t. 'The author's design being to consider the
Freethinker in the various lights of Atheist, libertine, enthusiast,
scorner, critic, metaphysician, fatalist, and sceptic, it must not
therefore be imagined that every one of these characters agrees with
every individual Freethinker; no more being implied than that each part
agrees with some or other of the sect.' The fallacy here arises from the
assumption of a sect with a coherent system, which, as has been stated
above, never had any existence.

The principle upon which Berkeley tells us that he constructed his
dialogue is a dangerous one. 'It must not,' he writes, 'be thought that
authors are misrepresented if every notion of Alciphron or Lysicles is
not found precisely in them. A gentleman in private conference may be
supposed to speak plainer than others write, to improve on their hints,
and draw conclusions from their principles.' Yes; but this method of
development, when carried out by a vehement partisan, is apt to find
hints where there are no hints, and draw conclusions which are quite
unwarranted by the premisses.

It is somewhat discouraging to an aspirant after literary immortality,
to reflect that in spite of the enormous amount of learned writing
which the Deistical controversy elicited, many educated people who have
not made the subject a special study, probably derive their knowledge of
the Deists mainly from two unpretentious volumes--Leland's 'View of the
Deistical Writers.'

Leland avowedly wrote as an advocate, and therefore it would be
unreasonable to expect from him the measured judgment of a philosophical
historian. But _as_ an advocate he wrote with great fairness,--indeed,
considering the excitement which the Deists raised among their
contemporaries, with wonderful fairness. It is not without reason that
he boasts in his preface, 'Great care has been taken to make a fair
representation of them, according to the best judgment I could form of
their designs.' But, besides the fact that the representations of a man
who holds a brief 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 wi