tance from the earth to be greater than that of the sun,* are not proofs of any great progress in astronomical research. On this subject, see Montucla's observations, in the part referred to in the note below. In truth, from circumstances such as these, joined to the fact, of the Indians being unable to give any explanation of, or assign any reasons for their particular tables and calculations, there seems good reason to think, that much, of what has been supposed to be their own invention, has been derived to them from other sources; as has proved to be the case, with respect to the Chinese tables; and as Mr. Nares has well shown to be extremely probable, with respect to those of the Indians likewise.† Bampt. Lect. pp. 270, 271.

As to the readiness of the Indians to impose fabrications upon the Europeans, all must now be tolerably well satisfied, since the publication of Mr. Wilford's letter, in which he confesses, with a grief that had actually reduced him to a fit of sickness, that "his Pundits had totally deceived him, in almost all that he had written about the Sacred Islands in the West; having at different times, and in proportion as they became acquainted with his pursuits and his wishes, made erasures in the Sanscrit MSS, and on those erasures inserted the names, RAJATA-DWEEP, for England, and SUVARNADWEEP, for Ireland." He adds, also, that "those frequently recurring erasures in most Indian мss, tended to throw a deep shade over their presumed authority." Another imposition, on a subject infinitely more important, has also since come to light. For, unfortunately, we find, that the remarkable passage in the 3d vol. of the Researches, which Sir W. Jones affirms, to be an exact translation by himself, from an Indian MS, forwarded to him by Mr. Wilford, relative to Noah, under the name of Satyavarman, and his three sons, Sherma, Charma, and Jyapeti, is ALTOGETHER A FORGERY BY THE BRAHMENS.

I cannot forbear annexing to this Number a passage from an old translation of a work of the celebrated Amyraut. It

"Ils font aussi la Lune plus éloignée de nous que le Soleil, et même ils sont aussi attacheés à cette opinion, qu'on l'est encore dans certaines contrées à nier le mouvement de la terre. Un Brame et un missionarie étant dans la même prison, le premier souffroit assez patiemment, que l'autre entreprît de le désabuser du culte de Brama; mais lorsque, dans d'autres conversations, il vit que le Missionaire pértendoit, que le Soleil étoit au delà de la Lune, ç'en fut fait : il rompit entiérement avec lui, et ne voulut plus lui, parler.”—Montuc. Hiss. des. Mathem. tom. i. p. 404.

Will not this supposition throw some light upon that extraordinary acquaintance with certain Trigonometrical principles, laid down in the Surya Siddhanta, which have excited Professor Playfair's wonder in Edinb. Trans.

vol. iv.

has a close connexion with the principal topics under discussion: and the singular value of its contents, will, I trust, justify its insertion.

66

Furthermore, whereas it was well said by one, that things of greatest antiquity are best; and the philosophers themselves, when they treat concerning God and religion, extremely cry up antiquity, and attribute much to the dictates of their ancestors; as if nature itself had suggested to them, that there was a source of all these things, from which they, that were nearest it, drew the purest and sincerest waters; whereas, accordingly as they are derived through several minds, as so many several conduit pipes, they become corrupted and tincted with extraneous qualities, and contract impurity. If there be found a doctrine that has all the marks of antiquity, and there appears nothing in the world that equals it, it ought not to be doubted, but that the same proceeded from him that is more ancient than all, as being author of all things. If the language in which it was revealed be as the mother and stock, from which others, though very ancient, are sprung; if it describes the history of the world, and of men, and their propagation upon the earth; if it affords the demonstration of times, and that without it the knowledge of chronology would be more intricate than a labyrinth; if it deduces its history from point to point with an exact correspondence; if it clearly and certainly relates histories, that are as the body of the fabulous shadows that we see in the writings of the most ancient authors in the world; who will doubt, but all which they have, is taken from thence, and that we ought to refer what is therein depraved and corrupted, thereunto, as to its principle, and have recourse thither to learn what we are ignorant of?-If there be found a religion, all whose parts accord together with an admirable harmony, although it has been propounded at several times, and by several persons, in several places; if there be a discipline, a doctrine, a book, a society, in which God himself speaks to men in a style and manner agreeable to the eminence of his majesty, displays his justice to them most terrible in its appearance, discovers his power in its highest magnificence, and gives them to sound the breadth and length, depth and heighth of his infinite mercies: lastly, if examples of an incomparable virtue be found therein, with incitations and instructions to piety; such as are not to be paralleled any other where in the world; 'tis an indubitable argument, that they are proceeded from some other than the human mind, or the school of MAN."

In referring to the authors who have illustrated the primary subjects of this Number, I ought not to omit the name of Mr. Lloyd, who, in his valuable treatise on Christian Theology,

has so justly propounded, and so impressively and eloquently enforced, the leading doctrines of the Christian religion. But that this Number has been already carried to an unreasonable length, I should add to it some extracts from his 1st and 2d chapters, which could not fail to enhance its value. From his remarks in the 1st chap. (particularly p. 6-10) on the proper provinces of Natural and Revealed Religion; and from those in the 2d, on the unity of divine truths displayed in the Jewish and Christian dispensations; I can promise the judicious reader much satisfaction and instruction.

