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SECT. II. -- A retired Life considered in respect
to Utility.

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SECT. III. The Utility of Monasteries consi-

dered

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PAGE

• 324-340

• 341-351

CONCLUSION.-- In which it is considered, how
far the Principles of the foregoing Discourse
may be of Use to guide us in the Choice of
Life

353-383

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On the Knowledge of God; particularly in his Justice and Benignity towards Man. II. This Knowledge unattainable in any satisfactory Degree, without the Light of Revelation. III. To be sought by Study and Prayer in Conjunction.

IT is remarked by Wollaston, that truth is the offspring of silence, of unbroken meditations, and of thoughts often revised and corrected. This observation, though it holds in respect to human knowledge in general, is peculiarly applicable to some of its higher branches. To investigate the more abstruse properties of number and figure, or to explore the secrets of nature, a man must exchange the tumultuous scenes of business,

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and the giddy circles of dissipation, for the calm and recollection of a studious retiremènt. Or if he would examine into the powers and faculties of his own mind, and curiously trace its operations, he will find it still more necessary to withdraw from the noise and bustle of life, and to make his court to silence and solitude.

If then an abstraction from the busy multitude be a needful preliminary in order successfully to investigate the laws of quantity, the properties of matter, or the operations of our own minds, objects which lie in some measure within the reach of our senses or consciousness; it would be highly irrational to suppose it less requisite, when we would trace His being and perfections who dwelleth in lightinaccessible, whose nature is transcendent, and whose attributes are infinite.

Yet this reasoning, however cogent and irresistible it appears, will, it may be feared, have little influence upon some who, though they would not expect to become profound metaphysicians, or learned in natural science, without frequent intervals of retired study, will vainly pretend to a sufficient knowledge of the great Author of nature, though they have never employed any stated portion of their time for its attainment; or at most have never gone beyond a formal appearance once in seven days, in some church or other place of religious resort, merely from a sense of decorum, or in conformity to the custom of those around them..

This conceit of native and unacquired mental endowments may, in some cases, be suffered to pass without much censure, That a poet, for instance, is born such, and not produced by art or study, is an old notion, whose truth it is not worth the while to dispute, as it is of little consequence whether it be true or false. But for a man to imagine himself in possession of the highest wisdom, who has never made any serious efforts to attain it; to suppose that the knowledge of God is with him original and

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