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nature itself. If we advert to the series of the causes of our being and preservation in the world, we shall commence a re trospective examination from son to father, grand father, and great grand father, and so on to the supreme and self-existent father of all and as to the means of our preservation, or successive causes of it, we may begin with parental kindness in nourishing, succouring, and providing for us in our helpless age; always remembering it to have originated from our eternal father, who implanted that powerful and sympathetic paternal affection in the breast of our progenitors.

By giving our ideas a larger scope, we shall perceive our dependence on the earth, and waters of the globe, which we inhabit, and from which we are bountifully fed and gorgeously arrayed; and next extending our ideas to the sun, whose fiery mass darts its brilliant rays of light to our terraqueous hall with amazing velocity, and whose region of inexhaustible fire supplies it with fervent heat, which causes vegetation and gilds the various seasons of the year with ten thousand charms, we immediately see this to be, not the achievement of man, but the workmanship and providence of God. How the sun is supplied with materials, thus to perpetuate its kind influences, we know not. But will any one pretend to deny the reality of those benign influences, because we do not understand the manner of the perpetuality of that fiery orb, or how it became such a body of fire: or will any one deny the reality of nutrition by food, because we do not understand the secret operation of the digesting powers of animal nature, or the minute particulars of its cherishing influence? None will affect so much stupidity. Equally preposterous and absurd would it be for us to deny the providence of God, "by whom we live and move, and have our being," because we cannot comprehend it.

We know that earth, water, fire, and air, in their various combinations, are subservient to our wants; we also know that these elements are devoid of reflection, reason, or design; from whence we may easily infer, that a wise, intelligent, and designing being has ordained them to be thus subservient. Could blind chance constitute order and propriety, and consequently a providence? That wisdom, order, and design should be the production of nonentity, or of chaos, confusion, and old night, is too ridiculous to deserve a serious confutation, since it supposes, that there may be an effect without a cause, that is, produced by nonentity; or that chaos and confusion produce the effects of power, wisdom, and goodness. To such absurdities as these we must either assent, or subscribe to the doctriue of a self-existent and providential being. Chaos itself

would necessarily include the idea of a creator, inasmuch as it supposes a positive existence, though it precludes the idea of a providence, which cannot exist without order, tendency, and design.

But chaos could no more exist independent of a creator, than the present aptly disposed system of nature. For there could be no fortuitous jumble or chaos of original atoms, independent or previous to creation, as nonentity could never produce the materials. Nothing from nothing and there remains nothing; but something from nothing is contradictory and impos sible.

The evidence of the being and providence of a God is so full and complete, that we cannot miss of discerning it, if we but open our eyes, and reflect on the visible creation. The display of God's providence is that by which the evidence of his being is evinced to us; for, though mere chaos would evince the certainty of a creator, yet that abstract mode of argument could not have been conceived or known by us, were it not for the exercise of God's providence (by whom we have our being); though that argument in itself would have been true, whether it had been used by us or not; because the reason of propositions and just inferences in themselves, are in truth the same, independent of our conceptions of them, abstractedly considered from our existence.

The benefit accruing to us from reasoning and argumentation, as it respects our knowledge and practice, is this, that thereby we explore the truth of things, as they are in our own nature; and to do so is our wisdom. All other conceptions of things are false and imaginary. We cannot exercise our thinking faculty on any thing whatever, that has a positive existence; but if we trace it thoroughly it will centre in an independent cause, and attest a God. Thus it is, that from the works of nature we explore its great and exalted author; but the inquisitive mind is lost in its searches and researches into the immensity of the divine fullness, from whence our beings and all our blessings flow. Your's, &c.

E. A.

P. S. In my next, I shall endeavour to point out the manner of dis covering the moral perfections and essential attributes of God.

the universal power, ever present, constantly and essentially communicating by means of every thing, through all the senses of man, every where in measure according to individual capacity."

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His Laws." How are we to know them? By the observation of those things themselves, for ourselves, or by words now spoken or written by men-words merely represent and copy, they are mutable, and incapable of expressing all that is seen, felt, or understood; but God continues the same, tion the same, and man equally man every where;"" and thus, that to be truly religious, is to pursue all kinds of truth, and every man who thinks for that end, is necessarily in communication with the Supreme Being, and therein really religious those only whose senses are perverted from this exercise of reflection, I conceive, can be justly called irreligious—they who consider religion more nominal, who propitiate the Divinity through a name, may yet not be virtuous."

Religion, its definition." A subjection to the will of God, or law of God."

In what it consists." The practice of moral virtue, and pursuit of all kinds of truth, religion, or the tie between us, and all that relates to us, whether external or internal in its influences, does truly consist."

How to be obtained." It is the prime business of our intellect to pursue all sources of sense, knowledge, and experience, whence to ascertain the duties and necessities between. each other, ourselves, and all that is about us-and these are the only means by which God, the omnipotent Being, informs and inspires us."

