gests that it is our duty to fubmit; otherwife 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 wifdom; 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 feem fo abfurd, the number of Free-thinkers would not be so great, if we made it our businefs 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 ourselves, pave the way for the errors of the mind. Solomon became diffolute and voluptuous before he fell into Idolatry. We ever and always lofe our innocence before we laugh at our catechism.

But a philofopher requires argument, and leaves prayer to the vulgar. Reafon is too pre

cious a gift to be offered at the fhrine of religion: 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 greateft 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 reafon difcovers, that the motives of credibility are fufficient to induce me to believe, that God has propofed fuch and such a doctrine; the fame reason immediately whispers, believe your God, for he can do more than you can comprchend.

In denying myfteries, because we cannot comprehend them, we may as well deny our exiftence. For our very exiftence is a mystery we can never comprehend. How many valves and fprings, how many veins and arteries, what an assemblage of bones, muscles, 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

philofophical breath, make it move, walk, fpeak, concert plans, form fchemes; make it fufceptible of love, fear, joy, hope, defire, &c. then we will recognize your comprehensive knowledge 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 myfteries in which your reafon is loft; and you would fain have a religion which proposes nothing but what your reafon comprehends. Thousands of years elapfed before Hervey difcovered the circulation of the blood. Thousands 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 abyss 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 lily, 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 nicest rules of geometry, without studying the mathematics, and in the conftruction whereof, the curious have obferved all the advantages which geometers de

rive from Newton's doctrine of fluxions, the minima and maxima, and the extraordinary contrivance, whereby a lefs quantity of furface 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 grass which fprings under your feet, every thing is a mystery

to man.

If you range in the boundless region of the abstract sciences, what a fathomlefs 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 fmallest part of the fame grain containing another world, and the leaft part of that part, as fmall, with refpect to the grain, as the grain is, with respect to the entire frame of the univerfe, and fo on, to infinity!

If, then, the vigour of our wit muft yield to an atom of matter, is it not an abuse of reason, to refuse 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 boasted privilege. Wounded man could never find, in his reafon, fufficient light to discover 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 some 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 use of his "broken limbs: but he is guilty, if he despises "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 fays of himself: I am the vine: you are the branches: without me, you cannot do any thing."

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