THE FATALISTS.

A NOVEL.

Printed by J. Darling, Leadenhall-Street, London.

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune,
(often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters,
the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity-fools
by heavenly compulsion-knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical pre-
dominance-drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience
of planetary influence.
SHAKESPEARE.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR

A. K. NEWMAN AND CO. LEADENHALL-STREET.

PREFACE.

THE opinion that a certain fatality governs every act of our lives is so dangerous to the empire of reason, and militates so much against the efforts of human prudence, that the moralist is called upon to combat it; and again, the principle of predestination is so destructive to the exercise of freewill in man, and so remote from giving a moral tendency to his actions, that the Christian is justified in weakening its influence wherever he can. To steer clear of this opinion, and not act under the influence of this principle, but conformable to the clear light of reason

VOL. I.

B

(which,