for one side must necessarily be taken cum grano, Leland lived too near the time to be able to view his subject in the ‘dry light’ of history.  ‘The best book,’ said Burke in 1773, ’that has ever been written against these people is that in which the author has collected in a body the whole of the Infidel code, and has brought their writings into one body to cut them all off together.’  If the subject was to be dealt with in this trenchant fashion, no one could have done it more honestly than Leland has done.  But the great questions which the Deists raised cannot be dealt with thus summarily.  Perhaps no book professedly written ‘against these people’ could possibly do justice to the whole case.  Hence those who virtually adopt Leland as their chief authority will at best have but a one-sided view of the matter.  Leland was a Dissenter; and it may be remarked in passing, that while the National Church bore the chief part in the struggle, as it was right she should, yet many Dissenters honourably distinguished themselves in the cause of our common Christianity.  The honoured names of Chandler,[165] Lardner, Doddridge, Foster, Hallet, and Leland himself, to which many others might be added, may be mentioned in proof of this assertion.

The attitude towards Deism of the authors hitherto named is unmistakable.  But there are yet two great names which cannot well be passed over, and which both the friends and foes of Deism have claimed for their side.  These are the names of Alexander Pope and John Locke.  The former was, as is well known, by profession a Roman Catholic;[166] but in his most elaborate, if not his most successful poem, he has been supposed to express the sentiments of one, if not two, of the most sceptical of the Deistical writers.  How far did the author of the ’Essay on Man’ agree with the religious sentiments of his ’guide, philosopher and friend,’ Viscount Bolingbroke?  Pope’s biographer answers this question very decisively.  ‘Pope,’ says Ruffhead, ’permitted Bolingbroke to be considered by the public as his philosopher and guide.  They agreed on the principle that “whatever is, is right,” as opposed to impious complaints against Providence; but Pope meant, because we only see a part of the moral system, not the whole, therefore these irregularities serving great purposes, such as the fuller manifestation of God’s goodness and justice, are right.  Lord Bolingbroke’s Essays are vindications of providence against the confederacy between Divines and Atheists who use a common principle, viz. that of the irregularities of God’s moral government here, for different ends:  the one to establish a future state, the others to discredit the being of a God.’  ‘Bolingbroke,’ he adds, ’always tried to conceal his principles from Pope, and Pope would not credit anything against him.’  Warburton’s testimony is to the same effect.  ‘So little,’ he writes, ’did Pope know of the principles of the “First Philosophy,” that when a common acquaintance told him in his last illness that Lord Bolingbroke denied God’s moral attributes as commonly understood, he asked Lord Bolingbroke whether he was mistaken, and was told he was.’