Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/435

Rh same. These three epistles, I say, are finished. The fourth he is now intent upon. It is a noble subject; he pleads the cause of God, I use Seneca's expression, against that famous charge which atheists in all ages have brought, the supposed unequal dispensations of Providence; a charge which I cannot heartily forgive your divines for admitting. You admit it indeed for an extreme good purpose, and you build on this admission the necessity of a future state of rewards and punishments. But what if you should find, that this future state will not account, in opposition to the atheist, for God's justice in the present state, which you give up? Would it not have been better to defend God's justice in this world, against these daring men, by irrefragable reasons, and to have rested the proof of the other point on revelation? I do not like concessions made against demonstration, repair or supply them how you will. The epistles I have mentioned will compose a first book; the plan of the second is settled. You will not understand by what I have said, that Pope will go so deep into the argument, or carry it so far as I have hinted. You inquire so kindly after my wife, that I must tell you something of her. She has fallen upon a remedy, invented by a surgeon abroad, and which has had great success in cases similar to hers. This remedy has visibly attacked the original cause of all her complaints, and has abated, in some degree, by one gentle and uniform effect, all the grievous and various symptoms. I hope, and surely with reason, that she will receive still greater benefit from this method of cure, which she will resume as soon as the great heat is over. If she recovers, I shall not, for her sake, abstract myself from the world more than I do at Rh