LETTER II.

I

HAVE already observed, that the belief in a Supreme Intelligence and in the immortality of the human soul, were doctrines so consonant to reason, and which were so spontaneously adopted by the human mind, as to be termed the religion of nature. I have likewise shewn, that wherever the light of reyelation was withdrawn, these first principles were so corrupted by the passions and the imagination, as to

be

be disjoined from all connection with the moral principle.

I come now to lay before you the substance of the knowledge obtained through the medium of divine revelation, an account of which has, by the providence of God, been preserved to us in the Bible. We there find, besides much valuable information, additional strength bestowed on all that reason had suggested, and additional light given upon points which were of too much moment to be left involved in the uncertainty of conjecture.

By the religion of reason it was taught, that the formation of the world, and of all that it contains, must necessarily be the work of a powerful and intelligent being. The Bible confirms the interesting truth. It gives us a sublime description of the manner in which this world was,

at

at the fiat of Omnipotence, called into existence; a description so clear, as to be level to the comprehension of the ignorant; so full of grandeur, as to claim the admiration of the most enlightened.

Wherever the human mind had arrived at such a state of cultivation as to be capable of exerting its reasoning powers, there were some who argued upon the probability that God who made the world, continues by his providence to govern it; and that he is consequently an invisible and ever-present witness of human actions. To the rational faculties of man, God afforded sufficient light to render this probable, but it was by revelation only that it could be ascertained, and by revelation it has been ascertained.

We learn from the Bible, that in the beginning of the world the Supreme

Being vouchsafed to give proofs of his immediate presence, not only to the understanding, but to the senses. By immediate communication, he instructed the parents of the human race. He informed them of their fallibility, and of the state of probation in which they were placed, and warned them of the penalty they would incur through disobedience. Nor when the penalty was incurred did he withdraw the proofs of his superintending care from the guilty sufferers. Hitherto he had appeared to them in the attributes of wisdom, power, and goodness; they were now to see him as a God of justice and a God of mercy.

Justice pronounced the awful sentence of condemnation; mercy presented the cup of hope.

The account handed down to us, in the book of Genesis, of the creation

VOL. II.

C

and

and fall of man,

is so very brief, that it must of necessity be obscure. But this briefness and obscurity are additional proofs of its authenticity. If you ever become acquainted with Oriental literature, you will perceive, that events which are stated by Moses within the compass of a few sentences, would have been amplified into volumes, had imagination been permitted to have any share in making up the record. Nor is the obscurity in which the inspired historian has left all that it imported not our happiness to know, a less decisive proof of his fidelity. Events transacted in a state of existence dissimilar to that in which we live, must necessarily be attended with circumstances impossible for us to comprehend. Supposing it possible for us to have access to the mind of an unborn child, and that its reasoning faculties

were