did and impartial; and with perfons who are otherwise difpofed, an appeal to their common fenfe will have no more effect.

In like manner, to prove the facts of the death and refurrection of Chrift, the early dates, and confequent authenticity of the gofpel hiftories, or any other facts, from which the truth of what we call the gospel is inferred, it is fufficient, but it is neceffary, to fhew that the credibility of thefe facts has the fame foundation as that of those which conftitute the body of all ancient hiftory, and that the miraculous events have fuch additional evidence of an external and internal kind, as overbalances our backwardness to admit the truth of facts diffimilar to thofe in other hiftories, and those which have fallen within our own particular obfervation. And if any perfon will fay that this is not demonftration, I am filent; fatiffied with having alledged fuch evidence as the nature of the cafe admitted, and despairing of producing conviction by any other

means.

The

The thing that seems chiefly to have influenced the writers above-mentioned to defert the plain doctrine of Mr. Locke, concerning the fource of our ideas, is its infufficiency to demonftrate the reality of a material world; and, I readily acknowledge, it is infufficient for fuch a demonftration as fhall leave no room for cavil: because it may be faid that, it is poffible that the divine being may, by his own immediate agency, prefent every feparate train of ideas to every individual mind, without the medium of an external world. And if this appears to any perfon a more natural, and fimple hypothefis to account for our ideas, and therefore ferable to the fuppofition of a real external world; by means of which, and of a more general agency of the deity, the fame ideas be prefented to thoufands and millions of minds, I leave him to his imagination, from which no evil, that I know, will refult.

may

pre

Half the inhabitants of the globe, for inftance, may be looking towards the heavens at the fame time, and all their minds are impreffed in the fame manner: all fee the

moon, ftars, and planets, in precifely the fame fituations; and even the obfervations of thofe who ufe telefcopes, correfpond with the utmoft 'exactnefs. To explain this, bishop Berkley fays, that the divine being, attending particularly to each individual mind, impreffes their fenforiums in the fame, or a correfponding manner, without the medium of any thing external to them. On the other hand, I, without pretending that his fcheme is impoffible, where divine power is concerned, think, however, that it is more natural to fuppofe, that there really are fuch bodies as the moon, ftars, and planets, placed at certain diftances from us, and moving in certain directions; by means of which, without fuch an agency of the deity as he fuppofes, all our minds are neceffarily impreffed in this corresponding

manner.

I am fatisfied that if fuch a reprefentation as this (by which I exhibit to any person particular appearances as arifing from more general laws, which is agreeable to the analogy of every thing elfe that we obferve)

does

does not pleafe and convince him, it will fignify nothing to tell him, with Mefirs. Reid, Beattie, and Ofwald, that the cafe is not to be argued at all, that he has fomething within himself, called common fenfe, which tells him that there is an external world, and that, if he reflect a moment, he must know that all his objections are frivolous and abfurd.

The hypothefis of there being no external world, is by no means fo fhocking to my understanding, or, to ufe the favourite phrafe, my common fenfe, as the fuppofition that I am properly confcious of more than paffes within my own mind, or, as Dr. Reid expreffes it, that we really perceive things that are external to us, and do not judge of all things that are without ourfelves by notices perceived within, how mistaken foever we may be in our judgments concerning them.

It is not very eafy to understand what it is, philofophically speaking, that Dr. Reid, Dr. Beattie, and Dr. Ofwald, always mean

by

by their common fenfe; but how captivating foever their general defcriptions of it may be at the first hearing, they appear to me to be exceedingly vague and inconfiftent, upon a more attentive examination.

Sometimes one would imagine, that the human mind was fo effectually guarded with this internal defence, that no one of the human race could be in danger of falling into any error of confequence, and that even all revelation might have been fpared. "The "human mind," fays Dr. Ofwald, vol. i. p. 8, "has a power of pronouncing, at first fight on obvious truth, with a quickness, "clearnefs, and indubitable certainty, fimilar, if not equal to the information con

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veyed by the external organs of fenfe. Its "exercife begins in children with the first "dawn of rationality, and not till then; and "is ever after enjoyed, in fome degree, by "learned and unlearned, and by every indi"vidual of the human kind, who is not an idiot, or fome how difordered in his intellectuals, affording an almost infallible "direction in the whole conduct of their