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and vice. Patience and compofure under diftrefs, affliction, and pain; a steadfast keeping up of our confidence in God, and of our reliance upon his final goodness, at the time when every thing present is adverse and discouraging; and (what is no lefs difficult to retain) a cordial defire for the happiness of others, even when we are deprived of our own: thefe difpofitions, which conftitute, perhaps, the perfection of our moral nature, would not have found their proper office and object in a state of avowed retribution; and in which, confequently, endurance of evil would be only fubmillion to punishment.

Again; one man's fufferings may be another man's trial. The family of a fick parent is a school of filial piety. The charities of domestic life, and not only thefe, but all the social virtues, are called out by diftrefs. But then, mifery, to be the proper object of mitigation, or of that benevolence which endeavours to relieve, must be really or apparently cafual. It is upon fuch fufferings alone that benevolence can operate. For were there no evils in the world, but what were punishments, properly and intelligibly fuch, benevolence would only stand in the way of juftice. Such evils, con

fiftently

fiftently with the adminiftration of moral government, could not be prevented or alleviated, that is to fay, could not be remitted in whole or in part, except by the authority which inflicted them, or by an appellate or fuperior authority. This confideration, which is founded in our most acknowledged apprehenfions of the nature of penal juftice, may poffefs its weight in the Divine councils. Virtue perhaps is the greatest of all ends. In human beings relative virtues form a large part of the whole. Now relative virtue presupposes, not only the existence of evil, without which it could have no object, no material to work upon, but that evils be, apparently at least, misfortunes; that is, the effects of apparent chance. It may be in purfuance, therefore, and in furtherance of the fame fcheme of probation, that the evils of life are made fo to present themselves,

I have already obferved that, when we let in religious confiderations, we often let in light upon the difficulties of nature. So in the fact now to be accounted for, the degree of happinefs, which we ufually enjoy in this life, may be better fuited to a state of trial and probation, than a greater degree would be. The truth

is, we are rather too much delighted with the world, than too little. Imperfect, broken, and precarious as our pleasures are, they are more than fufficient to attach us to the eager pursuit of them. A regard to a future state can hardly keep its place as it is. If we were defigned therefore to be influenced by that regard, might not a more indulgent system, a higher, or more uninterrupted state of gratification, have interfered with the design? At leaft it seems expedient, that mankind should be susceptible of this influence, when prefented to them; that the condition of the world fhould not be fuch, as to exclude its operation, or even to weaken it more than it does. In a religious view (however we may complain of them in every other) privation, disappointment, and fatiety, are not without the most falutary tendencies.

CHAP

CHAPTER XXVII.

CONCLUSION.

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In all cafes, wherein the mind feels itfelf in danger of being confounded by variety, it is fure to rest upon a few ftrong points, or perhaps upon a single inftance. Amongst a multitude of proofs, it is one that does the bufinefs. If we obferve in any argument, that hardly two minds fix upon the fame instance, the diverfity of choice fhews the strength of the argument, because it fhews the number and competition of the examples. There is no fubject in which the tendency to dwell upon felect or fingle topics is fo ufual, because there is no fubject, of which, in its full extent, the latitude is fo great, as that of natural history applied to the proof of an intelligent Creator. For my part, I take my stand in human anatomy: and the examples of mechanism I should be apt to draw out from the copious catalogue which it fupplies, are the pivot upon which the head turns, the ligament within

the focket of the hip joint, the pulley or trochlear muscle of the eye, the epiglottis, the bandages which tie down the tendons of the wrift and inftep, the flit or perforated muscles at the hands and feet, the knitting of the intestines to the mefentery, the course of the chyle into the blood, and the conftitution of the fexes as extended throughout the whole of the animal creation. To these inftances, the reader's memory will go back, as they are feverally set forth in their places: there is not one of the number which I do not think decifive; not one which is not strictly mechanical: nor have I read or heard of any folution of these appearances, which, in the fmallest degree, shakes the conclufion that we build upon them.

But, of the greateft part of thofe, who, either in this book or any other, read arguments to prove the existence of a God, it will be faid, that they leave off only where they began; that they were never ignorant of this great truth, never doubted of it; that it does not therefore appear, what is gained by refearches from which no new opinion is learnt, and upon the fubject of which no proofs were wanted. Now I answer, that, by invetigation, the following points are always gained,

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