All this is known, and all this is true; but why, we have not yet discovered.  Our author, if I understand him right, pursues the argument thus:  the religion of man produces evils, because the morality of man is imperfect; his morality is imperfect, that he may be justly a subject of punishment; he is made subject to punishment, because the pain of part is necessary to the happiness of the whole; pain is necessary to happiness, no mortal can tell why, or how.

Thus, after having clambered, with great labour, from one step of argumentation to another, instead of rising into the light of knowledge, we are devolved back into dark ignorance; and all our effort ends in belief, that for the evils of life there is some good reason, and in confession, that the reason cannot be found.  This is all that has been produced by the revival of Chrysippus’s untractableness of matter, and the Arabian scale of existence.  A system has been raised, which is so ready to fall to pieces of itself, that no great praise can be derived from its destruction.  To object, is always easy, and, it has been well observed by a late writer, that “the hand which cannot build a hovel, may demolish a temple [11].”

REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, FOR IMPROVING OF NATURAL KNOWLEDGE, FROM ITS FIRST RISE;

In which the most considerable papers communicated to the society, which have, hitherto, not been published, are inserted, in their proper order, as a supplement to the Philosophical Transactions.  By Thomas Birch, D. D. secretary to the Royal society, 2 vols. 4to.

This book might, more properly, have been entitled by the author, a diary than a history, as it proceeds regularly from day to day, so minutely, as to number over the members present at each committee, and so slowly, that two large volumes contain only the transactions of the eleven first years from the institution of the society.

I am, yet, far from intending to represent this work as useless.  Many particularities are of importance to one man, though they appear trifling to another; and it is always more safe to admit copiousness, than to affect brevity.  Many informations will be afforded by this book to the biographer.  I know not where else it can be found, but here, and in Ward, that Cowley was doctor in physick.  And, whenever any other institution, of the same kind, shall be attempted, the exact relation of the progress of the Royal society may furnish precedents.

These volumes consist of an exact journal of the society; of some papers delivered to them, which, though registered and preserved, had been never printed; and of short memoirs of the more eminent members, inserted at the end of the year in which each died.