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otherwise we are guilty of rebellion against the first of fovereigns: and to deny his power to punish the difobedience of his creatures, is more than you have attempted.

This important enquiry fhould be attended with a pure heart and fervent prayer. However a philofopher may laugh at the hint, as Cato would laugh if he met a priest. It was after a fervent prayer Solomon received his wisdom : after a fervent prayer, Cornelius the Centurion, obtained the privilege of becoming the first convert from amongst the Gentiles. Even the heathen, Democritus, who figured fo much amongst the literati of his time, conftantly prayed the Gods to fend him good images. Religion would not seem so abfurd, the number of Free-thinkers would not be fo great, if we made it our bufinefs to purify the heart, and earnestly to beg of the Divinity to enlighten our understandings. For the paffions of the heart, and too much confidence in ourfelves, pave the way for the errors of the mind. Solomon became diffolute and voluptuous before he fell into Idolatry. We ever and always lose our innocence before we laugh at our catechism.

But a philofopher requires argument, and leaves prayer to the vulgar. Reason is too precious a gift to be offered at the fhrine of reli

gion :

gion yet from St. Paul, to whom the Roman governor faid that too much learning had turned his head, down to John Locke, the great hiftorian of the human understanding, the greatest men the world ever produced, have believed myfteries beyond their comprehenfion. They all knew that God cannot lie, nor deceive mortals, but that man is liable to error. If then my reason discovers, that the motives of credibility are fufficient to induce me to believe, that God has propofed fuch and fuch a doctrine; the fame reafon immediately whispers, believe your God, for he can do more than you can comprebend.

In denying myfteries, because we cannot comprehend them, we may as well deny our existence. For our very existence is a mystery we can never comprehend. How many valves and springs, how many veins and arteries, what an affemblage of bones, mufcles, canals, juices, nerves, fluids, tubes, veffels, requifite to make that frail being called man? Great partizans of nature and reafon (words often used to veil your ignorance), take a handful of duft and fhape it into the figure of a man, bore the veins and arteries, lay the finews and tendons, fit the joints and blow into its noftrils your philofophical breath, make it move, walk, speak, concert plans, form fchemes; make it fufcep

tible

tible of love, fear, joy, hope, defire, &c. then we will recognize your comprehensive knowlege of the imperceptible progrefs, and divine mechanism of the human frame. For the formation of each of us is as wonderful as the formation of the firft. Your very bodies of which you are fo fond, are mysteries in which your reafon is loft; and you would fain have a religion which propofes nothing but what your reafon comprehends. Thousands of years elapfed before Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood. Thoufands will elapfe before the delicate texture of the human frame is known.

Difengage yourselves, if you can, from the impenetrable folds and darkneffes of your own frames. Take a furvey of all the objects that furround you, you plunge into an abyfs overfpread with darkness and obfcurity. Explain to us how one and the fame water paints and dyes the different flowers into various colours, the pink, the lilly, the tulip, the rofe; or how from an inodorous earth they draw their fweet perfumes! The cell of the bee, which that little infect makes according to the niceft rules of geometry, without ftudying the mathematics, and in the conftruction whereof, the curious have obferved all the advantages which geometers derive, from Newton's doctrine of fluxions,

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the minima and maxiina, and the extraordinary contrivance, whereby a lefs quantity of surface is fufficient to contain a given quantity of honey, which faves that creature much wax and labour. The cell of the bee,-the granary of the ant,the heart, lungs, liver, &c. of the mite,-baffle your learned researches.

From the immenfe bodies fwimming in the azure fluid above, to the blade of grafs which springs under your feet, every thing is a mystery to man.

If you range in the boundless region of the abstract sciences, what a fathomless ocean of truths which you must acknowledge, without comprehending! Lines eternally drawing near to each other, without ever meeting! Motion for ever flackening, without ever coming to a point of reft! The infinite divifibility of matter, whereby a small grain of wheat inclofes in itself as many parts (though leffer in proportion) as the whole world! The smallest part of the fame grain containing another world, and the leaft part of that part, as fmall, with respect to the grain, as the grain is, with refpect to the entire frame of the universe, and so on, to infinity!

If, then, the vigour of our wit muft yield to an atom of matter, is it not an abuse of reafon,

to refufe our affent to truths propounded by an All-wife and Omnipotent Being, only because they are above our conception?

If nature be, then, a mysterious book, closed up with a seven-fold feal, is it not presumption and blindness in man, not to submit to unerring wisdom? Revealed religion once fecluded, a faint light and lame kind of liberty would be our boafted privilege. Wounded man could never find, in his reafon, fufficient light to difcover the truths of eternal life; nor in his liberty, fufficient ftrength to follow their dictates, Like the bleeding traveller, on the road of Jericho, he stands in need of the affiftance of fome foreign and healing hand.

"It is none of his fault," fays St. Austin, who had himself been a proud and voluptuous philofopher, "if he cannot make ufe of his

broken limbs but he is guilty, if he defpifes "the physician who proffers to cure him and "he is humbly to acknowledge his weakness, to "obtain help. This affiftance is ministered, not "by the law of nature, but by the tree of life, "who says of himself : I am the vine : you are the branches: without me, you cannot do "any thing."

The two fatal springs of our evils, are-the error of the mind, and the infirmity of the will.

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