but to do the will of him who fent them; they preached the doctrines that were to make men wife unto falvation, and would have held it profane to endeavour to procure them a reception by any other means than their proper evidence.

As the filence of revelation, on points respecting which no information can be derived from any other fource, is a proof that they were not intended to be known by man, and ought to reprefs premature curiofity: fo, on the other hand, the very existence of a revelation, duly authenticated, imposes on those to whom it is addreffed, the ftricteft obligation to acquaint themfelves, according to the measure of their talents and opportunities, with whatever it contains.

AUTHORS who profefs to develope the fecret fprings of human policy, and to point

out

out the origin and tendency of transactions, which, to an ordinary eye, appear fortuitous and unconnected, are read with avidity, and studied with the closest attention. Analogies are carefully drawn between the actual state of things, and that which is defcribed, and leffons of enterprise or caution are derived from them; fometimes with the more felfifh view of perfonal aggrandifement; fometimes with the nobler one of converting them to the benefit of mankind. But where is the fcience, where the object of pursuit, that gives fuch scope both to the powers of the understanding, and the beft emotions of the heart, as a minute and unprejudiced investigation of the hiftory of God's dealings with man; from the offence of the first Adam, in whom we all die, to the advent and miniftry of the fecond, in whom we all are made alive.

THE

THE folemnity and awful circumftances, by which this difpenfation has been diftinguished through the feveral ftages of its progrefs, are calculated to awaken the most infenfible, and to fix the attention of the moft unthinking. Experience has shewn, and we have already had occasion to obferve, that the human faculties, however limited in certain respects, are adequate to all the concerns of the prefent life; they are in themselves the fource of intellectual pleasure, an enjoyment of a ftill higher kind; they penetrate the abyfs of space, and reduce to order and fyftem objects of which the remotenefs feems to mock inquiry, and the vaftnefs to furpass a finite comprehenfion.

To the direction of these faculties mankind are left in the moft difficult, and in, what appear to them, the most important and interefting conjectures. Empires rife

and

fall, revolutions take place which convulfe the world, virtue is oppreffed, and vice triumphant: ftill, all appears to proceed according to an established order of caufes and effects; no voice is heard from heaven; whatever share an overruling power may have in producing or controuling fuch events, its influence is fo filent and indirect, as (even when they come to be difpaffionately studied in the page of hiftory, and with a more extended view of their connections and confequences,) to afford rather matter of conjecture than of certainty.

FROM this plan, fo generally, and, as even our imperfect apprehenfion can difcover, fo wifely adhered to, we find but one deviation, though the records we poffefs are almoft coeval with the existence of our race. For, the prophecies, the calling of Abraham, the miraculous communications and deliverances vouchfafed to the

Patriarchs

Patriarchs and their defcendants, the fingular polity of the Jews, all were preparatory and fubordinate to that mystery into which even the angelic hoft were defirous to look; that fecond creation, more glorious than the first, when the morning stars fang together, and the fons of God fhouted for joy. Well indeed did the divine purpose, in fending the Meffiah upon earth, correfpond to those awful displays of fupernatural power by which it was prefigured and accompanied. It was not to adjust the petty interefts of individuals or ftates, it comprised not one fleeting generation of men; but, having been decreed in the counfels. of God before the foundation of the world, it reached from the beginning to the confummation of all things; conferring on myriads, to whom it never was promulgated, a ftate of blifs, fuch as eye hath not feen, nor car heard, nor hath it entered in

to