chimerical mythology, or fabulous tradition. Neither, let it be obferved, is the crime or danger lefs, because impure ideas are exhibited under a veil, in covert and chastized language.

Serioufnefs is not constraint of thought; nor levity, freedom. Every mind which wishes the advancement of truth and knowledge, in the most important of all hum n researches, muft abhor this licentiousness as violating no less the laws of reasoning, than the rights of decency. There is but one defcription of men, to whose principles it ought to be tolerable, I mean that class of reasoners, who can fee little in Christianity, even fuppofing it to be true. To fuch adverfaries we addrefs this reflection-Had Jefus Chrift delivered no other declaration, than the following: "The hour is coming, in the which all that

are in the graves fhall hear his voice, and 'fhall come forth; they that have done good, unto the refurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the refur⚫rection of damnation;' he had pronounced a meffage of ineftimable importance, and well worthy of that fplendid apparatus of prophecy

prophecy and miracles, with which his miffion was introduced, and attested-a meffage, in which the wifeft of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and reft to their enquiries. It is idle to say, that a future ftate had been discovered already-It had been discovered, as the Copernican fyftem was it was one guess amongst many. He alone difcovers, who proves; and no man can prove this point, but the teacher who teftifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God.

MORAL

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NOVERNMENT, at firft, was either patriarchal or military; that of a parent over his family, or of a commander over his fellow warriors.

I. Paternal authority, and the order of domeftic life, fupplied the foundation of civil government. Did mankind spring out of the earth mature and independent, it would be found perhaps impoffible to introduce subjection and subordination among

them:

them: but the condition of human infancy prepares men for fociety, by combining individuals into fmall communities, and placing them from the beginning under direction and controll. A family contains the rudiments of an empire. The authority of one over many, and the difpofition to govern and be governed, are in this way incidental to the very nature, and coeval, no doubt, with the existence of the human fpecies. Moreover, the conftitution of families not only affifts the formation of civil government by the difpofitions which it generates, but also furnishes the first steps of the process by which empires have been actually reared. A parent would retain a confiderable part of his authority after his children were grown up, and had formed families of their own. The obedience, of which they remembered not the beginning, would be confidered as natural; and would fcarcely, during the parent's life, be entirely or abruptly withdrawn. This is the fecond ftage in the progrefs of dominion. The firft was that of a parent over his young children: we now fee an ancestor prefiding over his adult defcendants. And altho' the original progenitor was the centre of union to his pofterity, yet it is not probable that

the