only by experience, which often teaches when it is too late.

BUT in the affairs of life, you will fay, we have a very great degree of affurance, a moral certainty almost, that men in general will not deceive us it is the universal intereft to keep up the faith of focial commerce. I allow itI only want to show, that faith is at the bottom of all human commerce; that is, fuch a faith, as, I fhall by and by show, we are capable of getting, with regard to Divine difcoveries.

IN all matters of faith whatever, a man, if he pleases, may difbelieve, or act at leaft, as if he difbelieves. There is no irresistible conviction, beyond the circle, the very narrow circle, of intuition and perfonal knowledge. And if it be a juft principle, that every thing is incredible which we cannot underftand, the man acts a rational part, who disbelieves the existence of things and

places, which lie beyond the sphere of his own researches.

THERE cannot be a more narrow, debafing, or fallacious principle. The human faculties are in a state of progreffion. When I was a child, fays St. Paul, I fpake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. i. Cor. xiii. II. We rife by a flow and tedious process from infant ignorance into fome degrees of useful knowledge, and many of us into wide extended difcoveries. And is the lamp of knowledge thus kindled and lighted up in every human breast, with fo much painful induftry and affiduous toil,-only to be extinguished at once in the fhadow of darkness and of death? No, we are taught, by what we know of ourselves, to look forwards, and to expect that faculties fo important, and unfolding in fuch a regular manner, will receive higher improvements, and that new

fcenes,

scenes, to which we are at present ftrangers, will be opened to our enlarged perceptions! That the mysteries of our manhood and improved years will be done away like the mysteries of our childhood! and human knowledge ripened into the maturity of angelical perfec

tion!

your

You

child;

MYSTERY is a relative term: what is mystery to a child or a mechanic, is not such to a person of enlarged obfervation. If myfteries, as myfteries, are incredible, there is an end of all inftruction, all practical knowledge. have no bufinefs to inftruct for what he does not know is mystery. The common artifan has no bufinefs to aid his natural ftrength with machines of complicated conftruction: for he knows nothing of the mechanical pówers, but their effects and uses. A plain man has no bufinefs to aid his natural with glaffes: for he knows nothing of the laws of refraction. The philofo

eye

R 4

pher

pher has no business to believe, that the planets are vaft opake bodies, and that fome of them, which appear fingle to the naked eye, are attended with a train of fatelites. His natural organ gives him no such intelligence: the artificial compofition of glaffes, which enlarge his views, may poffibly deceive him. A man has no business to be virtuous: because what conftitutes the nature and effence of virtue is to this day a dispute even amongst the learned. A man needs not worship GOD: for there are none of his attributes, which lie not far above our comprehenfion.

II. SUCH abfurdities, as these, flow from establishing the principle, that myfteries, as myfteries, are not credible. The grounds of the error lie, as I conceive, in not diftinguishing aright in this matter. Whether fuch and fuch a pretended mystery be a real part of religion is one thing, and whether mys

tery

tery at all be credible, is another. The first, under the conduct of a proper temper, is a fair and laudable enquiry: it is neceffary, amidst human weakness and corruption, to prevent the introduction of errors. But to deny the credibility of myfteries, as myfteries, is the highest contradiction to the common maxims of human life and knowledge.

THE myfteries, which are contended for in religion, are exactly fimilar to thofe of life and nature. We are capable of being affured, that they stand for things, which really are: we fhall hereafter in a maturer stage either understand them, or fee the reafons, why we cannot; and we can now in our present state of ignorance with regard to their nature, apply them to valuable and important purposes.

IF this be the common method of life, why should we not admit of it in religion?

THE manner, how the Divine being