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The editors would like to thank Michael Silverthorne for his translations of George Turnbull’s two Latin graduation theses and the Latin and Greek passages found in the selections from Turnbull’s A Treatise on Ancient Painting. We would also like to thank Alexander Broadie, John Cairns, Claire Carlin, Roger Emerson, Stephen Snobelen, Jeffrey Suderman, and, especially, Knud Haakonssen for their help during the lengthy gestation of this book. In addition, Paul Wood would like to thank John Sterk, QC, for his work as a research assistant and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for research funding.
For permission to reproduce manuscript material and letters we are grateful to the Special Collections Centre, University of Aberdeen; the Department of Manuscripts and the Board of the British Library; and Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections Department. Turnbull’s three letters to Lord Molesworth were first published, in edited form, in the Historical Manuscripts Commission’s combined account of the papers of the Molesworth and Clements families, who were related by marriage; see HMC, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, Vol. VIII: The Manuscripts of the Hon. Frederick Lindley Wood; M. L. S. Clements, Esq.; S. Philip Unwin, Esq. (1913). The whole collection was microfilmed at some point in the twentieth century and a master copy placed in the National Library of Ireland, before the manuscript originals were sold at Sotheby’s, London, in 1977. The purchaser, Mr. Martin Townsend of Letchworth, Hertfordshire, kindly gave permission for M. A. Stewart to publish eight letters from several authors in this collection, and he generously supplied photocopies of as many as he could find, including two of the Turnbull letters, with permission for transcriptions to be published from the microfilm for the remainder.
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Translations from the following titles are reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library. Loeb Classical Library® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 40, translated by H. Rackham, pp. 133–35, 199–205, 201, 205–7, 293, 339–41, 417 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914).
Cicero, De natura deorum and Academica, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 268, translated by H. Rackham, pp. 139–43, 151, 155–57, 159, 205–9, 257–59, 263–65, 283, 365 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933).
Cicero, De officiis, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 31, translated by Walter Mitter, pp. 13–19, 65 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1913).
Cicero, De oratore, De fato, Paradoxa Stoicorum, and De partitione oratoria; Loeb Classical Library, vols. 348–49, translated by E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham (2 vols.), pp. 17–19, 141–45, 225 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1942).
Plato, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and Phaedrus; Loeb Classical Library, vol. 36, translated by Harold North Fowler, pp. 113, 335–39 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914).
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1. To JOHN TOLAND1
Address: To Mr John Toland To the care of Mr Roberts2 in Warwick lane London3
MS: BL Add. MS 4465, fols. 17–18; unpubl.
Edinburgh, 13 November 1718
Sir
I have read some of your performances, & I have all the reason in the world to think, that I may tell my Sentiments to you freely, & that if you differ from me, you will, for the sake of truth, give your self the trouble to shew me why you do so: and therefore I have fairly ventured to begin a corespondence with you, and I would perswade my self, that when we have exchanged some few letters, you will not incline to drop it.
Sir I am a Freethinker, and I glory in the character. Some people are pleased to say that I am no good Christian; and in good faith if these two characters are in the least incompatible, I shal very frankly yeild it to them that I am not. But if to prove all things & to hold fast that only which is good, be true Christianity; I am as orthodox as any man can pretend to be. I neither regard custom, nor fashion, authority nor power; truth & reason are the only things that determine me. And I can never believe that to be a fool, is the way to get into the favour of infinite wisdom; or that one must be stript of his reason, to be made meet for the society of pure & perfect spirits. Sir I don’t know how it comes about, that it hath always been cast in the Atheist’s teeth, that he hates the restraints of virtue, & would gladly take up with any hypotheses, to get rid of the fears of another world. Perhaps
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it may be so with some. For my part, I have no prejudice against the being of a God; nor do I think, the practice of virtue, can be any hardship upon those, that have a true taste of life; but the only difficulty, that I can see, about the immortality of the soul, arises from the principles of the Theists themselves. An eternal Series may go on to eternity; but if you stop at the one end, you must stop at the other too. To suppose a God at the top of an Infinite scheme, that sees all his designs at once, is in reality to suppose a thing finite & infinite at the same time. For that which is seen must be finite; so that if God sees all his works, his works must have an end. Infinite knowledge, or an Infinite scheme perceived, is the most glaring contradiction imaginable. A succession of things may be vastly long, but end it must if it be perceived.
And in truth, Sir, the notion of God seeing all his works at one wiew, affords us no very extroardinary Idea of the divine blessedness. To be always fixed to the same Ideas, is a happiness, that I don’t envy even the Godhead it self. Let the wiews of the Deity be as large & wide as you will: I like much better to skip merrily from one thing to another at my pleasure. To have always just & true notions, is very desirable, but to be eternally humming over the same story, or to have always the same objects before one’s eyes, is the dullest entertainment under the heavens.
I have a great deal more to say to you, Good Sir, about the principles of religion, if you incline to keep up the corespondence, but this is enough at once. I long very much to know what you mean by your immortal government.4
I am Sir
with the greatest respect
and sincerest friendship
your most humble servant
Philocles5
PS. Please to direct for me. To Mr Ebednezar Shovel at Edinburgh6
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2. To [VISCOUNT MOLESWORTH]7
MS: NLI, Microfilm n. 4082, p. 37538
Tinninghame
