to be, I do not fay pleasure, but being perfectly pleased. And as mens taftes and fentiments vary, fo do their pleasures. And hence arise their different purfuits, while their ultimate intentions are the fame.

Thefe fort of cravings and defires are what they call instincts; like those of mere animals, all invariable.

It is not barely our life, nor even, ftrictly speaking, ourselves, that by this instinct we are influenced to love; but the comforts and enjoyments of life: and this may be so strong, that we may properly enough be faid to love them better than ourselves.

There is another course which may be callęd natural, and which takes in every thing, good or bad, which can by any means get strength enough to form the heart upon them; and fome of these may arise, so naturally, and without any pains or labour of ours, that it may be doubted whether they do not belong to the first.

That which bids fairest, after the animal sensations and appetites, is Sympathy; which, like all other paffions and affections, depends not on our will or pleafure. But as that, as well as all the reft, depends entirely on the fentiments or inward

ward feelings of the heart; and as these are very different in different men, and formed upon the more or less perfect difpofitions of the human system, they can never be reckoned among invariable instincts.

Where the fentiment is formed upon the right difpofition of the complex human fystem, it produces that agreeable temper which is called humanity; and where it is perfect, produces perfect fympathy. But this is feldom or never found in the prefent state of mankind. We enter warmly into the joys and forrows of those we love; to strangers our fympathy is more cool; and fuperftitious zeal entirely deftroys it: and there are numberlefs well-known cafes, where the fentiments may be wrought up to fuch a pitch of brutal infenfibility and favagenefs, as that the most excruciating tortures of our fellow-creatures give the most exquifite pleafure. Upon the whole, fympathy in all its forms will be found to keep pace with our love to our neighbour; and is either a certain modification of it, or a neceffary effect produced by it.

No man can love or hate what or when he will, or fo much as regulate the degree

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of either. He must love what pleases him, and hate the contrary. And according to the degrees of pleasure or pain, fuch muft his love or averfion be; and the degrees are innumerable, but the fame neceffary paffions in every degree.

But men as well as children may be pleased with trifles. With thefe life begins and however one object may drive out another, it is but an exchange of trifles, unless one could fix upon what is perfectly good; i. e. fuch as is fitted to give perfect pleasure: and thence it has been the business of the wisest men to find out what they called the chief good, fuch as could make one happy in the want, and even in the lofs, of every thing else; i. e. fuch as perfectly fuits the human conftitution, so as to raise and maintain perfect pleasure.

Of the two grand fects of ancient philofophers, the Stoics took it too high, and the Epicureans as much too low. The defect of the first lay in not distinguishing between abfolute and limited perfection and happiness; that is, fuch as the conftitution and circumstances of the being who wanted to be happy will admit of.

Being

Being, or life, is but the fubftratum, the fubject on which pleasure or enjoyment is grafted; and is not fimply good or defirable for itself, but for the pleafure or enjoyment which may attend it. But on the perfection of life the capacity of enjoyment depends; and hence, fo long as there is life there is hope.

I

2. The Knowledge of God.

Tis a true obfervation, that all that we

can be taught of God, fo long as the evidence ftands only on metaphyfical reafoning, makes but a faint impreffion; and that to fix and continue it, there is a neceffity for fuch an historical account of his works and ways, as may exemplify to us the powers and perfections which we are taught to attribute to him. It is thus we form the characters of men whom we have never feen; and thus God himfelf hatlı taught us to form our conceptions of him.

But when we form our characters of men, we have an idea of a being well known to us, and diftinguished from others by a particular name. There are

men

men who profefs to have as clear and diftinct an idea of a fpirit as of any part of matter. If any have fuch a talent, fure every one has not. All that we know of that fort of beings, must take its rise from what we feel in ourselves, and the perfections and powers we are confcious of. We feel that we think, in all the different forms of it; and, to a certain degree, we can do what we will. But what this fame spirit or mind is which perceives, judges, wills, and exerts thefe degrees of power, we can conceive no farther, than that it is not fuch a being as grofs fenfible matter; and all our accounts of its effence, or of the being which acts and poffeffes these known properties, confift in negatives, immaterial, invifible, &c.

Did we know what being and life are, we might poffibly form fome fatisfying conception, though nothing that could deferve the name of an idea; and here we are taught to fix our last resource, by the name that God hath chofen for himself, and which distinguishes him from every other being, JEHOVAH, which is best rendered by, He that is,—the poffeffor and proprietor of being; and, confequently, VOL. I.

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