has opened, gives ample room for all the planetary inhabitants, whom it leads, and even conftrains us to fuppofe. Where the fpirits of the other system refide was a queftion eafily answered, when fuperftition and hypothefis made up the fum of theology and philofophy. But it is not fo eafy to be anfwered now. Are the good and pure fpirits in heaven? But where is heaven? Is it beyond all the folar systems of the univerfe? Or is it, like the intermundia of Epicurus, in expanfes between them? Are the evil and impure fpirits in hell? But where is hell? Is it in the centre of any one planet for every system? Or is it in the center of every planet? Do others wander in air? or refide latent in every element ? Are they confined invifibly, like thofe that the Chinefe imagine, to certain countries and cities, to rivers and lakes, to woods and mountains? Or is it their employment to attend on particular men, the guardian angels of fome, or the devils and the tempters of others; for temptation is afcribed to the evil fpirits ftill, though poffeffion is fo no longer, I think, out of Spain and Portugal, and other countries, where religious ignorance prevails as much as in them, if any fuch there are? -Tantum ESSAY ESSAY THE THIR D: CONTAINING SOME FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON THE RISE AND PROGRESS O F MONOTHEISM, That first and great Principle of NATURAL THEOLOGY, or the FIRST PHILOSOPHY. ESSAY THE THIR D. SECTION I. I HAD finished the laft effay before I recollected, that here was fomething in Mr. Locke's difcourfe concerning the reasonableness of christianity, very repugnant to what I have advanced about the knowledge of the one true God, and to what I fhall have occafion to fay, on another occafion, about the ignorance of natural religion, under which it is fuppofed that mankind labored before the coming of Chrift. 1 fhall not anticipate the fecond point, but fhall beftow fome more reflections on the firft; in order to judge, whilft the subject is fresh in my mind, whether 1 ought to retract any thing that I have fail to you in converfation, or that has fallen from my pen upon the subject. If it appears, on examination, that my notions are not fo well founded in fact, and in reafon, as thofe of this great man in the prefent cafe, I fhall fubmit with pleasure to an authority, that I respect extremely in all cafes, and if it appears that they are better founded than his in both, one useful leffon will be the refult of this examination. We fhall learn how unfafe it is to take for granted any thing, in matters especially which concern, or which are |