In bestowing upon Lord Bolingbroke the epithet of SoPHIST, in the preceding Number, at p. 406, I feel upon second thoughts, that I have not been strictly correct in the application of the term. Ingenuity exerted, under a subtle show of reasoning, for the purpose of misleading and overreaching the controversial opponent, is the distinguishing attribute of the character so denominated. His Lordship, however, has not condescended to deal, in this treacherous manner, with those whom he combats in argument. His magnanimity, and his candour, are both at war with such mean and petty artifices. The one raises him above the little forms of logical and exact ratiocination; and the other inspires him with the disdain of concealing from his opponent any vulnerable part. His argument is, accordingly, of that elevated quality, that deals in lofty language and privileged assertion, and of that intrepid character, that fears not, as occasion may demand, to beat down the very positions, which, when other occasions demanded, it had been found convenient to maintain. The noble writer, in short, too courtly to associate with the antiquated followers of Aristotle, and too free to be trammelled by the rules of a precise and circumscribing dialectic, passes on fluently in one smooth and gentlemanly tenor, undisturbed by any want of connexion between premises and conclusion, and at perfect liberty to relinquish either, or both, just as his lordly humour may happen to direct. To these ingenuous qualities which exalt his Lordship's reasoning above the pedantic exactness of logic, is superadded an easy freedom which releases his Lordship's history from the troublesome punctilios of fact. So that, upon the whole, there is scarcely any writer, who, in a flowing and copious vein of declamation, possesses, in any degree comparable to his Lordship, the art of arriving at whatever conclusion he pleases, and by whatever route: not merely overwhelming the astonished adver sary, by a rapid succession of movements the most unexpect

ed; but displaying still greater argumentative powers, in overturning those very dogmas which had just before been rendered impregnable to all but himself, and thereby defeating the only antagonist worthy to be opposed to so illustrious a disputant.

To be serious, there is no writer of any name, Voltaire perhaps alone excepted, whose attempts upon Christianity are more impotent and contemptible than those of Lord Boling broke. The bare enumeration of the positions he has maintained throughout his Letters on History, and what are called his Philosophical Works, would be an exposure of ignorance and imbecility, sufficient not merely to satisfy truth, but to satiate malice. It was therefore scarcely necessary that his deistical productions should have been submitted to the careful dissection of Clayton, Warner, and Leland, and the powerful and unmerciful lacerations of Warburton.* They must soon have done the work for themselves. Having little more than their impiety and their viciousness to recommend them, they must inevitably, excepting only with those to whom impiety and vice are a recommendation, have ere long reached that oblivion to which, save only with such persons, they are now, I may say, almost universally consigned. On their first publication, it was proposed as the best mode of counteracting their mischievous design, to collect the contradictory passages, and merely arranging them mutually confronted in opposing columns, so to leave them without comment to the reflections of the reader: and, if I mistake not, this idea was acted on by one writer, in a work, entitled an Analysis of the Philosophical Works of the late Lord Bolingbroke. This work I have not seen: but so exact a specimen of this nature is supplied by the very part of this writer's works, to which I have had in the foregoing Number, occasion to refer, that I cannot refuse to produce it for the reader's satisfaction.

Being anxious to prove, in opposition to the received opinion, that the idolatries of the Gentile world could not have been derived from the corruptions of an original Revelation, he peremptorily asserts, that "it is impossible for any man in his senses to believe, that a tradition, (namely, that of the unity of God) derived from God himself, through so few generations, was lost among the greatest part of mankind; or

See the View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy in four letters to a friend, in which all that fervid vigour and burning severity for which its author is so distinguished, are overpoweringly exerted for the purpose of laying bare to the public eye, the miserable deficiencies of his Lordship, as a philosophical writer, under the several heads of ingenuity, of truth, of consistency, of learn: ing, and of reasoning.

that Polytheism and idolatry were established on the ruins of it, in the days of Serug, before those of Abraham, and so soon after the deluge." (Philos. Works, 8vo. ed. vol. i. p. 299.) At the distance of less than two pages, we find it as peremptorily asserted, by this same extraordinary writer, that "Polytheism and idolatry have the closest connexion with the natures and affections of rude ignorant men:" and in less than half a page more, that "the vulgar embrace them easily, even after the true doctrine of a divine unity has been taught and received, as we may learn from the example of the Israelites and that superstitions grow apace, and spread wide, even in those countries where Christianity has been established and is daily taught, as we may learn from the examples of the Roman churches," &c.-But this is not all. We find this same writer again, in vol. ii. p. 200-210. both deny the fact that the divine unity had been taught to the Israelites, and soon forgotten by them, (which is the very example he builds upon in the above passage,) and also the application of that fact to the case of other nations, (which application is the very use he has himself made of that fact.)-And then, after all this, and almost in the same breath in which he has made these assertions, he draws back again in part, and says, "I do not so much deny the truth of the facts, as I oppose their application." (p. 210.) That is, I cannot resist the recapitulation, our author first denies a certain fact as imposi ble: then establishes its strong probability upon general principles of human nature, supported by an example drawn from the case of the Israelites, and applied to that of mankind at large then he both denies the truth of that very example, and the justness of its application, (both of which are his own undisputed property :) and then again he admits them both, in certain (but different) degrees; since he does not so much deny the one as he opposes the other. What does all this mean? Is it, or is it not nonsense? Have we not here then, (to use the sort of pleasant and sportive phrase, that might not improbably have been used by such writers as his Lordship,) in beating about for game, sprung a whole covey of con tradictions, which, after winging their tortuous course in all directions, have at last sought shelter, by taking flight into the impenetrable thickets of nonsense? Now what is to be done with such a writer as this? The author of the memoirs of his life, whilst he speaks in terms much too strong of his qualities as a statesman, remarks, in alluding to the excursions which, as an author, he had ventured to make beyond his proper sphere: "I should be sorry, that you took your politics from priests; but I should be in more pain if I thought