It is needless to quote the passages in which Shaftesbury, like the other Deists, abuses the Jews; neither is it necessary to dwell upon his strange argument that ridicule is the best test of truth.  In this, as in other parts of his writings, it is often difficult to see when he is writing seriously, when ironically.  Perhaps he has himself furnished us with the means of solving the difficulty.  ‘If,’ he writes, ’men are forbidden to speak their minds seriously on certain subjects, they will do it ironically.  If they are forbidden to speak at all upon such subjects, or if they find it really dangerous to do so, they will then redouble their disguise, involve themselves in mysteriousness, and talk so as hardly to be understood or at least not plainly interpreted by those who are disposed to do them a mischief.’[153] The general tendency, however, of his writings is pretty clear, and is in harmony with the Deistical theory that God’s revelation of Himself in Nature is certain, clear, and sufficient for all practical purposes, while any other revelation is uncertain, obscure, and unnecessary.  But he holds that it would be unmannerly and disadvantageous to the interests of the community to act upon this doctrine in practical life.  ’Better take things as they are.  Laugh in your sleeve, if you will, at the follies which priestcraft has imposed upon mankind; but do not show your bad taste and bad humour by striving to battle against the stream of popular opinion.  When you are at Rome, do as Rome does.  The question “What is truth?” is a highly inconvenient one.  If you must ask it, ask it to yourself.’

It must be confessed that such low views of religion and morality are strangely at variance with the exalted notions of the disinterestedness of virtue which form the staple of one of Shaftesbury’s most important treatises.  To reconcile the discrepancy seems impossible.  Only let us take care that while we emphatically repudiate the immoral compromise between truth and expediency which Shaftesbury recommends, we do not lose sight of the real service which he has rendered to religion as well as philosophy by showing the excellency of virtue in itself without regard to the rewards and punishments which are attached to its pursuit or neglect.

The year before ‘The Characteristics’ appeared as a single work (1713), a small treatise was published anonymously which was at first assigned to the author of ‘Christianity not Mysterious,’ and which almost rivalled that notorious work in the attention which it excited, out of all proportion to its intrinsic merits.  It was entitled ’A Discourse of Freethinking, occasioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect called Freethinkers,’ and was presently owned as the work of Anthony Collins, an author who had previously entered into the lists of controversy in connection with the disputes of Sacheverell, Dodwell, and Clarke.  ’The Discourse of Freethinking’ was in itself a slight performance.  Its general scope was to show that