plain, he might have left a green and fertile foil, and a climate warm and pleasant. As he afcends, the ground allumes a more ruffet colour; the grafs becomes more mofly, and the weather more moderate. Still as he afcends, the weather becomes more cold and the earth more barren. In this dreary paffage he is often entertained with a little valley of iurprifing verdure, caused by the reflected heat of the fun collected into a narrow ipot on the furrounding heights. But it much more frequently happens, that he tecs only frightful precipices be→ neath, and lakes of amazing depths, from whence rivers are formed. and fountains derive their original. On thote places next the fummits vegetation is fcarcely carried on; here and there a few plants of the moft hardy kind appear. The air is

intolerably cold, either continually refrigerated with fruits, or difturbed with tempefts. All the ground here wears an eternal covering of ice, and fnows that feem for ever accumulating. Upon emerging from this war of the elements, he afcends into a purer and terener region, where vegetation is intirely ceated where the precipices, compofed intirely of rocks, rise perpendicularly above him-while he views beneath him all the combat of the elements-clouds at his feet, thunders roaring, and lightnings darting upwards from their botoms below. thouland meteors, which are never seen in the plain below, present themselves. Circular rainbows, mock funs, the thadow of the mountain projecting upon the body of the air, and the traveller's own image reflected, as in a looking-glafs, on the oppofite cloud, &c. See Ulloa, vol. i.

I

(To be continued.j

JONATHAN THE JEW.

(Continued from p. 135.)

A

Now fee plainly, that all my former reasonings against

Jefus and his character were, at the fame time, pointed against the divine law, and against the natural dictates of my own confcience. I chofe to confine the exercife of my confcience to what might diftinguifh me from others; i took pleasure in reflecting what I was not, in comparison of others, but was averfe to notice what I was before God. When any uneafy queftion, in this last respect, arofe in my heart, I was careful to turn it afide by more agreeable réafouings. If I might for once call that which properly diftinguithes man from other animals, namely his confcience, by the name of reaton, I would vary the ftile of the received maxim, and fay, Reafon

purjued

purfued is defpair, and faith, or the knowledge of the Truth, is the cure of despair.. Before I knew the cure, I found nothing but pain and mifery in liftening to the fimple dictates of my conscience. And fure I am, neither confcience nor argument directed me to the cure; but it came to me unexpectedly from heaven, by fupernatural revelation; that is, when I heard God, by the mouth of the witnefles, laying open the meaning of a fupernatural fact---a fact that had not only awakened fresh disturbance in my confcience, but also demolished all my arguments. I was convinced then, that the revealed Truth, which not only awakened my confcience, and made me fenfible of my malady, but also brought fuch relief as was fufficient to fatisfy it when moft awakened, muft have come from the fame God who formed it, and whofe law is naturally impreffed there. I found I had hitherto neglected and refifted the natural notices of the true God there, and framed to myself another god, by reasonings ;---that I had been all along as one half afleep or intoxicated, and who chufes to be fo, as not finding his circumftances in fo good order as to give him pleasure and fatiffaction in his fobereft and coolest moments. And indeed, who would incline to give place to fuch apprehenfions of God and of himself as can yield no pleature or fatisfaction, but, on the contrary, the greatest of all pains; yea muft, without the knowledge of the cure, ferve to fill his mind with the most repining hatred of God? I have great reason, then, to value the gofpel, as it enables me to reflect, without pain, that I am a human creature;---as it prefents me with fuch an amiable view of the inflexibly juft God, that he is, notwithstanding, love without bound or limit. The gospel, while it enforces the law of God, and makes the confcience more fenfible to the conviction of fin, conveys likewife the moft refreshing remedy in difplaying to the miferable and felf-condemned, the ranfom for all--fo answers to the majesty of the living and true God, who fays, See now that I, even I am he, and there is no God with me: I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal. Nor do I think I have any apology to make to men for renouncing my former ways and thoughts, however righteous they appeared to myself and others, upon my being found guilty, beyond reply, by the One Lawgiver, who is able to restore and destroy, and demonftrated to be wicked and unrighteous in refpect of both, by his irrefiftible work and teftimony. I do not think it beneath the dignity of the wifeft human creature to be convinced of his mistake by Him whom it well becomes to say, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my

ways.

ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. I used to admire it as a fine imagination, that, were Truth and Virtue to be prefented before our eyes in all their native charms, the beauteous fplendour would be too transporting, too dazzling, to be beheld by us, but through fome veil. The experiment has been tried, and that in a manner far furpaffing the reach of fancy. The unfullied perfection of both has appeared in the world in all their native charms indeed, yet so as not to hurt the weakeft eye. But what was the refult? We "faw no form or comeliness in him; no beauty that we fhould defire him." We turned afide our faces from him, as from a” difagreeable object. The moft wife and virtuous among us were the foremost to set him at nought. Yet, however strange it-may feem, true it is, that fome of the most bale and ftupids among us were, upon this occafion, ftruck with fuch an ap-. prehenfion of divine beauty, as far exceeds all the raptures of imagination. The Word was made flesh, faid they, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.

