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vant does contrary to his orders, because the power of the master is limited to the giving orders to the servant, and he cannot compel the servant not to disobey them. But if the master made the servant, his intellect, passions, &c., and knew all his thoughts, and could at any moment compel him to act in any way he thought proper, then the master would be the sole cause of every act done by the servant, no matter what orders he gave him.

I have said little about Pope's system (if his beautiful poem on the subject deserves that name), because I believe no human production ever exhibited such a waste of words as his "Essay on Man," without the slightest approximation to any elucidation of a subject, all the difficulties of which he professes dogmatically to solve at once. All, however, that he tells us is, that he

can form no conjecture on the subject whatever; but that he supposes all is right. When any difficulty meets him, he explains

it by telling us he knows other difficulties quite as insurmountable. One difficulty

he solves, by desiring us to

"Ask of yon argent fields above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove?"

The question why God permits the vicious passions of one individual to spread misery on millions, Pope answers, by asking the reader

"If an earthquake break not heaven's design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?"

This is surely an unsatisfactory answer to the questions, What is the design of heaven? and, How do the earthquake and Borgia promote it? For I suppose it may

be assumed, that Omniscience does not act without design, and does not give exist

ence to any thing that does not promote, much less that obstructs or defeats, its designs.

LETTER X.

Nor to trouble you with any further examination of the common theories on this subject, I will, as briefly as I can, state to you the solution which I have said I consider simple, satisfactory, discoverable by the light of nature, and confirmed by Revelation. Human reason could never have done more than guess the purposes of God in creating man, and I much doubt whether it could have done that accurately or satisfactorily; but the goodness of God in instructing man in the way of happiness, by the means of Moses and of Christ, abundantly proves that his only design, in the creation of the human species, was to pro

duce creatures capable of the utmost happiness, and to communicate that happiness to them for ever. This purpose required that those creatures should be intelligent, and that they should fully appreciate the blessings they were called to enjoy; for no blessing can be fully enjoyed that is not justly appreciated. Now no good can be justly appreciated, if it be not compared with its contrary evil; and evil must exist, before it can be compared with good; and to exist, it must be suffered. Hence the necessity of our suffering temporary evil, that we may fully enjoy eternal happiness. To have full enjoyment of good, we must have a perfect knowledge of it; for good unknown is a nullity: to have a perfect knowledge of it, we must compare it with evil, because all our knowledge results from the comparison of our ideas; to compare it with evil, we must know evil; to know evil,

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