Motives." Founded upon the real objects of our present life, are far more powerful than the hopes or fears of an hereafter the actual circumstances of life are more truly a me-dium of communication between God and the mind of man, and the only means, wisely and rightly considered and used, of all the happiness of which human nature is capable."

T. H. indulges us with much declamation upon the palpable and ever fresh revelation of reality, some new ideas upon irreligion, that words are not immutable, and the effect upon him of the sins of his father, &c. &c. He has certainly succeeded in not meriting the common objection that is brought against his brother theorists, when they attempt to sink an existing system, always to remember such a thing as a substitute máy be wanting; he is very considerate on this head, by giving us the "ever existing revelation of reality;" and, "that the universal power constantly communicates through all the senses of man, according to individual capacity." I presume

that T. H. understands himself; but owing to our different powers of perception, we cannot see this principle in an equally clear and convincing form, which of course is intended to triumph over all opposition. What an invaluable acquisition will T. H. be to your other correspondents, A. B. Mr. Burdon, and a Deist, gentlemen who have drank deep in the, well of unbelief, and reject Christianity, from a deficiency of evidence! This new idea of T. H.'s is quite ample on that score, and fully deserving of being made the foundation upon which they can rest their whole hypothesis, and from which they can take their stand, bidding defiance to the united attacks of the Christians.

This writer's ideas of God are, in my judgment, far removed from the standard of probability. In fact, the subject is of that intricate nature, that the most enlightened of mankind have confessed their total incapacity to form their judgment upon it, feeling fully satisfied, that it is infinitely above the present capacity of man. Speculations like T. H.'s forcibly bring to our minds the observation of children of quick parts, who, when their good intentioned parents tell them that God made every thing, they naturally ask whether he made the chairs and tables that surround them.

Having ascertained the writer's opinion of Deity, let us attend to the hinge upon which his whole system turns, that "Religion is a subjection to the will of God, or law of God;" and what the will of God is, he explains in the extract given above, from the other part of his essay. I admit most heartily the truth of the proposition, and T. H. is woefully deceived by endeavouring to put such a principle in competition with Christianity. How to make it square with the rest of his creed, I leave for his own exertions to unfold. For him to advance such a statement, and hold his other opinions, is truly extraordinary; so much so, that it would appear a natural impossibility, were we not disposed to make very great allowance for the deceptions which the human mind is capable of practising upon itself; for men to be acquainted with the will and law of God, it follows as a necessary consequence, that he must have made them known, or else we should for ever have remained in the dark upon the subject. We ascertain the knowledge of men, both in ancient and present times, that were destitute of this assistance, and discover it to be as distant from these principles advanced by T. H. as it is possible to conceive the greatest opposites in creation; we produce Revelation as the true and only source from whence the knowledge of them is derived, and the sole foundation

on which they rest; and having so done, it is not the business of the honest enquirer to go hunting after may-becauses, when he is in possession of one that carries with it the strongest possible evidence of its truth, and is fully ade quate to produce all the effects ascribed to it by its enlightened advocates. Such being the case, we bring our opponents to the situation of either admitting the truth of Revelation, or else relinquishing those positions, which they have foolishly said are to be learned from the study of nature, and actual occurrences of life. The discoveries of these searchers into all kinds of truth, are not less extraordinary than if some new adept in astronomy was to issue forth and gravely tell us, that it is a common error men entertain of the sun being the centre, and the cause of light and heat to our system; that as words merely represent and copy, we are to derive the true knowledge of so enlightened a science from the ever existing revelation of reality, and a close attention to the actual circumstances of life, in which of course it is impossible to err.

Having been led, in the examination of T. H.'s third and fourth propositions, to point out the true source from whence their knowledge is derived, we now come in regular gradation to his fifth; the general strain of which has been principally anticipated in the remarks that have already occurred. He informs us, that we are to " pursue all sources of sense, knowledge, and experience, to ascertain the duties and necessities between each other." This is the means necessary to be used for the obtainment of a knowledge of T. H.'s religion. Reader, don't you think it ought to su persede Christianity, as it is so eminently calculated for universal observance? Such an argument as this does not deserve to be seriously treated, when we see men labour ta bewilder their faculties, and take so much pains to leave the plain direct road, in order that they may cut through woods and mountains, in the hopes of at length reaching the same point. One indispensable requisite of any system of religion, that has the least claim upon the attention of man, is its being adapted to all circumstances and conditions of life; but was T. H.'s the only method by which we could obtain a knowledge of our relative duties, what a multitude of the human species must travel on to their graves in total ignorance upon the subject!

When we view the limited nature of man's faculties, and see that a great part of his knowledge is obliged to be taken on trust, how extremely ridiculous does this proposition appear, that we are to pursue all sources of sense,