perfect revelation was at firft made, and afterwards renewed, as occasion served, when the wantonnefs of imagination had corrupted and defaced it, and at last committed to writing by Mofes, for the use of the then present and all fucceeding generations, to be the rule and standard whereby they should measure and regulate their opinions and belief of things natural and divine.

As foreign as philosophy may seem to theology, we find, in fact, that fuch as our philofophy is, fuch is our God; and that our belief in divine, is generally of a piece with our notions in natural things. The Heathens thought the fun, moon, and host of heaven, gods; fo worshipped them; and, no doubt, mocked the prophets who preached to them, That the Lord made the heavens and the earth. Pharaoh knew not the Lord, neither would obey his voice: why? because the fellows of his royal fociety deluded him by experiments, into a belief that the powers which Mofes attributed to the Lord, were lodged in the material agents. So now our naturalists pretend,

from

from nature, to find out God; and upon their system of philosophy have built a theology diametrically oppofite, in the fundamental point, to what is taught in fcripture. "And these things being rightly "dispatched," fays Sir Ifaac Newton* "does it not appear, from phenomena, "that there is a being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omniprefent, who in infinite space, as it were in his fenfory, fees "the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and compre→ "hends them wholly by their immediate "prefence to himself?- -And though every true ftep made in this philofophy brings us not immediately to the knowledge of the first cause, yet it brings us "nearer to it; and on that account is to "be highly valued.". So his definition of his Deus makes him to exift in one perfon; directly oppofite, as I faid above, to the Christian faith; which teaches, that he exists in three perfons. Omnis homo, quatenus res fentiens, eft unus et idem homo, durante vita fua, in omnibus et fingulis fenOptics, p. 345. English edit. 1721.

fuum

fuum organis. Deus eft unus et idem Deus femper et ubique, viz. "Every man, so far as he is a thing that has perception, is ❝one and the fame man during his whole

life, in all and each of the organs of "fenfe. God is one and the fame God always and every where." This defi

nition of God, and the whole general scholium of which it is a part, was added when it was difcovered how fubfervient his philosophical tenets might be made to the fupport of those theological ones, which were at that time trying their way in the world, by force of the uncommon abilities and indefatigable zeal of the great Dr Clarke; and which are now making another attempt upon the public, in proposals for reforming the liturgy.

THUS we fee that philofophy has a clofer connection with theology, than it is generally supposed to have; and while we are prejudiced with falfe notions of the one, we cannot be brought to entertain true and proper ones of the other.

FOR

1

upon

FOR the two grand natural agents, the light and fpirit, are not vifible to us, and act in the macrocosm and microcofm in so gentle a manner, as not to be perceptible but by their effects, (as the antitypes act upon our fouls). But the orbs and things which these invifible agents act, are the objects of our fenfes, ftand out to view; while the others are hid from our eyes in a tempeft, which no man can fee, as the son of Sirach expreffes it. If there fore we begin to imagine that there are properties in matter, fuch as gravity and attraction, and the vis inertia, whereby bodies can act at a distance without contact, (which, if we judge by appearances, we may easily do, as we fee not the fluid which moves the orbs); or if, to account for gravity and attraction by a medium, we fuppose the particles of that medium elaftic, repulfive, or what else we please; this draws us in to attribute the effential incommunicable powers of Jehovah to his creature matter; such as, acting where it is not prefent, giving without receiving, and fuch like blafphemous abfurdities, whereby we

may

may fatally err in our notions of divinity. Befides, if we imagine that philosophy is discoverable by our natural abilities without revelation, or if any one fancies that he has discovered the true fyftem of nature; this introduces another fubfequent imagination, That by reason we can fearch out God, and find out the Almighty to perfection; and the confequence of this, again, is a conceit, that we have no need of revelation ; and this begets a neglect of the scriptures, which contain a revelation of these points; and this neglect by degrees hardens into a disbelief, and fo contempt, of the facred oracles of God; while at the fame time it produces a moft ridiculous veneration for the reveries and imaginations of men; makes us idolize human reason, and fet it up as the judge of God, and his methods of proceeding with man.

AND hence it has come to pafs, that of late the scriptures have met with fo general a disregard, while at the same time a kind of veneration has been paid to the gravita rian scheme; and though we have ridicu

led