sword could not conquer, though it might affright from the field.

The world and revelation, both the work of the same God, are both constructed on the same principles; and were the book of scripture like that of nature laid open to universal inspection, were all ideas of temporal rewards and punishments removed from the study of it, that would come to pass in the moral world, which has actually happened in the world of human science, each capacity would find its own object, and take its own quantum. Newtons will find stars without penalties, Miltons will be poets, and Lardners Christians without rewards. Calvins will contemplate the decrees of God, and Baxters will try to assort them with the spontaneous volitions of men; all, like the celestial bodies, will roll on in the quiet majesty of simple proportion, each in his proper sphere shining to the glory of God the Creator. But alas! We have not so learned Christ!

Were this doctrine of proportion allowed, three consequences would follow. First, Subscription to human creeds, with all their appendages, both penal and pompous, would roll back into the turbulent ocean, the Sea I mean, from whence they came; the Bible would remain a placid emanation of wisdom from God; and the belief of it a sufficient test of the obedience of his people. Secondly, Christians would be freed from the inhuman necessity of execrating one another, and by placing Christianity in believing in Christ, and not in believing in one another, they would rid revelation of those intolerable abuses,

which are fountains of sorrow to Christians, and sources of arguments to infidels. Thirdly, Oppor tunity would be given to believers in Christ to exercise those dispositions, which the present disproportional division of this common benefit obliges them to suppress, or conceal. O cruel theology, that makes it a crime to do what I have neither a right nor a power to leave undone !

I call perfection a third necessary character of a divine revelation. Every production of an intelligent being bears the characters of the intelligence that produced it, for as the man is, so is his strength, Judg. viii. 21. A weak genius produces a work imperfect and weak like itself. A wise, good being produces a work wise and good, and, if his power be equal to his wisdom and goodness, his work will resemble himself, and such a degree of wisdom, animated by an equal degree of goodness, and assisted by an equal degree of power, will produce a work equally wise, equally beneficial, equally effectual. The same degrees of goodness and power accompanied with only half the degree of wisdom, will produce a work as remarkable for a deficiency of skill as for a redundancy of efficiency and benevolence. Thus the flexibility of the hand may be known by the writing; the power of penetrating, and combining in the mind of the physician, may be known by the feelings of the patient, who has taken his prescription; and, by parity of reason, the uniform perfections of an invisible God may be known by the uniform perfection of his productions.

I perceive, I must not launch into this wide ocean of the doctrine of perfection, and I will confine myself to three characters of imperfection, which may serve to explain my meaning. Proposing to obtain a great end without the use of proper means-the employing of great means to obtain no valuable end --and the destroying of the end by the use of the means employed to obtain it; are three characters of imperfection frequently found in frail intelligent agents and certainly they can never be attributed to the great Supreme. A violation of the doctrine of analogy would argue God an unjust being; and a violation of that of proportion would prove him an unkind being; and a violation of this of perfection would argue him a being void of wisdom. Were we to suppose him capable of proposing plans impossible to be executed, and then punishing his creatures for not executing them, we should attribute to the best of beings the most odious dispositions of the most infamous of mankind. Heaven forbid the thought!

The first character of imperfection is proposing to obtain a great end without the use of proper means. To propose a noble end argues a fund of goodness: but not to propose proper means to obtain it argues a defect of wisdom. Christianity proposes the noble end of assimilating man to God! and it employs proper means of obtaining this end. God is an intelligent being happy in a perfection of wisdom; the gospel assimilates the felicity of human intelligences to that of the Deity by communicating the ideas of God on certain articles to men.

God is a bountiful being, happy in a perfection of goodness; the gospel assimilates the felicity of man to that of God by communicating certain benevolent dispositions to its disciples similar to the communicative excellencies of God. God is an operative being happy, in the display of exterior works beneficent to his creatures; the gospel felicitates man by directing and enabling him to perform certain works beneficent to his fellow-creatures. God condescends to propose this noble end, of assimilating man to himself, to the nature of mankind, and not to certain distinctions foreign from the nature of man, and appendent on exterior circumstances. The boy, who feeds the farmer's meanest animals, the sailor, who spends his days on the ocean, the miner, who, secluded from the light of the day, and the society of his fellow-creatures, spends his life in a subterraneous cavern, as well as the renowned roes of mankind, are all included in this condescending benevolent design of God. The gospel proposes to assimilate all to God: but it proposes such an assimilation, or, may I say? such a degree of moral excellence, as the nature of each can bear, and it directs to means so proper to obtain this end, and renders these directions so extremely plain, that the perfection of the designer shines with the utmost glory.

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I have sometimes imagined a Pagan ship's crew in a vessel under sail in the wide ocean; I have supposed not one soul aboard ever to have heard one word of Christianity; I have imagined a bird dropping a New-Testament written in the language of

the mariners on the upper deck; I have imagined a fund of uneducated, unsophisticated good sense in this company, and I have required of this little world answers to two questions; first, What end does this book propose? The answer is, This book was written, that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we might have life through his name, John xx. 31. I ask secondly, what means does this book authorise a foremast man, who believes, to employ to the rest of the crew to induce them to believe, that Jesus is the Son of God, and that believing they also with the foremast man, may have eternal felicity through his name? I dare not answer this question: but I dare venture to guess, should this foremast man conceal the book from any of the crew, he would be unlike the God, who gave it to all; or should he oblige the cabinboy to admit his explication of the book, he would be unlike the God, who requires the boy to explain it to himself; and should he require the captain to enforce his explication by penalties, the captain ought to reprove his folly for counter-acting the end of the book, the felicity of all the mariners; for turning a message of peace into an engine of faction; for employing means inadequate to the end; and so for erasing that character of perfection, which the heavenly donor gave it.

A second character of imperfection is the employing of great means to obtain no valuable end. Whatever end the author of Christianity had in view, it is beyond a doubt, he hath employed great means to ef fect it. To use the language of a prophet, he hath