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compose the word papa. A very singular prophecy, undoubtedly! A prophecy in Latin, but in no other language, not even in that in which the Apocalypse was written!

The instances of human imbecility are, indeed, not to be enumerated. Be this, however, as it may, religion of every description, we are told, is incontestibly founded on fatalism. Among the Greeks, it was held, that men were punished for faults, which they were fated to commit, as is evident in Orestes, Oedipus, &c. who merely did what had formally been announced by the oracle. Even Christianity is said to have made vain efforts to justify the Divinity, in throwing the faults of men on their free-will, which is never to be reconciled with predestination. Even the system of grace cannot obviate the difficulty; seeing that God gives grace only to whom he pleases. The foundations of all systems, then, are the fatal decrees of a being irresistible, who decides arbitrarily, and who awards eternally. If God be infinitely good, we are asked, why should we fear him? If he be omniscient, why tell him of our wants, and fatigue him with our prayers? If he be every where, why disquiet ourselves about our lot, and erect churches and

temples

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temples to him? If he be merciful,why be in wrath against frail beings, to whom he has granted the liberty to deviate from reason? If he be immutable, in what manner can we make him alter his decrees? If he be inconceivable, why do we strive to gain a conception of him? If he hath spoken, why is not the whole universe convinced? If the knowledge of the one God be above all things the most necessary, why is it not of all things the most evident, and the most clear ?*

There is a moment, when some suspension of common affairs, some pause of temporal pain and pleasure, is peculiarly necessary to him who deliberates for eternity; who is forming the only plan, in which miscarriage cannot be repaired, and examining the only question in which mistake cannot be rectified. The gratification of the appetites fill but a small portion of time, and these appetites themselves are weakened by every attempt to encrease the enjoyment they are intended to supply. Who then would doze away life in an hopeless indifference, who had the power to exalt himself into felicity? The gamester, of whatever class, plays against manifest odds. He starts with a stake, which at one time, perhaps, did, and still

might,

Systeme de la Nature.

+ Johnson.

might have made him happy. He hazards it He wins, but he discovers his

on the dye.

gains to be brass he loses; that which he parts with is gold; and reason, as well as imagination, heightens what has become irrecoverable.

The spirituality of our being, we have had much occasion to dilate upon already. We have proved it irrefragably, I think, even to the conviction of captiousness itself. For what clearer? Though a scarcely discernible atom in the immensity of the universe, yet man has powers which spurn the narrow boundaries of time and place, soar beyond the sphere of his existence, penetrate the secret laws of nature, and calculate their progressive effects. But, let us bestow one moment more, I beseech you, on a subject so peculiarly interesting, and which involves, consequently, not only the distinct nature of immateriality, but, more especially the operations of human liberty, and I must add,however, in opposition to fashionable Necessitarians, the dictates, in my opinion, of common sense.

Leibnitz demands whether God, in creating the world, must necessarily have created the best world; and whether this world be so in effect? Whether it be or be not, it is idle to ask; for

who

who can furnish us with the demonstration? We can have no positive knowledge, further than we have ideas. Hence the extent of our knowledge not only falls short of the reality of things, but even of the extent of our own perceptions. We have the ideas of a square, a circle, and equality; and yet, perhaps, shall never be able to find a circle equal to a square. The real belief in a Supreme Being, affords, when duly considered, sufficient foundation for duty, right action, and morality. For if there be no property, there can be no injustice; if there be no government, there can be no restraint: and yet, we are required to believe that there is no such thing as free will.

When we consider the vast distance of the known and visible parts of the world, and the reasons we have to think what lies within our grasp, is but a small part of the immense universe, we shall then discover within ourselves an huge mass of ignorance. What the particular fabrics of the great volumes of matter which make up the whole stupendous frame of corporeal beings are, how far they are extended, what is their motion, how continued, and, what influence they have upon one another; are contemplations that at the first glimpse plunge us into inextricable con• fusion.

fusion. If we confine our view, again, on a lesser scale, to the little system of our sun, and the attendant bodies that visibly move about it; what several sorts of vegetables, animals, and corporeal intellectual beings, infinitely different from those of our appropriate spot the earth, may there not probably be in other planets, to the knowledge of which, even of their outward figures and parts, we can no way attain; for we have no natural means, either by sensation or reflection, of acquiring ideas concerning them.

There are, on the other hand, other bodies in the universe no less concealed from us by their minuteness. These imperceptible corpuscles being the active parts of inatter, and the great instruments of nature, on which depend all their secondary qualities and operations, our want of distinct ideas of their primary qualities keeps us in incurable ignorance of what we desire to know about them. Did we know the mechanical affections of opium, we might as easily account for its operation in causing sleep, as a watch-maker can for the motion of his watch. The dissolving of silver in aqua fortis, or gold in aqua regia, and not vice versa, would be then, perhaps, no more difficult to comprehend than it would be to a mechanic to understand,

VOL, VI.

F

why

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