make it their fincere and diligent endeavour to gain the Divine Favour in the way which he has appointed.

It is impoffible to furvey, with a difcerning eye, the world which we inhabit, without reading the illuftricus characters of power, wifdom, and goodnefs, which the Divine hand has inferibed upon it; each of which attributes fuggefts to us a fet of duties, and therefore deferves our particular confideration.

To create, or bring into exiftence, one particle of matter, which before was nothing, who can fay what power is requifite? The difference between nothing and a real exiftence is ftrictly and properly infinite. Which feems to imply an infinite difficulty to be furmounted, before one particle of matter can be produced. And no power, inferior to infinite, is equal to an infinite difficulty. Be that as it will, it is unquestionable, that to produce great works, requires proportionable power. And if the works of nature are not great, there is no greatnefs conceivable. The calling forth a world into being, had it been from its creation to remain for ever at reft, had been an effect worthy of Divine Power. But to give to a fyftem fo huge and unwieldy, any degree of motion, much more to give a motion inconceivably swift to masses of matter inconceivably bulky; to accommodate velocity to what is the most unfit for being moved with velocity; to whirl a whole earth, a globe of twenty-five thousand miles round, with all its mountains and eceans, at the rate of near fixty-thoufand miles an hour; to carry on fuch an amazing motion for many thoufands of years; to keep fix fuch bodies in continual motion, in different planes, and with different velocities, round a common centre, at the fame time that ten others are revolving round them, and going along with them; What amazing power is requisite to p roduce fuch effects!

How do we admire the effects produced by a combination of mechanic powers (which alfo act by Divine Power, or Laws of Nature) in raifing weights, and overcoming the vis inertia of matter? What diould we think of a machine, conftructed by human hands, by which St. Paul's Church, or a little hill, fhould be tranfported

half

half a mile from its place, with ever fo flow a motion? But the greatest mountain is no more in comparison with the whole earth, than a grain of fand to a mountain. Yet the whole cumbrous mafs of earth has been whirled round the fun, for thefe five thousand years and upwards, with a rapidity frightful to think of, and for any thing we know, with undiminished force. And the comet in 1680-81, muft, according to the Newtonian principles, have moved in its perihelion, or nearest approach to the fun, at the rate of above a million of miles in an hour; which was a flight near twenty times more rapid than that of the earth in its annual courfe! Now the fwifteft fpeed of a horfe, that ever has been known, was at the rate of one mile in one minute, which continued, would give fixty miles in an hour, instead of more than a million, the comet's motion. The swifteft horfe, at full speed, may move twenty foot in the time that one can pronounce one, or fixty foot, while one can say one, two, three. But to form fome conception of the motion of the Newtonian comet, let the reader fuppofe himself placed upon fuch an eminence as will give him a profpect of fifty miles on each hand; the rapidity of that tremendous body in the fwifeft part of its courfe, was fuch that in the time of pronouncing one fyllable, or in the twinkling of an eye, it would fly across that space of one hundred miles, while the fwifteft horfe would have proceeded twenty foot. Yet thofe enormous bodies are by the parallax they give, fuppofed to be nearly of the magnitude of our globe of earth and ocean, and fome of them perhaps larger.

Now there is nothing more evident, than that in proportion to the quantity of matter to be moved, and the velocity with which it is to moved, fuch must be the moving force. Let the reader, therefore, if he has any talent in calculation, try to eftimate the force required to give fuch a furious rapidity to bodies of fuch ftupendous magnitude; if he has any imagination, let him fill it with the fublime idea of Omnipotence; and if he has either reafon or religion, let him proftrate his foul, and adore fuch tremendous and irrefiftible power.

Nor

Nor is lefs command of matter required to produce the aftonishing appearances in the minute, than in the great world; to carry on the various fecretions, circulations, and tranfmutations in vegetation, and the production, growth, and life of animals; efpecially when the degree of minutenefs is fuch, as it must be in an animalcule, of which millions would only equal the bulk of a grain of fand. What power is required to wing the rapid light from its fountain, the fun, to us in feven or eight minutes, with fuch a swiftness, that in the inftant of pronouncing the word light, fixty thousand miles are paffed through!

To a being poffeffed of rightful power over us, the proper duty is evidently fear, or awe; and the confequence of that is obedience. If we confider the Su

preme Being as poffeffed of infinite or boundless power over all his creatures, we muft fee the indifpenfable neceffity of the most profound fubmiflion to him, both in our difpofitions and practice. If we confider him as our Creator, we must be convinced that he has an abfolute right to us, and to all our fervices. If we think of him as irrefiftible, rebellion against him is a degree of madness beyond all computation. For what lafting and inconceivably dreadful punishments may not fuch power inflict upon thofe perverfe and impenitent beings, who became the objects of his vengeance? And what chance can the worms of the earth have to deliver themfelves out of the hands of the Almighty?

