Imatges de pàgina
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claim the fanction of human authority, and long ufage. My only apology is this. I not only find, that power and prescription have hitherto been the great fupport of error, and the most unwieldy obftacles to the progress of sound knowledge; but that genuine truth has ever difclaimed any alliance with fuch fallacious friends. There fore I have implicitly followed the light of my own mind; tho' at the fame time, I am fo far from arrogating to myself any privilege, which I would not readily grant to others, that instead of cenfuring those who differ from me in fentiment, I rather commend them, for following the dictates of their own judgment, when they believe it to be better informed. In fpeculative and controvertible points, I have impartially laid before my readers the arguments of the different

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opponents, without taking upon me to affirm or decide upon the subject; but where I think that useful truth and rational religion are concerned, I have openly flood forth to fupport the interests of both.

Some parts of my work will appear new to many of my readers; particularly my theory of the curfe upon the ground, and of the natural means employed by the Creator for the destruction of the old world. The firft, whether true or falfe, is my own. The outlines of the fecond I owe to Mr. Whitehurst, but more especially to Monf. de Luc, Reader to our Queen. I might have reaped greater benefit from the writings of that ingenious philofopher and excellent divine, had not the greatest part of my work been printed off, before I had the pleafure of meeting with his Lettres Phyfiques et Morales.

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I have endeavoured as much as poffible to adapt my difcourfes to the capacities of ordinary readers, and therefore have not introduced mathematical demonftrations, nor minute difcuffions on philofophical fubjects. Neither have I interlarded my work with many vouchers from the heathen historians, in order to corroborate the authority of Mofes; because, in my opinion, it can anfwer no great purpose, to. quote a mutilated copy, to thofe who have the original in their hands.

Were my publication thought worthy of a fecond edition, fome parts of it might be corrected, and others more fully elucidated. And fhould it meet with a favourable reception, I intend (from materials already collected) to publifh a fecond volume, including that period of facred hiftory, from the deluge, to the eftablishment of the

twelve tribes in Canaan. During which period, we find many remarkable occurrences, fuch as, the confufion of languages at Babel; the deftruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; the plagues of Egypt; and the peregrinations of the Ifraelites thro' the wilderness.

In my prefent undertaking I have met with the countenance of a numerous and respectable lift of fubfcribers, of different denominations, to whom I fincerely prefent my grateful acknowledgments. It is my greatest ambition, and it would be my greatest happiness, to have it in my power by any production of mine, to make them a more fubftantial return, by impreffing their minds with just and worthy fentiments of Almighty God; by exciting them to the tudy of revelation, and a due efteem for its facred truths; and convincing

them

them that all the difpenfations of providence to mankind, originated from divine benevolence, and will at last terminate in his glory, and the happiness of his rational creation.

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