immutable Spirit prevails in any local church, it is radically safe.

3. For though the members of our church may practically digress whenever they violate or even taint the natural system, on which that temple is founded, yet the digression is but individual, by natural order, this disorder is repaired and nature

renovates.

4. However various may be the jarring claims of either temporary or local communities to the highest origin in God, they can only demonstrate their title thereto by their resemblance in demonstrable goodness: their apparent confidence in the stability of the system; and their practical consistency with nature.

DEFINITIONS.

5. DEFINING INSTINCT, to be an impulse by which the animals, in whom it naturally predominates, fulfil the end of their being, in complying with their predominating laws of self-preservation, in well-being; and in propagation; and, thusthe infallible substitute of Reason.

6. REASON to be the discriminating and discretional power of reflection, accommodating itself to the varying circumstances of humanity, in the acquirement of perfection, founded on Truth.

7. TRUTH to be "the conformity of our conceptions to the nature of things."

8. NATURE, as applicable to the universe, to be the general properties of which it is composed: in particular, to be the properties of its parts, according to their common order; and its laws to be those rules by which they are governed and actuated, in which they are either absolutely or discretionally Good.

9. Good to be whatever is of use, as tending to the well-being of nature, and the propagation of its various species in perfection; and distinguishable as physical, metaphysical, and hyperphysical; the whole, as rising on each other, applicable to rational beings, as exterior, interior, and external: or, the means, directing agency, and end; the maturity of the interior, constituting rationality in perfection, is termed Goodness.

10. GOODNESS to be the will of diffusing and propagating good.

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PREMISES.

11. WE premise FIRST TRUTHS, founded on the immutable principles and laws of Nature, which, as self-evident objects of sense, and of reflection, apply more especially to rationality, as the basis of Reason.

12. REASON to distinguish its objects and appreciate them, according to the degree of evidence of good with which they are accompanied; whether its researches are Physical, Metaphysical, or Hyperphysical.

13. PHYSICAL.-In contemplating natural bodies and their influence upon each other, and the effects; and from them conjointly, the end and the fitness of things.

14. METAPHYSICAL.-In contemplating powers which, though connected with physical, are capable of affording abstracted contemplation.

15. HYPERPHYSICAL.-When, by reflection and inference, founded on correspondency of principles in the things which human faculties can comprehend, far enough to demonstrate them to be true; Reason forms conclusions of those things

which human faculties cannot comprehend, and consequently, cannot demonstrate, but which, also, may be true; extending itself even to remote and unknown causes, and from analogy inferring similar effects.

16. Physically.-Through the interior means the Senses of smelling, tasting, hearing, feeling, and seeing.

17. In those external means, which in some degree can every where be found-in the beneficial effects of the sun: in the common sustenance of life in the rough voice and in the uncultivated state of nature as primary means. Through the uncultivated state of nature being productive of fragrance, harmony, palatable vians heat and light, as secondary means.

18. Metaphysically.-Through the endowment of those common means, and with faculties which form the union between Physics and Metaphysics, the members of our communities are presumed to have become so internally cultivated, as to afford that external cultivation required from their directing agency, in the arrangement of that heat and light, and in the occasional substitution of the

principal renovator: in making discordant sounds harmonious: in acquiring taste, and in promoting the fragrancy of uncultivated nature-for the individual and general good, as the end of creation.

19. Hyperphysically.—The members of our church, through the due exercise of their physical and metaphysical powers, in the ascertainment of permanent good being the end of the creation, having been led by their external researches beyond the material world to eternity and to the God of nature, as to a Creator, who equally provides for the wants of all his creatures, in proportion to their faculties, without distinction of nation, sect, or party, or even of genus, species, or complexionthey conclude that His providence is universal.

20. Our votaries, in their conviction, that they are justified by the universal tenure of nature, in assigning to it a cause, not finding it therein, in a condensed form, recognise such a Being through His works only.

21. Under the general criterion, those members, only, who promote, or endeavour at the promotion of universal good, will be contemplated as imitating, as serving, or as being acceptable before that