CONTENTS. The several Heads of the Evidences of Revealed Religion; Of the Power of Human Reason to judge of the Internal Evi- dence of Truth in the Doctrines and Precepts of Religion, 35 ESSAY I. The several Heads of the Evidences of revealed Religion; their various Characters; and the Argument resulting from their concurrent Testimony. IN studying the evidences of the truth of revealed religion, whether they are examined solely for our own satisfaction, or to enable us to give light to others, it is very useful to bear constantly in mind, that every particular argument and branch of this evidence, however clear and convincing it may be in itself, still belongs to a vast system of truths, the several parts of which are wonderfully fitted, in different ways, to the various understandings, characters, and situations of those to whom this universal dispensation is offered. Thus is held out to every inquirer-as well to the scholar who can make the whole of human learning tributary to his investigations, as to the unlettered seeker after truth, who draws all his knowledge from his own heart and the sense of his own wants-some argument, which, if rightly received, may be sufficient to satisfy his reason, to awaken his conscience, or to engage his affections; while the whole of this proof taken together forms a vast and grand chain of moral demonstration, running through every age of the world, embracing at once all that we know of our race, its history, and destinies; and all that we know concerning ourselves, our own nature, our duties, our weakness, and our dangers. Almost all of man's science and the whole of his history, including alike the annals of princes and nations, and the more secret records of each one's memory of his past life, thus becomes, to a meditative and reflecting mind, in some way or other, connected with the history and doctrines of Christianity, and may be made to bear attestation to their truth. Hence the evidence of revelation is, throughout, not only in its general heads, but in every branch of it, (to use the happy and expressive phrase of Dr. Paley,) strictly cumulative ;'* each part serving not merely to confirm the other evidence of the same nature, but also, by the aggregation of innumerable probabilities, to strengthen the whole an hundred fold, until every chance of error or fraud is gradually, and at length completely, excluded; " and thus," says Jeremy Tay * This useful and expressive word is, I believe, original with Paley; at least, in the general and popular sense in which he applies it. It is borrowed from the civil law, where it has an analogous technical signification, ESSAY I. The several Heads of the Evidences of revealed Religion; their various Characters; and the Argument resulting from their concurrent Testimony. IN studying the evidences of the truth of revealed religion, whether they are examined solely for our own satisfaction, or to enable us to give light to others, it is very useful to bear constantly in mind, that every particular argument and branch of this evidence, however clear and convincing it may be in itself, still belongs to a vast system of truths, the several parts of which are wonderfully fitted, in different ways, to the various understandings, characters, and situations of those to whom this universal dispensation is offered. Thus is held out to every inquirer-as well to the scholar who can make the whole of human learning tributary to his investigations, as to the unlettered seeker after truth, who draws all his knowledge from his own heart and the sense of his own wants-some argument, which, if rightly received, may be sufficient to satisfy his reason, to awaken his conscience, or to |