Oh ego felix, vice si (nec unquam Surgerem rursus) simili cadentem Parca me lenis sineret quieto Fallere Letho. Multa flagranti radiisque cincto Integris, ah quam nihil inviderem, Cum Dei ardentes medius quadrigas Sentit Olympus! I wonder whether Gray ever perused the following lines written by his friend and Biographer the Revd: Mr. Mason. ‘Is this the _Bigot’s_ rant? Away ye vain!’ Your hopes your fears, in doubt, in dulness steep! Go sooth your souls in sickness, grief, or pain, With the sad solace of, _eternal sleep_. Yet know ye Sceptics, know, the Almighty mind Who breath’d on man a portion of his fire, Bad his free soul by earth nor time confin’d To heav’n, to immortality aspire. Nor shall the pile of hope his mercy rear’d, By vain philosophy be e’er destroy’d; Eternity! by all or wish’d or fear’d, Shall be by all, or suffer’d or enjoy’d. _Mason._ It is still more singular that Dr. Beattie with all his professions of christianity, should not have been aware of the atheistical complexion of the following passage in his “Hermit.” Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn, Kind nature the embryo blossom shall save; But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn! Oh, when shall it dawn on the night of the grave! Indeed, the natural evidences of a future state were never conceived by any reasonable defender of the doctrine, to be of themselves satisfactory and conclusive.[70] They were never deemed of more value than to produce a _probable expectation_ of a state of future rewards and punishments, and they are certainly contradicted by the known facts relating to the origin, the growth, and decline of the human faculties. Bishop Porteus has collected these arguments, and stated them with as much force as his moderate abilities would permit; but by far the best summary of what has been urged on this as well as on almost every important question of morals and metaphysics, will be found in Mr. Belsham’s Elements of the Philosophy of Mind. An excellent compendium, by a gentleman, to whom next to Mr. Lindsey, Dr. Priestley appears to have been more attached than to any other. [70] Dr. Priestley in his observations on the increase of infidelity published at Northumberland, has a passage which would seem to intimate that a future state might be clearly made out by the light of nature (p. 59, 60) but this is certainly inadvertency, and by no means conformable to his constant, deliberate, sentiments on that subject as expressed particularly in his Institutes. The SECOND part of the Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, contains a discussion of the long contested and confused question of Liberty and Necessity.