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sition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not the truth for truth's sake, but for some other bye-end. For the evidence that any proposition or tenet is true, lying only in the proofs a man has of it, whatsoever degrees of assent he affords it beyond the degrees of that evidence, it is plain all that surpiusage of assurance is owing to some other affection, and not to the love of truth: It being as impossible that the love of truth should carry my assent above or beyond the evidence there is to me, that it is true, as that the love of truth should make me assent to any proposition, for the sake of that evidence which it has not that it is true; which is in effect to love it as truth, because it is possible or probable that it may not be true. Whatsoever credit or authority we give to any principle or proposition more than it receives from the principles and proofs it supports itself upon, is owing to our inclinations that way, and is so far a derogation from the love of truth as such: which, as it can receive no evidence from our passions or interests, so it should receive no tincture from them."

I hope the reader will attend to these observations of this great master of the human mind. It is not my wish that any person admit, embrace or assent to any principle or sentiment by me advanced, only so far as it shall appear to be supported and justified by proper evidence, or the reason and nature of things. I feel anxious that he keep his mind open to truth and reason, and that he labour to banish from his breast all prejudice, prepossession and party-zeal; assuring him that, as I enjoy myself, so do I freely allow to him the unalienable rights of judgment and conscience.

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These observations are not intended less for the fessor and advocate of christianity, than the avowed deist and atheist. The professors of christianity are too much in the habit of taking their religious principles upon trust, and not fetching them from their true and proper It is in this way that errors in religion have, since the first establishment of christianity originated, and under the sacred name of religion, it has sheltered and defended it

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self, and gained the character of truth, of important, necessary, awful, and perhaps excellent truth; and the unwary think themselves bound in conscience and duty to maintain it with zeal; and then, whoever endeavours to correct it, though ever so much in the spirit of meckness and peace, must do it at his peril. Hence those grosser instances of persecution and bloodshed which have fouled the christian name; hence those wranglings, debates, heats, and animosities, which have destroyed christian societies. This is one reason why the sceptic, who is indifferent to any principles, when he finds absurdity mixed with the christian faith, taking the whole for a true account of christianity, rejects the whole. By this unhappy means what numbers have been drawn into deism! And by this unhappy means, I strongly suspect, if the truth were known, religion appears but in a doubtful light to many who seem to be strict professors of it; for where it is not received in its proper evidence, there cannot be, I think, a full and strong assent of faith; and no man can receive it in its proper evidence, who doth not endeavour carefully to understand its principles.

I have made the preceding remarks, not more on account of the subject of natural religion, than those which are necessarily connected with it, and which are hereafter to be attended to. The things chiefly to be learnt and understood in scripture are principles, and propositions, or the grounds and reasons of things; and precepts, which are the rules of duty. Now, if we mistake either, we shall throw all into confusion; our way will be all mist and clouds; that which should be light will be darkness, or, which is all one, a false light to mislead us; that which should be our joy, will be our heaviness; that which should be our comfort, and inspire cheerful hope, will be a dead weight to burthen our spirits and clog our course. Our path, which should be as a shining light, that shineth more and more, will be a gloomy, melancholy road, and we shall make our way with difficulty, because we want that true sense, and knowledge of the ways and will of God, which are necessary to give life, comfort and vigour. Chimeras and frightful images will terrify our consciences, and fill us with groundiess fears; God will be painted in monstrous colours; and all the ravishing glo

ries of his truth, wisdom, and love, which should powerfully draw our hearts to him, will be hid from our eyes; the lustre of redeeming grace will in part or wholly be eclipsed; some parts of religion will be superstitiously magnified, while others, of greater consequence, and especially those, when suitably regarded, which give most glory to God, and conduce most to the happiness of mankind, will be undervalued.

The advocates of revealed religion, by mistaking principles, and the divine evidences by which alone they are tenable, involve such palpable absurdities as to amount almost to a denial of its truth, and of its susceptibility of rational examination. This, instead of proselyting men to christianity, emboldens infidelity to rear its head, and lift its heel against the dominion of Jesus Christ, the divinity of his character and doctrines. This is not all: Deism, or scepticism at best, is the consequence of such advocation; and thus the moral obligations imposed by the scriptures upon the minds, and hearts of men fail, through the failure in establishing their truth by the proper testimony, and its right use in the argument.

