is to raise the imagination to the fubject, and that oftentimes in oppofition to the impreffion made upon the fenfes. An illufion, for example, must be got over, arifing from the distance at which we view the heavenly bodies, viz. the apparent flowness of their motions. The moon fhall take fome hours in getting half a yard from a ftar which it touched. A motion fo deliberate, we may think easily guided. But what is the fact? The moon, in fact, is, all this while, driving through the heavens, at the rate of confiderably more than two thousand miles in an hour; which is more than double of that, with which a ball is shot off from the mouth of a cannon. Yet is this prodigious rapidity as much under government, as if the planet proceeded ever fo flowly, or were conducted in its course inch by inch. It is alfo difficult to bring the imagination to conceive (what yet, to judge tolerably of the matter, it is neceffary to conceive) how loofe, if we may fo express it, the heavenly bodies are. Enormous globes, held by nothing, confined by nothing, are turned into free and boundless space, each to seek its course by the virtue of an invifible principle; but a principle, one, common, and the fame, in all; and afcer

tainable. To preserve such bodies from being loft, from running together in heaps, from hindering and diftracting one another's motions, in a degree inconfiftent with any continuing order; h. e. to cause them to form planetary systems, systems that, when formed, can be upheld, and, moft especially, fyftems accommodated to the organized and sensitive natures which the planets fuftain, as we know to be the case, where alone we can know what the case is, upon our earth: all this requires an intelligent interpofition, because it can be demonftrated concerning it, that it requires an adjustment of force, distance, direction, and velocity, out of the reach of chance to have produced; an adjustment, in its view to utility fimilar to that which we fee in ten thousand fubjects of nature which are nearer to us, but in power, and in the extent of fpace through which that power is exerted, stupendous.

But many of the heavenly bodies, as the fun and fixed stars, are ftationary. Their reft must be the effect of an abfence or of an equilibrium of attractions. It proves also that a projectile impulfe was originally given to fome of the heavenly bodies, and not to others.

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others. But further; if attraction act at all distances, there can be only one quiefcent centre of gravity in the universe: and all bodies whatever muft be approaching this centre, or revolving round it. According to the first of these fuppofitions, if the duration of the world had been long enough to allow of it, all its parts, all the great bodies of which it is compofed, must have been gathered together in a heap round this point. No changes however which have been observed, afford us the smallest reason for believing that either the one fuppofition or the other is true : and then it will follow, that attraction itself is controlled or fufpended by a superior agent; that there is a power above the highest of the powers of material nature; a will which restrains and circumfcribes the operations of the moft extensive.

CHAP

CHAPTER XXIII.

OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY.

CONTRIVANCE, if established, appears to me to prove every thing which we wish to prove. Amongst other things it proves the perfonality of the Deity, as diftinguished from what is fometimes called nature, fometimes called a principle: which terms, in the mouths of those who use them philofophically, seem to be intended, to admit and to express an efficacy, but to exclude and to deny a perfonal agent. Now that which can contrive, which can defign, must be a perfon. These capacities conftitute perfonality, for they imply conscioufnefs, and thought. They require that which can perceive an end or purpofe; as well as the power of providing means, and of directing them to their end*. They require a centre in which perceptions unite, and from which

* Priestley's Letters to a Philofophical Unbeliever, P. 153, ed. 2.

volitions flow; which is mind. The acts of a mind prove the existence of a mind: and in whatever a mind refides is a person. The feat of intellect is a perfon. We have no authority to limit the properties of mind to any particular corporeal form, or to any particular circumfcription of space. These properties fubfift, in created nature, under a great variety of fenfible forms. Alfo every animated being has its fenforium, that is, a certain portion of space, within which perception and volition are exerted. This sphere may be enlarged to an indefinite extent; may comprehend the universe: and, being fo imagined, may ferve to furnish us with as good a notion, as we are capable of forming, of the immensity of the divine nature, i. c. of a Being, infinite, as well in effence, as in power; yet nevertheless a perfon.

"No man hath feen God at any time." And this, I believe, makes the great difficulty. Now it is a difficulty, which chiefly arifes from our not duly estimating the state of our faculties. The Deity, it is true, is the object of none of our fenfes: but reflect what limited capacities animal fenfes are. Many animals. seem to have but one fenfe, or perhaps two

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