attention above all things to the concerns of futurity; vigilance against temptations from within, and from the allurements of the world, and perseverance to the end in aspiring after the inestimable prize of a glorious and happy immortality.

Christianity proposes the noblest motives to obedience that can be conceived, and the fittest for influencing such an order of beings as mankind. The most sordid and stupid is likely to be alarmed by the threatenings of a punishment inconceivably terrible, and of immense duration. The natural consequence of which fear is,its being deterred from vice, and forced to think of reforming. From whence the next step is into sobriety, or negative goodness: which leads naturally to the practice of direct virtue; and, as practice produces habit, the issue to be expected is, a habit of virtue; an attachment to goodness; farther and farther degrees of improvement; and in the end such a perfection in the government of passion and appetite, in benevolence. to mankind, and piety to God, as will, upon the Christian plan, qualify for future happiness.

Thus the denunciation of future punishment for vice, which christianity sets forth, is evidently a wise and proper means for promoting virtue: especially, if we add the encouragement of certainty of pardon upon repentance and reformation, which important point we owe wholly to revelation. And if we also take in the views of the supernatural assistance which christianity encourages well-disposed persons to expect in their conflict with temptation and vice; and those high honours, and that sublime happiness, which revealed religion sets before mankind, as the consequence of a victorious perseverance in virtue. The fitness of such motives for powerfully influencing such an order of beings as the human species, is a proof, that the religion which proposes them is of Him who formed the human species; who endowed mankind with reason, with hope, and fear, and made the mind susceptible of habit, and stamped upon it the idea of immortality. For none but He, who formed the mind, and perfectly knew its springs, could address it in a way so proper for influencing it, and for bringing it, in a consistency with its nature and present state, to the steady love and practice of virtue. We have likewise in scripture an account of the estab

lishment of the christian religion, and the firm adherence of its first professors in spite of persecution. Addresses from the first propagators of christianity to their proselytes, explaining more fully the doctrines of religion, solving their difficulties, encouraging them to constancy, and giv ing them useful directions for the conduct of life. And predictions of the future state of the church, its degeneracy into Popery, and the consummation of all things.

Here the amazing scheme, being completed, comes to a period. The Divine dispensations with regard to mankind, in their present state, having been finished in the establishment of the christian religion in the world, nothing more is to be expected, but the completion of the predic tions yet unfulfilled, of which the chief are, the restoration of the Israelites and Jews to their own country, with the conversion of the world in general to the christian religion, which makes way for the last glorious ages; for the reno vation and consummation of all things; for the general judgment of the whole human race, according to the char acters they have sustained in life, the condemnation and utter destruction of such of the species as shall be found to have rendered themselves unworthy and incapable of the Divine mercy, and the establishment of the pious and virtuous in an everlasting state of glory and happiness, in or der to their improving and rising higher and higher to all eternity.

Can any man, who only runs through this brief and imperfect sketch of the whole body of revelation, bring himself to believe that such a scheme could have been begun with the beginning of the world, carried on through a suc cession of four thousand years by the instrumentality of a number of different persons, who had no opportunity of concerting measures together; exhibiting to the view of mankind all that is great, important, and useful to be knowa and practised, all the Divine dispensations with respect to a species of rational moral agents, the scope and purpose of the whole, being wise, good, worthy of God, and suitable to the wants of men, uniform in its purpose throughout, teaching one grand and useful lesson from the beginning to the end, agreeing with itself, with the constitution and course of nature, the strain of history, and the natural rea son of man, in which there appears a perfect agreement be

twixt types and antitypes, doctrines and precepts, predic tions and completions, laws and sanctions, pretensions and truth; and the whole leading directly to the highest improvement and perfection of Human Nature; can any man, bring himself to believe such an universal, all-comprehensive scheme to be really no more than human contrivance? But of this more hereafter

SECTION III.

Considerations on some particulars in Revealed Religion.

The reader may remember, that I put off the subject of Providence, though commonly reckoned a doctrine of Natural Religion, till I should be upon Revelation, because it is from thence that it receives its principal confirmation and establishment.

The opinion, that the world, and all things animate and inanimate, are by the infinite Author of all, supported in their existence, and conducted in all the changes of state, which they undergo, is as ancient as the belief of the Divine existence.

