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THE

SCHEME

AND

CONDUCT

OF

PROVIDENCE,

FROM THE

CREATION

ΤΟ ΤΗΕ

Coming of MESSIAH:

OR,

An ENQUIRY into the REASONS
of the DIVINE DISPENSATIONS
in that Period.

By Mr. W ELSTED.

LONDON:

Printed for J. WALTHOE, over against the Royal
Exchange in Cornbill. MDCCXXXVI.

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OXFORD

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Here is, it is well known, a piety and greatness, natural to your temper, which muft needs render

all well-meant difquifitions into facred fubjects, acceptable to you, and the more fo, the freer they are from anger, prejudice, or any of those narrow paffions, that never had dominion in your own breast.

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This treatise, then, I am perfuaded, my Lord, will meet with, at your noble hands, a reception, very different from what might be expected from thofe courtly philofophers, who are too unvulgar to relifh any divinity, that is not Pagan, or to approve of any orthodoxy, whether in points of faith, or practice.

The cause of virtue, and true religion, is as much at your Grace's heart, as that of vice and immorality is the care of madmen and libertines; which makes it altogether as right, my Lord, to infcribe to you a view of revelation, as it would have been to infcribe to Polycharmus a defence of Atheism.

If I wanted any other, or farther juftification for dedicating this Effay to your Grace, I would humbly mention the bortnefs of it, which is either the beft excufe for a bad book, or the

trueft

trueft recommendation and glory of a good one.

There is an Evil, my Lord, under the Sun, which, of all others, I have moft marvell'd at, I mean the length and voluminoufnefs of the mortal Writings of fome men; nor is there any thing, that a man, who loves his country, would more defire to fee redrefs'd.

As often therefore as I think of this grievance, I cannot forbear wifhing, that the laws of gravitation and attraction, which rule fo irresistibly other great bodies, might take place alfo with refpect to books, and that these might, in like manner, attract, and have dominion over one another, in proportion, not to their outward bulk and magnitude, but to their folid contents.

If this were the cafe, your Grace will imagine, that very new and extraordinary effects muft fall out in the A 3 world

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