ABSTRACT
I could wish that Alciphron and Lysicles had made this observation to Euphranor, and had applied it to shew him why they admitted the word force, and rejected the word grace. The task would not have been hard, since it would not have been hard to shew him real causes sufficiently known, and sufficiently marked by words, of the effects ascribed by him to a cause supposed unknown, and marked by a distinct word appropriated to this purpose. They might have shewn these causes to be the influence of a religious education, a warm head, and a warmer heart; hope, fear, grief, joy, strong passions turned by prejudice and habit to devotion, devotion itself nursing its own principles, the effect in its turn becoming a cause uniform and constant, or redoubling its force, on the least failure, in acts of attrition, contrition, mortification, and repentance. They might have proved not only by probable reasons, but by indubitable facts, the sufficiency of these and other known causes to produce all the effects commonly ascribed to grace, even the most astonishing that ever appeared in saints, confessors, or martyrs. Nay, they might have shewn that effects more astonishing, and many of them better vouched, than most of these, have been, and are still daily, produced in men, whom it would be blasphemous to repute under the divine influence. Alciphron might have illustrated this argument in his serious character, by quoting the saints, confessors, and martyrs of idolatry and heresy; and Lysicles in his gayer character, by quoting those of atheism, and of the most abominable vices, as well as the most indifferent customs; of paederasty, for instance, and of long beards.
