General and in Centres tion. the Sun, and right Reason, or the Moon, depend all gratification of the will, and desires of the "There is yet a further modification of the dividual laws of attraction and gravity, or power and of Attrac- weakness, which, like all other symbols, are necessarily ambiguous; because there is evil as well as good, selfishness as well as love in every heart; and they both have their attractions and repulsions. This is the law of individual, or particular central attractions. As there is a common centre of attraction of the whole earth, to which every thing within the sphere of its influence, tends generally from without, and yet every distinct particle has also its own centre of attraction, (which would work distinctly, if the particle were separated from the common mass; but which cannot do so, while it is united with, and subordinate to that common mass,) so, it is with the human world. There is a common centre of gravity and attraction, of the moral and intellectual world of man, or unregenerate human nature, which, in its universal desire and tendency to become perfectly independent of all other beings, and at the same time to have all other beings as far as possible dependent on itself. Hence proceeds its desire to flee from the presence of God; that is to say, not to know him, nor think of him, nor to feel him, nor fear him. This atheism of fallen man, is called in human language the universal desire of happiness: but we are not conscious that this desire of an atheistical happiness proceeds from the adversary of God and man, who ever since the FALL, has been our grand, but unknown common centre.* Yet, every individual soul has also his own distinct centre of gravity and attraction, or selflove, towards which every thing in him and about him naturally tends, in subordination nevertheless to the grand common centre. Thus, for instance, a man wishes to make an independent fortune, and self-love if alone consulted, (in the natural man,) would be for making it at once, as we say, through thick and thin; but the superior attraction of the common interest and self-love of the society at large, which is the general common centre, forbids this by penal laws, and therefore each individual is necessitated to pursue his own par ticular object, in subordination to the common interest or centre of the society at large. But, each of the private centres is evidently one and * Viz. " according to the course of this world; according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh IN the children of disobedience." Ephes. ch. ii. the same spirit of self-love which governs the whole, working according to the universal laws of reason and proportion, which all must obey; by which the weaker must ever yield to the stronger. That is to say, in the unregenerate world, it is the influence of " the prince of the power of the air," the god of this world, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.* (Ephesians.) Hence, as the power of opposing (or hostile) attraction, (or repulsion, and also impulsion,) in the natural centre, continually strives to carry off the earth from the restraining power of the SUN, into infinite space; so the delegated spirit or messenger of Satan, in the centre of unregenerate humanity, continually impels it in like manner, from faith, love, and obedience to the will of God into boundless error and spiritual darkness. Nevertheless, HIS omnipotence overrules this rebellious spirit with a strong hand to the general good, and to his own eternal glory of grace and truth. This subject seems also to afford a probable and not irrational theory of spiritual or moral COMETS, viz. " wandering stars, to whom is 66 * Viz. Sir Isaac Newton's sagacious surmise of a very subtil elastic fluid in the centre of the earth, as the principle of central attraction! This fluid, however, if it does exist and work as Sir Isaac supposed, is only a type of a spiritual Agent, "which deceiveth the whole world." reserved the blackness of darkness for ever." (Jude.) For, by an obvious analogy, they may be considered either as individuals or as nations, who being in one part of their ORBIT, or moral path, carried away far beyond the due appointed limits of moral and religious duty, by the central impulse of an atheistical aversion and opposition to the declared will of GoD, are nevertheless in the opposite part of the same orbit, brought back by Almighty power and justice, and necessitated by the laws of eternal truth, to approach nearer to the centre of their spiritual motion, in the exact proportion in which they formerly departed from it in the free will of a perverse and rebellious opposition. And as the first aberration from the orbit of duty, proceeded from atheistical aversion, so the subsequent undue approximation, is an impious, sacrilegious intrusion into the regions of the divine Majesty; that is to say, a presumptuous, and equally atheistical assumption or arrogation of divine honours and prerogatives! Such is the alternate swing of the pendulum of human wickedness, and divine judgment, until the sinner" is consumed by the spirit of HIS mouth, and destroyed by the brightness of HIS coming." (2 Thessalonians.) Such is the orbit of the hypocrites of SUPERSTITION and INFIDELITY! It is one in spirit, and the different modes of impiety (torrid and frigid,) only repre See the 49th Psalm. lation. sent the same character or spirit in different parts of the same orbit. In one part a sacrilegious, in the other an atheistical tyrant; or, as Mr. Faber calls him, a wilful KING, and in both a BEAST; a beast in superstition, and a beast in atheism. Yet not an individual, but a genus. Recapitu- As this feeble essay is intended for the ground-work of universal analogy, so far as my ordained line extends, I shall endeavour to explain the premises more particularly, viz. The more minutely and circumstantially we examine and compare the first principles of the laws of natural, moral, and spiritual attraction and gravitation towards a centre, the more we shall find them to be perfectly analogous to each other. In both scales, or in every scale, the cause, the source, of the attraction, gravitation, repulsion, &c. seems to consist in the perfect congruity, or sympathy, in one case, or aversion and antipathy in the other, between the central principle in the HEART or CENTRE, attracting or repelling, and the external things attracted or repelled by it; and therefore the power of the attraction or desire, and of the repulsion or aversion, is, and must be in the same proportion between them in both cases. Thus, the devil tempts us more strongly in proportion to the strength of our hearts' lusts and evil passions, which are derived from him; as our LORD says to the carnal Jews. Ye are of your 66 |