they view him, but rationally: that is, with a sense of the infinite wisdom of their Maker, and with an application of their various properties to the improvement of the mind in Wisdom and Religion. (He who looks upon brutes, as brutes look upon men, without learning any thing from them, loses this privilege of his Reason.) And certainly, if God had moral views in the ordering of the world, it ought to be considered with a moral intention; which practice will lead us to a sort of Philosophy most worthy of a rational mind, the Candidate of an higher and invisible world. Naturalists may amuse themselves with counting the teeth of beasts, the scales of a snake, the threads of a flower, or the microscopical feathers upon the wing of a moth; and amaze the ignorant with a grand display of superficial Literature; which may serve excellently well for order and distinction, as the titles upon the drawers in the shop of the apothecary: but they see not the highest Wisdom of God in the Creation, till they discover the spiritual through the natural world, which no Glass but that of the Scripture will enable them to do. The Christian only can feel the force of those words→

Lord!

Lord! how manifold are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all! The more we examine things by the proper light, the more we shall be convinced that the Natural and Moral Systems of God are allied throughout to one another and whatever may be suspected to the disparagement of REVELATION by the half-learned unbeliever, whose Vanity hath put out the Eyes of his understanding, it will be found to have the attestation of all Nature. Every blast of Air that blows, every blade of Grass that springeth up from the ground, and and every living Creature that moveth upon the face of the Earth, is, in some respect or other, subservient to the Philosophy of the Gospel. So that if any man would be a rational Infidel, he must find some other world to reason in: this world is the school of Christianity.

XV. Whether the Heathens derived this article of their wisdom from Oriental Tradition, or whether it was the offspring of their own Reason and Contemplation, they certainly saw, in some measure, the moral use of the animal Creation; which is applied by the fables of Æsop in particular so excellently well to the purposes of morality, that some have judged his productions but little short

of

of inspiration. They are without exception the best vehicles of moral instruction to young minds, more apt to be delighted with examples than abstractions; and I know not of any more valuable treasure that has descended to us from Pagan Antiquity. The Ancients were so attached to this figurative use of the animals, that the Egyptians in their Hieroglyphics assumed them as Characters to denote all the powers or depravities of the human mind, the excellencies of art and the errors of ignorance, the policy of the wise and the simplicity of fools. They even filled the heaven itself with them, expressing thereby the nature of the Elements, and accommodating them to the celestial phænomena; placing the figure of the Crab at that point of the Zodiac, when the Sun, having attained the height of the Summer, begins to go backward again toward the winter; and the figure of the Capricorn, or mountain Goat, at the lower Tropic, where the Sun begins to climb upwards toward the northern hemisphere. The two Bears, inhabitants of the coldest Climates, are placed by the North Pole, over the re

* Αισωπο δε δοκει μη πόρρω θειοτέρας επιπνοιας των ηθικης didaorañias avaμs. Max. Planud. in Vitâ Æsopi.

gions of perpetual frost and snow; the Lion, the Egyptian Symbol of the Solar Light*, in that part of the Zodiac which corresponded formerly to the month of July, when the Heat of the Sun is most predominant: and the like propriety of expression might be traced in others of the celestial figures, which may seem to have been placed with no other design than that general one of parcelling out the Stars into intelligible tribes or classes. The fabu 'lous origin given to them by some of the Greeks and Latins is altogether childish and ridiculous.

XVI. Here it is to be observed, that the heathens having erred in their notions of honour and excellence, some of their highest virtues having been no better than celebrated vices; they have on many occasions given the precedence to unclean animals, adorning even their Divinities with the skins of Beasts of Prey. The appetite for honour, as it signifies military glory, being attended with a

* Κεφαλην γαρ έχει μεγάλην το ζωον. Και τας μεν πορας πυρώδεις, το δε προσώπων τρογυλον. Και περι αυτο ακτινοειδεις τρίχας κατα μίμησιν ηλιας, οθεν και ύπο τον θρόνον το wp8 λεοντας υποτιθεασι, δεικνύντες το προς τον θεον τα ζωα συμβολον. Hora. poll. Hierogl. lib. i. cap. xvii.

thirst of blood, it is not strange that the mighty warriors and hunters of the world should have chosen to array themselves with the spoils of Lions, Leopards, Tygers, and Bears, their rivals in cruelty. But the servants of God, who had the more valuable ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, are said to have wandered about in sheep skins and goats skins, in a world that was not worthy of them. They preferred the appearance of those Creatures, who like themselves had been helpless, persecuted, and yet most serviceable to the world. Our Saviour supposes all his followers to be in sheeps-clothing; warning us at the same time that many should assume the habit of the sheep, though allied more nearly in their appetites and manners, their internal character, to the ravening wolf. And it seems agreeable to reason, that the Providence of God hath designedly furnished the sheep with the best materials for human clothing, as it were to remind us daily what Spirit we should be of. It is difficult to account for those coats of skins which God gave to Adam and Eve, to clothe them before their expulsion from Paradise, but by

a Gen. iii. 21.

sup