! is superior to the quick resentments of children. It requires a more just knowledge of things, more experience, and more forefight. Thus does the christian scheme appear to be perfectly consonant to nature. It supposes a series of dispensations, in which the human mind is ope rated upon, and its improvement promoted in a manner analogous to that in which it is actually operated upon, and its improvement promoted every day. As the one, therefore, is conducted according to the ordinary providence of the divine being, the other is what might be expected from his extraordinary dispensations. Both these schemes have the fame great object in view, and in both of them the fame end is gained by the same methods. For, in fact, the only instrument employed is that great and extensive principle of association of ideas, which is so confpicuous in the human mind, and which, according to the admirable theory of Dr. Hartley, furnishes the stamina for all its other properties, and is the source of all our faculties. It is by this principle of afsociation, that our views are enlarged to take in distant objects, but objects that have a real connection with those that are prefent. And it is an habitual attention to these associated circumstances of our actions, that gives them an influence as if they were present. As virtue, with all its consequences in this life, is eligible upon the whole, we are led, by this principle of affociation F4 ciation, to chuse and practice it, without any other guide than nature and common providence; but as virtue, with all those more extensive consequences, which revelation informs us of, is infinitely more eligible; we are led, by the same principle of affociation, to love it with more ardour, and to practice it with more conftancy; because, by the help of those lights, which are furnished by the extraordinary providence of Almighty God, in the revelation of his will to mankind, we see it to be a thing in which we are more deeply interested than we could otherwise have known ourselves to be. INSTITUTES INSTITUTES OF NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. PART 111. CONTAINING A View of the Doctrines of Revelation. 1 THE INTRODUCTION. T HE execution of this part of my undertaking has been attended (as all who are acquainted with the subject will be fully sensible) with peculiar difficulties, owing chiefly to the very different views, which even rational and learned men have entertained concerning the Doctrines of Revelation and, therefore, it is with peculiar diffidence that I offer this part to the public. A strict attention, however, to my original design, which was the instruction of young persons, has enabled me to keep clear of a great deal of that en barrassment, in which I should otherwise have been involved; for, though it was not possible to avoid all subjects that have been controverted, I have, by this means, avoided many of them; and there are few of those which I could not avoid that I have discussed at large, having contented myself, for the most part, with relating what appeared to me to be the genuine Doctrines of Revelation, F6 without |