and hath even moral corruption left, to the human mind, that every system of laws, human or divine, especially that which is dictated by infinite wisdom and perfection, is undoubtedly well fitted to the purposes of mankind every where. It will, I believe, be very hard to refute this position even in a political sense. Monarchies, aristocracies, and republics have subsisted, and may very well subsist, in all sorts of climates. Heat and cold make no difference in the nature of civil government. When either government or religion is converted into a weathercock, and made to point this way or that, it is only the wind of human opinion, ever variable, that plays it round; in regard to the former, seldom, and in regard to the latter, never, to the advantage of mankind, for the true religion is certainly the oldest.

There is but one thing more, whereon, as a friend to common sense, I wish to dwell a little in this rhapsody, because I think much wrong is done to that, to religion, and morality, by the mathematicians, and some of our mathematical divines. Among these, upon an absurd opinion that nothing but mathematics and mathematical demonstration can generate certainty in the human intellect, attempts have been made to introduce that species of proof into matters, purely religious and moral. These wild attempts have been long ago deservedly ridiculed, and totally exploded, as altogether inapplicable to the purpose; although it is still maintained, and that by some able and sound divines, that religion and morality do not rest on as sure a foundation as mathematical knowledge. Nothing, say they, can force the human assent, but self-evidence and mathematical demonstration.

This is the point I would here controvert, because I cannot help thinking, there are other branches of knowledge, wherein self-evidence and demonstration, equally clear and certain, take place, and compel the assent of common sense and reason. Logic is one of these, whereon mathematical certainty, as one among other sorts of certainty, is forced to depend. Religion and morality, which are but two names for precisely one and the same thing, is another. Logic is the art of reasoning rightly on all subjects. Of this the

plain, illiterate man, as a rational being, is as perfect a master, as the schools could make him, on every point of knowledge which comes fairly within the verge of his capacity. Within this line, give him the primary and intuitive truths, draw your consequences logically; and for two or three steps of conclusion, that is, as far as he is any way concerned to proceed, you compel his assent, whatsoever his interests or prejudices may, on the other side, force him to object.

For instance I say, that which hath no being, cannot give being to any thing, therefore the world could not make or give being to itself; some other being therefore made the world. But the world is well and wisely made, therefore some being of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, that is, God, made the world. This now is moral proof or demonstration; and nothing in mathematics carries with it a stronger or more certain proof; nay, every mathematical demonstration is a collateral demonstration of a God, the sole Creator of mathematics. But, as the Creator is infinitely wise and good, and among his other works hath made man a rational and morally free agent, if man hath fallen into corruption of nature, and into sin and misery, it necessarily follows, that his infinitely gracious Creator hath willed his reformation and redemption; and that his infinite wisdom hath contrived, and his infinite power applied, the means of his redemption. Again, as God is infinitely good, it must be his will, that man should do good, and abstain from evil, for instance, that he should cherish his father, and endeavour to 'prolong his life, and that he should not wilfully murder his father, as fully convinced, and knowing, there is a God, and that God will reward the former, or punish the latter.

The certainty of these truths is what the learned call moral certainty; and I will venture to assert, that they can produce nothing mathematical of more clear, cogent, and absolute certainty. Sure I am, that not a tittle of their negative numbers, points, lines, surfaces, quantities, surds, all ideal and imaginary, nor in the demonstrations they pretend to build upon them, is supported with half the proof found in the moral proofs alleged. What! negative numbers, that

is, no numbers, multiplied so as to produce positive and real numbers! A point of no dimension to give dimension to a line! A line of no breadth to give breadth to a surface! A surface without quantity to inclose a real quantity! Supposing the reader of common sense to be but a slender mathematician, do not such positions put his faith more on the stretch than the Trinity ought to have put that of Newton, especially as the reader knows a great deal more of numbers, points, lines, surfaces, and quantities, than Newton did of the Divine Nature? And will he not change the name of such positions from surds to absurds? Having examined the sacred writers with some degree of explicity, I will not implicitly swallow these positions from the hands of the mathematicians; and, fine things as they may be for vanity to plume itself on, I am sensible, they are of little or no use to me or any body else. But whoever my reader is, I declare I have ten thousand irrefragable reasons for firmly believing, that Sir Isaac Newton was incomparably more apt to write lies and nonsense than St. Peter, St. John, or St. Paul. I ask no man's pardon for this declaration, lest I should be obliged to ask God's pardon for so doing. In this I have a teacher, to whom Newton was a fool, and made so by his mathematics. The lowest, and seemingly the weakest kind of moral proof, is that which rests on testimony; and yet in this instance, it is frequently of force sufficient to compel assent, as well as this, that the three angles of a right-lined triangle are equal to two right angles. Is there any rational man, but moderately acquainted with history or geography, who can possibly doubt, whether there ever was such a man as Julius Cæsar; or whether there is, or ever was such a city as Rome, though he never was in Italy? Doubting in such cases is impossible.

