in religion from revelation or tradition. A system may be fabricated, and called natural; but a religion it cannot be; for there never was a religion, among Jews or Gentiles, Greeks, Romans, or Barbarians, since the beginning of the world, without sacrifice and priesthood: of which natural religion, having neither, is consequently no religion. The imagination of man, by supposing a religion without these, has done infinite disservice to the only religion by which man can be saved. It has produced the deistical substitution of naked morality, or Turkish honesty, for the doctrines of intercession, redemption, and divine grace. It has no gift from God, but that nature, which came poor, and blind, and naked out of Paradise; subject only to farther misery, from its own lusts, and the temptations

of

publications of modern date. Attraction is going down; and the demonstration of a vacuum is not to be supported; as I shall shew in another place. Electricity hath risen up, and given us the knowledge of a new power in nature, which is an object of sense, and may be extended to the whole system of the world. Lord Forbes's letter to a Bishop was written with the best intention in the world; but, when a scheme is new, and admitted in all its parts, more weight is laid upon some things, than they will bear. He tells his reader many curious things, for which I have not room; neither would I choose to introduce them, because they depend on Hebrew evidence.

of the Devil. A religion, more flattering to the pride of man, pleases his fancy better than this; but it will never do him any good.

Hutchinson himself had so strong a sense of this, that he looked upon natural religion as Deism in disguise; an engine of the Devil, in these latter days, for the overthrow of the Gospel; and therefore boldly called it the religion of Satan or Anti-christ. Let the well-informed Christian look about him and consider, whether his words, extravagant as they might seem at first, have not been fully verified. I myself, for one, am so thoroughly persuaded of this, that I determine never to give quarter to natural religion, when it falls in my way to speak of the all-sufficiency of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We know very well how the Scripture is brought in to give its countenance to the notion of a natural religion: but we know also that dark texts are drawn to such a sense, as to render all the rest of the Scripture of no effect; as hath happened in the doctrines of predestination and natural religion; by the former of which we lose the Church, by the latter its Faith. Facts bring a dispute to a short issue. If Voltaire were alive, I would be judged by him, whether Christianity hath not been going down ever since natural religion came up. And we

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know, by what his disciples, the French, have done, that natural religion comes up, when Christianity is put down. These facts teach us, that they will not stand long together. Whether they possibly might or not is not worth an inquiry; because he, that has got Christianity, may leave natural religion to shift for itself.

6. Few writers for natural religion have shewn any regard to the types and figures of the Scripture, or known much about them. But the Hutchinsonians, with the old Christian Fathers, and the Divines of the Reformation, are very attentive to them, and take great delight in them. They differ in their nature from all the learning of the world; and so much of the wisdom of revelation is contained in them, that no Christian should neglect the knowlege of them. All infidels abominate them. Lord Bolingbroke calls St. Paul a Cabbalist for arguing from them; but the Hutchinsonians are ambitious of being such Cabbalists as St. Paul was.

7. In natural philosophy, they have great regard to the name of Newton, as the most wonderful genius of his kind. But they are sure, his method of proving a vacuum is not agreeable to nature. A vacuum cannot be deduced from the theory of resistances: for, if mo

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tion be from impulsion, as Newton himself, and some of the wisest of his followers have suspected; then the cause of motion will never resist the motion which it causes. The rule, which is true when applied to communicated motion, does not hold when applied to the motions of nature. For the motions of nature change from less to more; as when a spark turns to a conflagration: but communicated motion always changes from more to less: so that there is an essential difference between them, and we cannot argue from the one to the other. Mr. Cotes's demonstration, it is well known, is applicable only to communicated motion: I mean such only as is violent or artificial. There is no need of a vacuum in the heavens: it is more reasonable and more agreeable to nature that they should be filled with a circulating fluid, which does not hinder motion, but begins it and preserves it.

They cannot allow inert matter to be capable (as mind is) of active qualities; but ascribe attraction, repulsion, &c. to subtle causes, not immaterial. There may be cases very intricate and difficult; but they take the rule from plain cases, and supposing nature to be uniform and consistent, they apply it to the rest.

8. In natural history, they maintain, against all the wild theories of Infidels, which come up, one after another

other, like mushrooms, and soon turn rotten, that the present condition of the earth bears evident marks of an universal flood; and that extraneous fossils are to be accounted for from the same catastrophe. Many of them are therefore diligent collectors of fossil bodies, which are valuable to the curious in consideration of their origin.

9. What commonly passes under the name of learning, is a knowlege of Heathen books: but it should always be admitted with great precaution. For they think of all Heathens, that, from the time when they commenced Heathens, they never worshipped the true God, the Maker of heaven and earth; but, instead of him, the elements of the world, the powers of nature, and the lights of heaven: that the love of vice and vanity was the real cause of their ignorance: they did not know the true God, because they did not like to know him: and that the same passions will give us an inclination to the principles of Heathens, rather than to the principles of Christians; and that most of the ill principles of this age come out of the Heathen School. The favourers of Mr. Hutchinson's scheme are therefore reputed to be the enemies of learning. But they are not so. They are enemies only to the abuses of it, and to the corruptions derived from it. To all false learning,

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