I have faid, the refurrection of Jefus ferves me as a new principle of knowledge or reafoning. I do not fet out from conjectures to enquire after truth; but I fet out with the light of undoubted truth, to obferve what path it opens for me to walk in. I do not fet out from human maxims or presumptions to inquire how I fhall form a God to myself; but I'fet out from heavenly truth, ftamped with the divine character, to inquire how I fhall form my heart and life fuitably to it. I do not fet out upon the inquiry, What fhall I do to placate the divine Majefty? or, as the phrafe is, How I fhall make my peace with God? But I fet out from the perfuafion that God is juft in juftifying the ungodly, to inquire what fervice he has for me,---to prove "what is the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." All my religious principles and practices are so many inferences from the aforementioned fact; yet I have no ground to value myself as a reafoner, even on this new footing.. For I could find no fatisfactory meaning at all in that fact, till I was taught it by the illiterate Galileans.

And

what is more, I can deduce no inference from thence, till I be first taught it by one or other of the infpired witnefles. But when I hear them difplaying the manifold wifdom of God from that fource, I perceive a wonderful propriety and force in the whole of their reasoning.

Thus

Thus God fees meet to abafe my pride of understanding, by the very means he ufes for conveying to me the most useful and comfortable of all knowledge. And herein I am perfuaded he confults my real benefit. For were I lett to indulge my natural itch for reasoning, even on this new footing, I am fenfible I fhould foon act the fame part with this fupernatural revelation, as I formerly did with (what is generally called) the light of nature. When I reflect, where all my own wifdom, and that of the greatest fages landed me---and that, in the height of my wifdom, I turned out the greateft fool; I am now fully fatisfied that my fafeft and wifeft courfe is fimply to believe juft as I am told, and fubmiffively to do juít as i am bidden, without murmuring or difputing. However foolish, then, my rule of faith and practice may appear in the eyes of the wife, and however weak in the eyes of the devout, I find myself kept in countenance by the apoftolic maxim, The foolishness of God is wifer than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

ON REPROBATION.

LETTER II.

DEAR SIR,

T

O fuppofe that the reprobation of a very confiderable part of mankind refults from the abfolute uncontroulable will of Jehovah, and was fixed by an irreverfible decree from all eternity---that it was conceived in the womb of infinite perfection---is the offspring of the fovereign good pleasure of God ---the child of his eternal counfel---brought forth through the intervention of fin---reared to maturity through the co-operation of the devil---and preferved in being to all eternity by the unabating fury of him who hath faid Fury is not in me, involves the most horrid confequences, as it feems to make fin neceffary to the accomplishment of the divine defigns---gives the appearance of fome kind of alliance, or at leaft co-action, between the throne of holinefs, and fin and the devil, and makes the Moft High, by his decrees, the caufe of all the fin and mifery which ever have taken or shall take place: confequences fo fhocking to all common fenfe, that one might fuppofe nothing could be neceffary but to expose them to general view, in order to the abfurdity of the principles which lead to them being feen.

It

It is contrary to the fixed order of nature, to the unalterable laws which the Creator hath established among his works, for the fame fountain to fend forth sweet and bitter waters, for a good tree to bring forth evil fruit, for a caufe to produce effects oppofite to its own nature. No rational man will believe it poffible for polluted ftreams to iffue from a pure fountain, for poisonous and deftructive fruit to grow upon a good tree, or for any cause to operate contrary to its own nature: but it would be much more rational to believe these things than it is to believe that He, whole nature is holiness, to whom no im.. purity can attach, fhould, by his decrees, caufe to iflue forth the polluted ftreams of fin---that His good pleasure should produce, amongst other fruit, a decree of reprobation and confignment of any part of his works to endless ruin---that He, whofe very nature is love, who is the ever happy God, fhould ever decree or act but for the happinefs of his creatures.

I am not opposing a mere chimera; for if God, by a sovereign decree, had reprobated vaft multitudes of his creatures, either by ordaining thofe things which render them the fubjects of his wrath, and fit them for deftruction, or by fixing them in such a state of pollution as fhould render their damnation inevitable, or by determining to withold that grace, without which they could not be recovered, after they had destroyed themselves, (and under one or other of thefe views reprobation has had many advocates) it would follow, that reprobation flowed from the fame fountain as election, and all the riches of divine grace, from that Being who is love, that the infinite. ocean of goodness had fent forth ftreams which would embitter the existence of creatures, and faturate them with misery to all eternity.

It will be in vain to argue that God is an abfolute fovereign ---that all creatures and bleffings are his abfolute property--that, confequently, he has a right to do what he will with his own---that the thing formed hath no right to fay to him who formed it, Why haft thou formed me thus? All this we admit and ftrenuously maintain; but pofitively deny that it affords any fupport to Calvinian reprobation: on the contrary, we think, as God is an abfolute fovereign, and as all creatures are his abfolute property, which he made for himself, created for his own glory, he certainly will reclaim that property, free it from every incumbrace, and intirely remove every thing that would prevent any part of his works from praising him. As God is love, his fovereignity is the fovereignity of love---his decrees the decrees of love---his goings forth the goings forth of love, VOL. III.

Z

and