Notwithstanding the plainness and clearness of these allegations, the refiners, just mentioned, having found irresistible proof in mathematical demonstrations, and absurdly looking for their favourite mathematics in every thing, have either tried to carry its species of proof into other branches of knowledge, wherewith it hath not even a remote analogy; as if a physician should attempt to prove, before a judge and jury, his right to a particular horse, by an aphorism of

Hypocrates; or, what is yet more prejudicial to truth, they have degraded moral proof into somewhat less to be depended on, or less certain, than the mathematical, so as to render it rather problematical. Nevertheless, as if there were logical degrees of certainty, they still talk of moral certainty, that is, to me, of uncertain certainty. Nothing is certain, if there is any thing more certain, in regard, I mean, to the same understanding.

One observation more, and I have done. As prejudice, interest, and passion, by their influence over our will and heart, frequently diminish the power of moral evidence and proof on our actions, rather than our judgment; so if they are once gained over by proof and reason, they second the practical conviction with an equal degree of vigour. Their effect however in thus interfering with common sense and reason, should not be confounded with it by a good logician. It is true, our Saviour saith, this is the work of God, that ye believe in him, whom he hath sent;' but in this our Saviour means, believing with the concurrence of the will and heart, a mode of expression often used in Scripture, and not only with the judgment, as the devils do,' who in spite of their infernal hatred to our religion, are forced to believe' by mere moral proof, as strongly as a mathematician is compelled to assent by his compulsory demonstrations. Some take our Saviour's expression in this sense, that faith is the work of God in the heart of man; and this is true of saving faith, but not of that which is merely historical. In this latter sense his words could not be a direct answer to the Jews, who had put this question to him, 'What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?' To this question the Holy Spirit, speaking by St. Paul, sufficiently explains our Saviour's answer. In the gospel,' saith he, Rom. i. 16, 17, 'the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith,' that is, from the faith of the understanding to the faith of the heart; for chap. x. 9, he adds, if thou shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart, that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.' A man, or a devil, may be forced by moral evidence, to believe with the understanding; but, until he gives up his heart and will to this evidence, he hath not done the work

of God, nor indeed any work of his own. The first degree of faith is compulsory; the second, voluntary, and is that of the whole man, possessing, not only his intellect, but likewise his animal nature. He that hath not the first degree of faith, is an infidel, only because he either never had an opportunity of knowing its evidence, or would not attend to it, for fear of wedding his heart to certain principles, too coercive, as he foresaw, to be submitted to by his passions and habits.

It is to be wished, that more justice were done to faith by men of commerce, who owe all their wealth to it; by men of the law, who found all their trials on it; by philosophers, who ignorantly endeavour to vilify its evidence; and by the class of piddling divines, who lose sight of it in a mist of conceited disputes, more prejudicial to religious truth than ignorance itself. Logical faith is a firm persuasion of any proposition on the testimony of others. The first degree of Christian faith is such a persuasion on the testimony of God, and of such men as we cannot rationally suspect of insufficiency in regard either to their means of information, or their veracity in reporting. And the second degree of Christian faith, founding itself on the first, is that faith of the understanding, which aided by the Spirit of God, takes possession of the heart and will, with all their practical, operative, and saving warmths. This is that joint work of God and man, by which man believeth in him, whom God hath sent' to teach and redeem that man. This is that evidence, which carries in it the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.' This is that faith which overcometh the world.' Philosophy, in none of its branches, can produce any thing of equal conviction, for who will sacrifice his life to it? Nothing of equal utility, for what in comparison, would signify the squaring of a circle, or a machine to exhibit a perpetual motion, if either could be found out? But this faith turns every thing into that gold, wherewith the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem are paved; this faith communicates a universal remedy; this faith discovers an art of flying above the fixed stars. Though these things may sound like allegories, they are the farthest from hyperboles of any thing in the world, as far as that the whole is greater than any of its