The contradictions, if I may be permitted the expression, which have existed in some form or other since the apostolic age, in almost every plan of the christian faith, formed into a system by human wit, have had their foundation in the erroneous ideas which have obtained in the minds of men relative to the capacities and powers of the human mind. They have originated, in part, in mistaking the nature and use of revelation in words, and the design of miraculous works, as they have been employed, and ought now to be used, (though of record) in communicating supernatural knowledge and establishing its truth, otherwise unattainable; and in misapprehending the imaginations and passions, the feelings, and the affections excited by religious subjects, for the immediate operations of the spirit of God. Natural religion, or that capacity of mind upon which it depends for acquiring ideas and knowledge of spiritual and invisible things by natural, without spiritual light, or the revelation of God's spirit, forms a chief foundation upon which those errors rest. It was first introduced into the plan of celes

tial wisdom by the Platonic christians, with whom also originated scholastic theology, and mystic divinity. It was with an eye to these great errors that the apostles guarded the churches and persons to whom they wrote, 'lest any man spoil them through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.' 'The profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called,' were of the same character.

Natural religion necessarily destroys the real nature and state of things as they exist in the human mind in reference to spiritual and divine knowledge. It contemplates man as in a state very different from his real one, and far superior to it. It denies the fact, that by original transgression man lost his moral ability, and his union and communion with God as an intelligent and moral being, and with them the knowledge of him; and that they are restored by the atoning or expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the revelation of God's spirit through him, in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily, and faith in him in his proper characters. It also denies the fact, that it is by the revelations of God's spirit in words, or that it is by the word of God that the human race, circumstanced as they are, acquire the name and knowledge of God and his character, together with his will and future purposes concerning them. Natural religion asserts that the natural powers of the human mind, without spiritual light, or the revelations of God's spirit by words, or immediate inspiration, can have spiritual perceptions; and, on the same account, denies that the book which we call the scriptures is the revelation of God, and that the human mind is dependant upon it for spiritual ideas. Upon the refutation of these opinions depends the universal acknowledgement of the indispensible necessity, the worth and the excelleney of the scriptures as being the only mean of spiritual knowledge, for the learn ing of truth and righteousness, as being that which is perfect, and sure, what endureth forever, enlightens the eye, (the mind's eye) converts the soul, gives understanding to the simple, and is able to make all men wise unto salvation.

Should I be as successful in this investigation as I con fidently anticipate, every voice under heaven will be silenced upon spiritual subjects in regard to their original ideas, but the voice of God's spirit; and this will be the first great step towards rectifying the many errors which human imagination has introduced into christianity. Natural religion silenced, or the opinion subverted that the human mind, without the aid of revelation, has a power of discerning God, the scriptures assume their proper character as the glass of spiritual vision. "There the mind's eye expatiates in a boundless field of heavenly light, and clearly views the objects and prospects of truth, where the light of mere nature could never have penetrated; there it beholds things through description which are not seen by the eye of sense, and which are eternal; there we see the being of God asserted and proven, his nature and perfections, his glorious majesty and universal sovereignty, described by his own spirit, as alone knowing the things of God, with the justest propriety of sentiment, and simple magnificence of language, which the Holy Ghost alone teacheth; revealing and explaining spiritual things by spiritual words; there we read, and through that reading learn, that not only an everlasting God exists, but also that he is the Lord, the pos sessor of all being, of all wisdom and power, who made the earth, and created man upon it; that he stretched out the heavens and commanded all their hosts-that he measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out the heavens with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains and the hills in a balance-that he toucheth the mountains and they smoke, he looketh upon the earth and it trembleth; he beholdeth the nations as a drop of a bucket, and he counts them as the small dust of the earth; he takes up the isles as a very little thing. The whole universe rests wholly upon his arm, and is entirely subject to the disposals of his will. When we cast our eyes above; he created all these things, and brings out their host by number; he calls them all by name, by the greatness of his might, for he is strong in power, not one of them fails; in understanding he is infinite; he is mighty in wisdom, wonderful in council, and