covers you on the confines of that unknown country! When THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS-But for exhorting, and not preaching, here let me ftop, is my province. To the divine it belongs to refume the fubject where I am obliged to drop it, and to expatiate on those higher arguments, which, with a trembling pen, I have fcarcely ventured to fuggeft. SECT. 1 SECT. CI. A VINDICATION OF THE WISDOM AND GOODNESS OF GOD IN ESTABLISHING GENERAL LAWS. Nec Deus interfit, nifi dignus vindice nodus HOR. All NATURE is but art unknown to thee: All CHANCE, direction, which thou canst not see; All DISCORD, harmony not understood; All PARTIAL EVIL, univerfal good: And spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite, one truth is clear, "WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.” POPE. As men are unable, says the celebrated historian RoBERTSON, to comprehend the manner in which the ALMIGHTY carries on the government of the universe, by equal, fixed, and general laws, they are apt to imagine that, in every case which their paffions or interest render important in their own eyes, the SUPREME RUler of all ought vifibly to difplay his power. It requires no inconfiderable degree of fcience and philosophy to correct this popular error. Religion, for several centuries, confifted 6 B 2 confifted chiefly in believing the legendary history of those faints whose names crowd and difgrace the Romifh calendar. The fabulous tales concerning their miracles had been declared authentic by the bulls of popes and the decrees of councils; they made the great subject of the instructions which the clergy offered to the people, and were received by them with implicit credulity and admiration. By attending to these, men were accustomed to believe that the established laws of nature might be violated on the most frivolous occafions, and were taught to look rather for particular and extraordinary acts of power under the divine administration, than to contemplate the regular progress and execution of a general plan. It has been before proved, that it is the fame with the phyfical as with the moral world. "The UNIVERSAL CAUSE "acts not by partial, but by general laws.” The mechanism of our body, the connection and subferviency of all its parts to a common purpose, the exquifite contrivance of its organs, confifting of all the various orders of veffels, interwoven with wonderful art, have led anatomifts in all ages to acknowledge an in finitely finitely wife, omnipotent, and benevolent power. It is, indeed, otherwife inconceivable how fuch confiftency and harmony could have taken place in the different parts of our wonderful fraine. How they could have been fo exactly fitted to each other, and to the exterior objects, which have an evident relation to them, and the fyftem they compofe. In the most inconfiderable, as well as in the moft illuftrious works of the CREATOR, confummate art and defign appear. There is not a creature that moves, nor a vegetable that grows, but, when minutely examined, furnishes materials of the highest admiration. The fame wisdom that placed the fun in the center of the fyftem, and arranged the feveral planets around him in their order, has fhewn itself equally in the vegetable and animal creation. Befides the footsteps of his wifdom and goodnefs, as it were, upon their furfaces, there are many curious and excellent tokens and effects of Divine power in the hidden and innermost receffes of them. But these are not to be seen by the flight glances of the lazy and ignorant; but require the most attentive and prying inspection of the curious and the learned. In the ftructure of the univerfe men are very ready to confefs, that all is great and beautiful. They adore the the hand that could launch forth into the boundless region of space this immenfe globe, with all its load of created beings, who appointed its revolution daily round its own axis, and its annual course in perpetual circuit round the fun; who marked out the monthly journey of the moon, and the different courfes of the other planets; who hath fo appointed them, that it is now reckoned even a criminal error for an aftronomer to mifs even a minute in the calculation of their times,—but in the government of human affairs, and the laws of the animated fibre, they complain of great imperfection and irregularity. Have they not yet learnt that effects depend on cause, that these are linked together, and that both proceed from the fame AUTHOR? Have they forgotten, that he who balanced all the heavenly bodies, and adjusted the proportions and limits of nature, is the fame who hath allotted them their condition in the world, who diftributes the measures of their profperity and adverfity, and fixes the bounds of their habitation? If their lot appear to them ill-forted, and their condition hard, let them only put the question to their own minds, whether it be moft probable, that the great and wife CREATOR hath erred in his diftribution of human things, or that they |