legated powers
without the divine interference. The philosophy expressed in Pope's
didactic poetry gives expression to Bolingbroke's opinions(472) on
providence.

In his views of human duty Bolingbroke refers conduct to self-love as a
cause, and to happiness as an end; and doubts a future state,(473) either
on the ground of materialism, or possibly because his favourite principle,
that "whatever is, is best," led him to disbelieve the argument for a
future life adduced from the inequality of present rewards. Future
punishment is rejected, on the ground that it can offer no end compatible
with the moral object of punishment, which is correction.

When he passes from natural religion to revealed, he allows the
possibility of divine inspiration, but doubts the fact; rebuking those
however who doubt things merely because they cannot understand them. In
criticising the Jewish revelation,(474) he puts no limits to his words of
severity. He dares to pronounce the Jewish history to be repugnant to the
attributes of a supreme, all-perfect Being. His attack on the records is
partly on account of the materials contained in them, such as the
narrative of the fall, the numerical statistics, the invasion of the
Canaanites, the absence of eternal rewards as sanctions of the Mosaic law;
and partly on the ground of the evidence being, as he alleges, not
narrated by contemporaries. In giving his opinion of Christianity, he
repeats the weak objection already used by Chubb, of a distinction
existing between the gospel of Christ and of Paul;(475) and tries to
explain the origin of Christianity and of its doctrines, suggesting the
derivation of the idea of a Trinity from the triadic notions of other
religions. But he is driven to concede some things denied by former
deists. He grants, for example, that if the miracles really occurred, they
attest the revelation;(476) and he therefore labours to show that they did
not occur, by attacking the New Testament canon(477) as he had before
attacked the Old; attempting to show that the composition of the gospels
was separated by an interval from the alleged occurrence of the events;
applying, in fact, Pouilly's incipient criticism on history which has been
so freely used in theology by more recent critics.

These remarks will exhibit Bolingbroke's views, both in their cause and
their relation to those of former deists. It will be observed that they
are for the most part a direct result either of se