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God whom he hath not seen*? A free-thinker may perhaps laugh at the simplicity of this argument, which yet he would affect to admire, could any one find it for him in Plato. But let him for once condescend to be instructed by his Bible, and hearken to a little christian reasoning.

"You say you love God (says the Apostle) though you hate your brother: Impossible! The love of any object begins originally, like all the other passions, "from self-love. Thus we love ourselves, by representa"tion, in our offspring; which love extends by degrees "to our remoter relations, and so on through our neigh"bourhood, to all the fellow-members of our community. "And now self-love, refined by reason and religion, begins to lose its nature, and deservedly assumes another name. Our country next claims our love; we then "extend it to all mankind, and never rest till we have, "at length, fixed it on that most amiable of all objects, "the great Author and Original of Being. This is the course and progress of human love:

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God loves from whole to parts, but human soul
Must rise from individual to the whole.

"Now (pursues the Apostle) I reason thus: Can you, who are not yet arrived at that inferior stage of benevolence, the love of your brother, whom you have "seen, that is, whom the necessities of civil life, and a "sense of your mutual relation might teach you to love, pretend to have reached the very height and per"fection of this passion, the love of God, whom you have "not seen? that is, whose wonderful economy in his system of creation, which makes him so amiable, you "cannot have the least conception of; you, who have not yet learnt that your own private system is supported "on the great principle of benevolence? Fear him, 'flatter him, fight for him, as you dread his power, you may; but to love him, as you know not his nature, "is impossible. This is the Apostle's grand and sublime reasoning; and it is with the same thought on which the Apostle founds his argument, that our moral

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VOL. XI.

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Poet ends his Essay, as the just and necessary conclusion of his work:

Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;
The centre mov'd, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace,
His country next, and next, all human race;
Wide, and more wide, th' o'erflowings of the mind
Take every creature in, of every kind;

Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest,
AND HEAVEN BEHOLDS ITS IMAGE IN HIS BREAST.

1

REMARKS

ON A BOOK ENTITLED

Future Rewards and Punishments believed by the Ancients, particularly the Philosophers;

Wherein some Objections of the Rev. Mr. WARBURTON, in his Divine Legation of Moses, are considered: 1742.

WITH

A POSTSCRIPT,

In answer to some Objections of DR. SYKES;

And A LETTER to Bishop SMALLBROOK.

Beware lest any man spoil you through PHILOSOPHY and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after CHRIST. Col. ii. 8.

ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE SECOND EDITION;

1742.

THE AUTHOR of the Pamphlet here examined, hath lately made a public confession of his authorship, signed with his own name; and thereby saved himself from all farther correction of this kind. For he who is so lost to shame, as a WRITER, to own what he before wrote, and so lost to shame, as a MAN, to own what he hath now written, must needs be past all amendment, the only reasonable view in correction. I shall therefore but do, what indeed (were it any more than repeating what he himself hath discovered to the Public) would be justly reckoned the cruellest of all things, tell my reader the name of this Miserable; which we find to be I. TILLARD.

REMARKS.

HOUGH I could not persuade myself to take this

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notice of such a kind of Writer as him of the Miscellany, yet a very little thing, the reader sees, will engage me to give an adversary satisfaction; while I suffer myself to be seduced into a controversy by the Writer of a late Book, entitled, Future Rewards and Punishments believed by the Ancients, particularly the Philosophers; wherein some Objections of the Reverend Mr. Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Moses, are considered*

And a very little thing it was; only the finding in his book one single truth, which does me a piece of justice, that the orthodor Writer above-mentioned would by no means be brought unto, even after his conviction of calumny on that head. It is in these words; Bat I must here do so much justice to Mr. Warburton, as to acknowledge, that the point he denies, is, that the philosophers only did not believe future rewards and punishments; whereas he allows all others did believe them. p. 84.

For the rest, neither his abilities nor his candour deserved this notice. His abilities are duly celebrated in these few sheets; and for his candour, the reader will, I believe, require no farther proof than the following After all these lively descriptions-if there can the least doubt remain in the reader's breast--it must arise from the influence and prepossession of a few random expressions now and then thrown out to depreciate the philosaphers, by certain persons, who, thinking themselves obliged to say something out of the commwa road, very frequently discover their IGNORANCE AND WANT OF

SENSE IN THE VERY ATTEMPT TO DISPLAY THEIR

* 8vo. London, 1740. Printed by M. Steen, in the Inner-Temple

Lane.

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