain of the world, we may be sure they must have weighed down the Christian religion, with that load of odium that attends them, among the more disorderly part of mankind, had it not been supported by the vine-stock of God's continual grace. Pride indeed and avarice, spring up near the root of the vine, and twisting themselves among its branches, mix their pale and baneful berries, with its beautiful and wholesome clusters.

The greater part by far, both of the knowledge and virtue that is in the world, springs from the Christian religion; though idle pretenders to knowledge have taken occasion from thence, to pester the world, with a thousand vain speculations, and pernicious refinements; and, although wicked and self-interested men have impudently pretended to draw the motives of their unrighteous practices, from a desire to promote its welfare. If indeed, mankind had never reasoned absurdly, nor acted wickedly, before they embraced the Christian religion, we might with the greater shew of truth, ascribe the folly and vice, too often to be met with among Christians, to our religion, rather than to the infirmity, and degeneracy of our nature. But as it is quite otherwise, and as there has really been more knowledge and stricter virtue among the worshippers of Christ Jesus, than among those who were ignorant of Christianity, experience is against you. I will tell thee a tale, if thou wilt listen to it, O Sciagenes.

In the old Egyptian chronicles, we are told, that the sun, once upon a time, being highly provoked at the wickedness of mankind, which he was daily obliged, not only to behold, but to lend his light to, resolved never more to offend the purity of his eye, nor pollute the lustre of his rays, with the corruptions of the human race. Full of indignation he turned his foaming steeds, and drove the bright chariot of the day so far into the eastern sky, that it appeared like a star of the third magnitude. From thence, with a certain penury of light, he twinkled faintly on this

ungrateful world, that had so much abused his bounty. However, not intending to leave himself entirely without a witness, nor to plunge the world in utter darkness, he ordered his sister, the moon, with her train of planets, to stay behind, partly to afford mankind a small portion of that derivative light which they enjoyed; and partly to observe, in their periods round this world, the behaviour of mankind during his absence. Mortals, instead of lamenting his departure, hailed the darkness, and rejoiced in that secrecy which it afforded their crimes; the beasts of prey rushed from their dens, and exercised their fury, without restraint or fear: their savage nature grew ten-fold more outrageous, by the boundless and uninterrupted licence the continual night afforded them: the fruits of the earth, with all the variety of sweet-smelling herbs, or beautiful flowers, faded away, and shrunk into their primitive seeds, whilst nothing but the baneful yew, and the cold hemlock, with other poisonous weeds, overspread the damp and dreary soil. As these, with now and then a dragon, or a tiger, when they could kill them, were the only food of mankind, they filled them with various distempers, and shortened their fearful and miserable days. From thence, too, as well as from the coldness and inclemency of the air, together with the continual darkness, the heart of man grew numb and insensible, grew fierce and boisterous, grew gloomy and sullen. Charity grew cold, and hardened to an icicle. Humanity, in passing from man to man, was frozen by the bleakness of the air; and being shivered to pieces, was blown away by the winds in snow. Fraud and theft, and rapine, screened by the black wing of darkness, with lawless and ungovernable impunity, blended right and wrong, and confounded property. Pride and anger, envy and malice stalked abroad in the thick cloud of night, and made such hideous havoc, that the moon is said to have sickened at the sight, and fallen into those fainting fits, which have ever since, at certain seasons, oppressed her, and overcome her light. Every one kindled up a fire of his own, and called it his sun; while those who happened to live near each other, made greater fires by their common labour, on every high hill, which they also called their public suns, comforting themselves with those, and forgetting the true sun; by which, at the same time that they despised