supernatural. Both of them might thus concur in receiving the hypothesis of planetary worlds, which does not require to be contrasted with the other, nor should have been so by me, if I had not thought it necessary to show, at the same time, that there are probably finite created intelligencies vastly superior to the human, and that there is, however, no such gradation of intelligent beings, as raises the most elevated of them a jot nearer to the Supreme Intelligence than the lowest. I oppose this theological system, and I defend the philosophical hypothesis the rather, because, by these means, we may combat the pride and presumption of metaphysicians in two most flagrant instances, in the assumption of a gradation of the same intelligence and knowledge from man to God, as I have said already, and in that by which man is made the final cause of the whole creation; for if the planets of our solar system are worlds inhabited like ours, and if the fixed stars are other suns about which other planets revolve, the celestial phænomena were no more made for us than we for them. That noble scene of the universe, which modern philosophy has opened, gives ample room for all the planetary inhabitants, whom it leads, and even constrains us to suppose. Where the spirits of the other system reside, was a question easily answered, when superstition and hypothesis made up the sum of theology and philosophy. But it is not so easy to be answered now. Are the good and pure spirits in Heaven? But where is Hea ven? Is it beyond all the solar systems of the universe? Or is it, like the intermundia of Epicurus, in expanses between them? Are the evil and impure spirits in Hell? But where is Hell? Is it in the centre of any one planet for every system? Or is it in the centre of every planet? Do others wander in air, or reside latent in every element? Are they confined invisibly, like those that the Chinese imagine, to certain countries and cities, to rivers and lakes, to woods and mountains? Or is it their employment to attend on particular men, the guardian angels of some, or the devils and the tempters of others; for temptation is ascribed to the evil spirits still, though possession is so no longer, I think, out of Spain and Portugal, and other countries where religious ignorance prevails as much as in them, if any such there are ?------Tantum-- 187 ESSAY THE THIRD. I SECTION I. HAD finished the last Essay, before I recollected, that there was something in Mr. Locke's discourse concerning the Reasonableness of Christianity very repugnant to what I have advanced about the knowledge of the one true God, and to what I shall have occasion to say, on another occasion, about the ignorance of natural religion, under which it is supposed that mankind laboured before the coming of Christ. I shall not anticipate the second point, but shall bestow some more reflections on the first; in order to judge, while the subject is fresh on my mind, whether I ought to retract any thing that I have said to you in conversation, or that has fallen from my pen upon the subject. If it appears, on examination, that my notions are not so well founded in fact, and in reason, as those of this great man in the present case, I shall submit with pleasure to an authority that I respect extremely in all cases; and if it appears that they are better founded than his in both, one useful lesson will be the result of this examination. We shall learn how unsafe it is to take for granted any thing in matters, |