On the Love of our Country. A Faft Sermon 221 Perfeverance in Well-doing. A Sermon 245 The Duties of Industry, Frugality, and A Teft of true and false Doctrines. A Sermon 313 A N ESSAY, &c. M R. HUME hath many of the ta lents of a fine writer, and hath justly obtained that character by the agreeable Essays moral and political, with which he has obliged the world. What he hath written well will create a prejudice in favour of his errors; and these will have all their bad influence, when recommended by fo able an advocate. The present is a subject of the greatest importance, and the author expreffes a particular fatisfaction in his performance. These are reasons for considering it carefully, and for guarding B * The reader is defired to distinguish betwixt this and the Philofophical Effays of this author, which is the book referred to throughout this treatife. guarding ourselves against being deceived by the artifice or eloquence of the writer. He begins with challenging, a little indirectly, the thanks of the public, for a dif covery, which, he apprehends, will be of univerfal service to mankind. This is nothing less than an infallible cure for fuperftition. "I flatter myself," fays he, "that I have difcovered an argument, which, if juft, will, with the wife and learned, be "an everlasting check to all kinds of fuper"ftitious delufion, and, confequently, will "be useful as long as the world endures "for fo long, I fuppofe, will the accounts "of miracles and prodigies be found in all τέ profane history*." The virtues of this fpecifick are fuch, that it exterminates all religions alike; as he fhews, by trying its ftrength upon the Chriftian, which, where it prevails, is, perhaps, more obftinate and hard of cure than any other. Here, however, it has been known to fail. I have given it a fair trial, and known it tried by others, without the leaft effect, and think I can prove that there is no one ingredient of any virtue or efficacy in it. The * Philofophical Essays concerning Human Understanding, 174, first edition, page 344 of the 4to Edit. 1758. |