THE ANALOGY OF DIVINE WISDOM, BETWEEN MATTER and SENSE, SENSE and MORALITY, TEMPORAL and SPIRITUAL Conduct; AND BETWEEN The MATERIAL and SPIRITUAL World. PART II. DUBLIN: Printed in the Year MDCCL. C N. B. It should be premised, that the following Analogies are all, except one part, drawn up under fcriptural heads, to prevent the luxuriance of fanfy; left imagination fhould wander into enthusiastical conceits, without foundation on the divine word. Part the third, is a continuation of the second, and refts upon the fame foundation, and is only divided from it, to give fufficient paufe of refting; this kind of matter not admitting of a long, or precipitate reading. THE ANALOGY OF Divine Wisdom, &c. ROM. i, 20. The invisible things of him, from the creation of the World, are clearly feen, being understood by the Things that are made; even bis eternal Power and Godhead: So that they are without Excufe. T HE holy fcriptures make frequent references to the natural world. Many Allufions, to illuftrate moral things, are borrowed from fenfible images. Solomon fends the fluggard to the Ant, to learn diligence and forefight. And al though Elibu, in Job, faith, that God teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wifer than the fowls of Heaven; yet our Saviour recommends the confideration of the providential care of the fowls of the air to chriftians, in order to fhun anxiety of temper, and acquire religious chearfulnefs: Behold the fowls of the air; for they fow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns: yet your beavenly father feedeth them. He defcends lower, even to the vegetable world: Confider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they, toil not neither do they С г Spin Spin; and yet I fay unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of thefe. The apocryphal fong of the three children very properly calls upon the irrational creatures of God, to praise him: O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praife, and exalt him, above all for ever, Oye fun and moon.-O ye ftars of Heaven,O every fhorver and dew, O ail ye winds, blefs ye the Lord, praife, and exalt him above all for ever. For although these creatures are themselves void of reason, they excite rational beings to praise that BEING, who is the foundation of reason, and furnish them with noble fentiments of divine power, and wisdom, and goodness. It is not therefore any particular moral behaviour only, that is to be learned from the external world, but the foundation itself of all moral reasoning must be drawn from thence: For thither the Scrip tures appeal for proofs of the being and attributes of God; without an acknowledgment of which, the bible is of no more authority, than meaner books: The invifible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly feen, being understood by the things that are made; even bis eternal Power and Godhead. For this reafon irreligious men are without excufe, if, though not having a particular revelation, they do not believe in God, and live immoral lives; or, if, having a revelation, they either do not fufficiently credit it, or act contrary to it. In the former cafe they have the volume of the creation to ftudy, where every creature, nay, every lump of matter, is a leffon of divine truths: In the latter they have, befides this, the written word of God. It is the former of thefe we are at prefent to confider, the laws of God difcernable in the material world, and the application of them to the moral; that is, the analogy between the material, fenfitive, and moral fyftem of things. |