loved, and protected by him who is infinitely perfect and omnipotent?

By reason we likewise find, that the excesses of the passions produce misery, and iniquity makes a man completely wretched and despicable but integrity and moral worth secure us peace and merit, and lead to true happiness and glory. Unless reason and inquiry are banished, vice and oppression must have terrible struggles against the principles of humanity and conscience. Reflection must raise the most torturing suspicions, and all stable satisfaction must be lost: but by cultivating the high powers of our reason, and acquiring moral excellence, so far as human nature is able: by justice and the benevolent affections, virtue and charity, we are connected with, and affixed to the Deity, and with the inward applauses of a good heart, we have the outward enjoyment of all the felicities suitable to our transitory condition. Happy state surely! There are no horrors here to haunt us. There is no dreadful thing to poison all parts of life and all enjoyments.

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Let us hearken then to the original law of reason, and fol ow God and nature as the sure guide to happiness. Let the offices of piety and beneficence be the principal employment of our time; and

the chief work of our every day, to secure an happy immortality, by equity, benignity, and devotion. By continual attention, and internal discipline, reason can do great things, and enable us so to improve the supreme and most godlike powers of our constitution, and so discharge the duties imposed upon us by our Creator, that when we return into that silence we were in before we existed, and our places shall know us no more, we may pass from the unstable condition of terrestrial affairs to that eternal state in the heavens, where everlasting pleasures and enjoyments are prepared for those who have lived in the delightful exercise of the powers of reason, and performed all social and kind offices to others, out of a sense of duty to God. Thus does truth oblige us. It is the basis of morality, as morality is the basis of religion.

This, I think, is a just account of moral truth and rectitude, and shews that it is essentially glorious in itself, and the sacred rule to which all things must bend, and all agents submit. But then a question may be asked, What need have we of revelation, since reason can so fully instruct us, and its bonds alone are sufficient to hold us;—and in particular, what becomes of the principal part of revelation, called redemption?

The system of moral truth and revelation, it may

be answered, are united, and at perfect amity with each other. Morality and the gospel stand on the same foundation, and differ only in this, that revealed religion, in respect of the corrupt and degenerate state of mankind, has brought fresh light, and additional assistance, to direct, support, and fix men in their duty. We have histories which relate an early deviation from moral truth, and inform us that this disease of our rational nature spreads like a contagion. more deplorable, in succeeding ages; and as evil examples and prejudices added new force to the prevailing passions, and reason and liberty of will, for want of due exercise, grew weaker, and less able to regain their lost dominion, corruption was rendered universal. Then did the true God, the Father of the Universe, and the most provident and beneficent of Beings, interpose by a revelation of his will, and by advice and authority, do all that was possible, to prevent the self-destructive effects of the culpable ignorance and folly of his offspring. He gave the world a transcript of the law of nature by an extraordinary messenger, the Man Christ Jesus, who had power given him to work miracles, to rouse mankind from their fatal stupidity, to set their thoughts on work, and to conciliate their attention to the heavenly declaration. In this repub

The case became worse, and

lication of the original law, he gave them doctrines and commandments perfectly consonant to the purest reason, and to them annexed sanctions that do really bind and oblige men, as they not only guard and strengthen religion, but affect our natural sensibility and selfishness. Religion appears to great disadvantage, when divines preach it into a bond of indemnity, and a mere contract of interest; but exclusive of this, it must be allowed, that the sanctions of the gospel have a weight, awfulness, and solemnity, that prove to a great degree effectual. Safety and advantage are reasons for well-doing.

In short, the evidence of the obligation of the duties of natural religion is as plain and strong from reason, as any revelation can make it; but yet the means of rendering these duties effectual in practice, are not so clear and powerful from mere reason, as from revelation. The proof of obligation is equally strong in reason and inspiration, but the obligation itself is rendered stronger by the gospel, by superadded means or motives. The primary obligation of natural religion arises from the nature and reason of things, as being objects of our rational moral faculties, agreeably to which we cannot but be obliged to act; and this obligation is strengthened by the tendency of natural religion to the

final happiness of every rational agent: but the clear knowledge, and express promises which we have in the gospel, of the nature and greatness of this final happiness, being added to the obligation from, and the tendency of reason or natural religion to the final happiness of human nature, the obligation of it is thereby still more strengthened. In this lies the benefit of Christianity. It is the old, uncorrupt religion of nature and reason, intirely free from superstition and immorality; delivered and taught in the most rational and easy way, and enforced by the most gracious and powerful motives.

But if this be the case, it may be asked, Where are our holy mysteries-and what do you think of our Redemption? If natural reason and conscience can do so much, and to the gospel we are obliged only for a little more light and influence, then Trinity in Unity, and the Sacrifice of the Cross are nothing. What are your sentiments on these subjects?

As to the Trinity, it is a word invented by the doctors, and so far as I can find, was never once thought of by Jesus Christ and his apostles; unless it was to guard against the spread of tritheism, by taking the greatest care to inculcate the supreme divinity of God the Father: but let it be a trinity, since the church will have it so, and by it I under