s an infinitely stronger man than
his opponent, and unlike Warburton, he never debased controversy by
scurrility, which the bishop generally found a more potent weapon than
argument.

On the publication, in 1723, of Dr. Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, it
was vigorously attacked by Law. In this masterly pamphlet, instead of
attempting to refute the physician by showing that virtue is more
profitable to the State than vice, and that, therefore, private vices
are not public benefits, Law takes a higher ground, and asserts that
morality is not a question of profit and loss, but of conscience.
Mandeville maintains that man is a mere animal governed by his passions;
his opponent, on the other hand, argues that man is created in the image
of God, that virtue 'is a law to which even the divine nature is
subject,' and that human nature is fitted to rise to the angels, while
Mandeville would lower it to the brutes.

John Sterling, writing to F. D. Maurice of the first section of Law's
remarks, says: 'I have never seen in our language the elementary
grounds of a rational ideal philosophy, as opposed to empiricism, stated
with nearly the same clearness, simplicity, and force,' and it was at
Sterling's suggestion that Maurice published a new edition of Law's
argument with an introductory essay (1844).

The following passage from the _Remarks on the Fable of the Bees_ will
illustrate Law's method as a polemic:

'Deists and freethinkers are generally considered as
unbelievers; but upon examination they will appear to be men of
the most resigned and implicit faith in the world; they would
believe _transubstantiation_, but that it implies a believing in
God; for they never resign their reason, but when it is to yield
to something that opposes salvation. For the Deist's creed has
as many articles as the Christian's, and requires a much greater
suspension of our reason to believe them. So that if to believe
things upon no authority, or without any reason, be an argument
of credulity, the freethinker will appear to be the most easy,
credulous creature alive. In the first place, he is to believe
almost all the same articles to be false which the Christian
believes to be true.

'Now, it may easily be shown that it requires stronger acts of
faith to believe these articles to be false, than to believe
them to be true. For, taking faith to be an assent of the mind
to s