As to the natural or material world, it is certain, from reason and experience, that the inactivity of matter is inseparable from its nature. All the laws of nature, as deduced from experience, and observation, are founded upon this axiom, That matter does necessarily continue in that state in which it is at present, whether of rest or of direct motion, till it be put out of that state by some living agent. To imagine matter capable of itself, of changing its state of rest into that of motion, or of motion into rest, would be supposing it something else than matter; for it is essential to the idea of matter, that it resists all impressions made upon it. Unresisting matter is a self-contradictory idea, as much as noisy silence, vicious virtue, or the like. There is not one appearance, or effect, in the natural world, that could have been brought about by unresisting matter. Upon the inertia of matter, the whole Cours of nature depends. To say, that matter, however modified, is capable of being made to have any tendency to change its place or state, would be ascribing to it a power of choosing and refusing. For before it can of it

-self change its state of rest for motion, or of motion for rest, it must choose for itself. If a particle of matter is to move itself, which way shall it move? If you determine eastward, westward, southward, or northward; the -question immediately arises, why should it move eastward rather than westward, or southward rather than northward? To ascribe thought or choice, or activity of any kind, to matter, however modified, is ascribing to it what contra-. dicts its very nature and essence. For its nature and essence is to continue for ever inactive. So that, wherever we see a portion of matter in motion, it is certain, that it is moved by the action of some living agent. Farther, if we found in the natural world no motions carried on, but what proceeded in direct lines, it might be conceivable, that the matter of the universe had received such an impulse at the beginning, as had continued its motions till now. For, matter, put once in motion, must, if left to it. self, move on in a direct course to eternity. But whoever has considered the natural world, will reflect, that there are a great many different motions continually going on in the universe, some of which are directly contrary to others. That the forces, with which bodies tend to one another, and with which some solid substances cohere, are im. mensely great, while the ease, with which the lightest bodies pass through the space, in which those forces prevail, makes it inconceivable, that any thing material is the cause of those strong tendencies. This therefore obliges us to have recourse to something immaterial, as the cause of the endlessly various, complicated, and contrary tendencies, which we see prevail in nature. In the solar system, supposing, as some have fancied, a set of subtle particles continually flowing inward, toward the sun, to pro duce the effect of gravitation, there must be another influx of the same sort of particles from all parts toward each of the planets, for they too are endowed (to use the common expression) with the power of attracting toward themselves whatever is within the sphere of their attraction. It is evident, that the course of the particles, which cause gravita tion toward the sun, must be in part directly contrary to that which causes the gravitation of the satellites of a planet toward it. And the streams of particles flowing inward toward each of the satellites of a planet, must be in part

directly contrary to the course of those which flow toward the planet itself. The planet also continually changing place, no possible influx of particles towards it can produce the effect required, because, that direction of such influx, which would be favourable in one situation, must of course be quite contrary in another. And upon the planet itself, if there are any animals or vegetables, any material substan oes, in which there is either secretion, motion of fluids, corruption, decay, or renovation, the contrariety of the course of the particles, by which such internal motions are carried on, must be such as to produce absolute confusion; for we must at last conceive throughout all created space, an infi. nite number of streams of small particles flowing in all directions, which could, by the very supposition, produce no regular motion in the material system. Besides, we know, that the forces of attraction and gravitation are not as the surfaces of bodies attracting one another; but as the number of particles contained in them, which requires a power that shall freely pervade the most solid bodies, not merely effect their surfaces. We likewise know, that elastic matter tends every way, or endeavours to diffuse itself wider and wider, and to repel its own particles, and every surrounding body. This power, or tendency (to nse the common improper term) is by no means consistent with any theory of streams of particles flowing any one way; but is easily explicable by that of an Infinite Mind within

all matter.

There is, in short, no solution of the various and opposite tendencies of the parts of the material system, that is not palpably absurd, besides having recourse to an Infi. nite mind, in which the visible world has its being, and by which it not only was at first put into motion, like a clock wound up and set a-going; but is continually, from moment to moment, actuated according to certain fixed rules or methods, which are what we call the Laws of Nature.

If therefore we find it necessary, on account of the necessary inactivity of matter, which has nothing in its rature equal to the complicated motions, which we see in the system of the world, to conclude, that the Infinite author of nature does continually, either mediately or immediately, exert his indefatigable power in conducting and actuating the inanimate machine; we cannot suppose less,