Imatges de pàgina
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IN

OF THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.

thefe Institutes I fhall endeavour to explain the principles of natural and revealed religion; or to affign the reasons why we acknowledge ourselves to be subject to the moral government of God, and why we profess ourselves to be christians, and confiftent proteftants.

Knowledge of this kind is, in its own nature, the most important of any that we can give our attention to; because it is the moft nearly connected with our present and future happiness.

If there be a God, and if we be accountable to him for our conduct, it must be highly interefting to us to know all that we can concerning his character and government, concerning what he requires of us, and what we have to expect from him. If it be true that a perfon, pretending to be fent from God, hath affured us of a future life, VOL. I. B

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it certainly behoves us to examine his pretenfions to divine authority; and if we fee reason to admit them, to inform ourfelves concerning the whole of his inftructions, and particlarly what kind of behaviour here will fecure our happiness hereafter. Laftly, if the religion we profefs be divine, and have been corrupted by the ignorance or artifice of men, it is a matter of confequence that it be restored to its primitive purity; because its efficacy upon the heart and life muft depend upon it. And if men have ufurped any power with refpect to religion which the author of it has not given them, it is of confequence that their unjust claims be exposed and refifted.

In order to give the most diftin view of the principles of religion, I shall firft explain what it is that we learn from nature, and then what farther lights we receive from revelation. But it must be observed, that, in giving a delineation of natural religion, I fhall deliver what I fuppofe might have been known concerning God, our duty, and our future expectations by the light of nature, and not what was actually known of them by any of the human race; for these are very different things. Many things are, in their own nature, attainable, which, in fact, are never attained; fo that though we find but little of the knowledge of God, and of his providence, in many nations, which never en-{ joyed the light of revelation, it does not follow

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that nature did not contain and teach those leffons, and that men had not the means of learning them, provided they had made the most of the light they had, and of the powers that were given them.

I fhall, therefore, include under the head of natural religion, all that can be demonftrated, or proved to be true by natural reafon, though it was never, in fact, discovered by it; and even though it be probable that mankind would never have known it without the affiftance of revelation. Thus the doctrine of a future ftate may be called a doctrine of natural religion, if when we have had the first knowledge of it from divine revelation, we can afterwards fhow that the expectation of it was probable from the light of nature, and that present appearances are, upon the whole, favourable to the fuppofition of it.

SECTION 1:

Of the existence of God, and thofe attributes which are deduced from his being confidered as uncaused himself, and the cause of every thing else.

WHEN we say there is a GOD, we mean that there is an intelligent defigning cause of what we see in the world around us, and a being who was himself uncaused. Unlefs we have re

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courfe to this fuppofition, we cannot account for present appearances; for there is an evident incapacity in every thing we see of being the cause of its own existence, or of the exiftence of other. things. Though, in one sense, some things are the caufes of others, yet they are only fo in part; and when we give sufficient attention to their nature, we fhall fee, that it is very improperly that they are termed caufes at all: for when we have allowed all that we can to their influence and operation, there is ftill fomething that must be referred to a prior and fuperior caufe. Thus we fay that a proper foil, together with the influences of the fun and the rain, are the causes of the growth of plants; but, in fact, all that we mean, and all that, in ftrictness, we ought to fay, is, that according to the prefent conftitution of things, plants could not grow but in those circumftances; for, if there had not been a body previously organized like a plant, and if there had not existed what we call a conftitution of nature, in confequence of which plants are disposed to thrive by the influence of the foil, the fun, and the rain, those circumftances would have fignified nothing; and the fitness of the organs of a plant to receive nourishment from the foil, the rain, and the fun, is a proof of fuch wisdom and defign, as those bodies are evidently deftitute of. If the fitting of a fuit of cloaths to the body of a man be an argu

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