There is no inconfiftency between the fear we owe to God, and the duty of love. On the contrary, love ever implies a fear to offend the perfon beloved. As on one hand, nothing is fo perfectly amiable as infinite perfection; fo neither is there any fo proper object of fear, as he who is infinitely great and awful. And there is a wide difference between the flavish fear, which a criminal has for his judge, or that which a miferable fubject has for a tyrant, and that of a fon for an affectionate father. Of this laft kind is the reverence with which we ought to think of our Creator. Only we must take the utmost care not to entertain any no

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tion of God, as of one capable of any weaknefs refembling that of earthly parents. For it is certain, that the Judge of the world, whofe rectitude and justice are abfolutely perfect and inviolable, will not, cannot, be misled, by fondness for his own creatures, to make the obdurately wicked happy. For, though he loves his creature, he loves juftice more, and will not facrifice his own eternal and immutable attribute for the fake of any number of worthless rebellious beings whatever.

As to the Divine Wifdom appearing in the works of creation, we are peculiarly at a lofs to conceive properly of it. For we come into a world ready finished, and fit to be inhabited; and therefore have no concep tion of the immenfe ftretch of thought, the amazing depth of invention (if we may fo fpeak) that was necef fary to plan an univerfe. Let any man imagine the ftate of things before there was any created being, if ever fuch a time was; when there was no plan, no model, or pattern to proceed upon; when the very idea of an univerfe, as well as the particular plan and execution of it, was to be drawn, fo to fpeak, out of the Divine Imagination. Let the reader fuppofe himself to have been first produced, and to have had it revealed to him by his Creator, that an univerfe was to be created. An univerfe! What idea could he have formed of an univerfe? Had he been confulted upon the plan of it, which part would he have begun at? Before light exifted, could he have conceived the idea of light? Before there was either fun, ftars, or earth, could he have formed any conception of a fun, ftars, or earth? Could he have contrived light for the eye, or the eye for light? Could he have fuited a world to its inhabitants, or inhabitants to a world? Could he have fitted bodies to minds, or minds to bodies?

If the reader fhould not clearly enough fee the difficulty of inventing and planning an univerfe from nothing, nor the wondrous forefight and comprehenfive wifdom, that was neceffary for fitting an almost infinite number of things to one another, in fuch a manner, that every particular fhould anfwer its particular end, and fill its particular place, at the fame time that it fhould

fhould contribute to promote various other defigns; if the depth of Wisdom, which has produced all this, does not fufficiently appear to the reader, let him try to form a plan of a new world, quite different from all that he knows of in the prefent univerfe, in which none of our elements, nor light, nor animal life, nor any of the five fenfes, nor refpiration, nor vegetation fhall have any place. And when he has ufed his utmost efforts, and put his invention upon the utmoft ftretch, and finds that he cannot form a fhadow of one fingle idea, of which the original is not drawn from nature; then let him confefs his own weaknefs, and adore that boundlefs Wifdom, which has produced, out of its own infinite fertility of invention, enough to employ, and to confound the utmost human fagacity.

Have not the most acute penetration, and indefatigable industry of the wife and learned of all ages, been employed (and how could they more worthily) in fearching out the wonderful works of the Almighty Maker of the univerfe? and have they yet found out one fingle article to the bottom? Can all the philofophers of modern times, who have added to the obfervations of the ancients, the difcoveries made by their own industry and fagacity; can they give a fatisfying account of the machinery of the body of a fly, or a worm? Can they tell what makes two particles of matter cohere? Can they tell what the fubftance of a particle of matter is? Is the fcience of phyfiology, delightful and noble as it is, and worthy of the ftudy of angels, is it carried any farther than a fet of obfervations, wonderful indeed and ftriking, but as to real caufes, and internal natures, altogether in the dark? How do we admire, and justly, the exalted genius of our feemingly infpired philofopher, for going a pitch beyond the fagacity of all mankind in difcovering the laws, by which the vast machine of the world is governed? Yet he modeftly owns the caufe of attraction and gravitation to lie too deep for his penetration. How do we fland aftonifhed at the acutenefs of a mind, which could purfue calculations to a degree of fubtlety beyond the reach of by far the greateft part of mankind to follow him in,