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most nearly connected with our present and future happiness.

If there be a God, and if we be accountable to him for our conduct, it must be highly interesting to us to know all that we can concerning his character and government, concerning what he requires of us, and what we have to expect from him. If it be true that a perfon, pretending to be fent from God, hath affured us of a future life, it certainly behoves us to examine his pretenfions to divine authority; and if we fee reafon to admit them, to inform ourfelves concerning the whole of his inftructions, and particularly what kind of behaviour here will fecure our happiness hereafter. Lastly, if the religion we profess be divine, and have been corrupted by the ignorance or artifice of men, it is a matter of confequence that it be restored to its primitive purity; because its efficacy upon the heart and life muft depend upon it. And if men have ufurped any power with respect to religion which the author of it has not given them,

them, it is of confequence that their unjust claims be expofed and refifted.

In order to give the most distinct view of the principles of religion, I fhall firft explain what it is that we learn from nature, and then what farther lights we receive from revelation. But it must be observed, that, in giving a delineation of natural religion, I shall deliver what I fuppofe might have been known concerning God, our duty, and our future expectations by the light of nature, and not what was actually known of them by any of the human race; for these are very different things. Many things are, in their own nature, attainable, which, in fact, are never attained; fo that though we find but little of the knowledge of God, and of his providence, in many nations, which never enjoyed the light of revelation, it does not follow that nature did not contain and teach thofe leffons, and that men had not the means of learning them, provided they had made the most of the light they had, and of the powers that were given them.

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I fhall, therefore, include under the head of natural religion, all that can be demonftrated, or proved to be true by natural reafon, though it was never, in fact, difcovered by it; and even though it be probable that mankind would never have known it without the affiftance of revelation. Thus the doctrine of a future ftate may be called a doctrine of natural religion, if when we have had the first knowledge of it from divine revelation, we can afterwards fhow that the expectation of it was probable from the light of nature, and that present appearances are, upon the whole, favourable to the suppofition of it,

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Of the existence of God, and thofe attributes which are deduced from his being confidered as uncaufed himself, and the cause of every thing else.

WHEN

HEN we fay there is a GOD, we mean that there is an intelligent defigning caufe of what we fee in the world around us, and a being who was himself uncaufed. Unless we have recourfe to this fuppofition, we cannot account for prefent appearances; for there is an evident incapacity in every thing we fee of being the cause of its own existence, or of the existence of other things. Though, in one fenfe, fome things are the causes of others, yet they are only fo in part; and when we give fufficient attention to their nature, we fhall fee, that it is very improperly that they are termed causes at all: for when we have allowed all that we can to their influence and operation, there is still something that muft

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must be referred to a prior and fuperior caufe. Thus we fay that a proper foil, together with the influences of the fun and the rain, are the causes of the growth of plants; but, in fact, all that we mean, and all that, in ftrictness, we ought to fay, is, that according to the prefent conftitution of things, plants could not grow but in those circumstances; for, if there had not been a body previously organized like a plánt, and if there had not exifted what we call a conflitution of nature, in confequence of which plants are difpofed to thrive by the influence of the foil, the fun, and the rain, those circumstances would have fignified nothing; and the fitnefs of the organs of a plant to receive nourishment from the foil, the rain, and the fun, is a proof of fuch wisdom and defign, as those bodies are evidently deftitute of. If the fitting of a fuit of cloaths to the body of a man be an argument of contrivance, and confequently prove the existence of an intelligent agent, much more is the fitnefs of a thousand things to a thousand other things in the system of nature a proof of an intelligent

defigning

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