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raife, improve, and blefs the human race; let us confider whether they be conducted in a manner analogous to one another; fo that we may trace the fame hand in both, and hence derive a prefumptive argument in favour of revelation.

To me, I own, there feems to be, in this respect, a very great analogy between both thefe difpenfations of God to mankind, and the argument that may thence be deduced in favour of revelation frikes me very much. For in those extraordinary difpenfations of God to mankind, of which we are informed in the books of fcripture, we fee a most glorious apparatus for accomplishing this great end, for enlarging the comprehenfion of the human mind, and raifing us to the highest pitch of perfection and excellence.

To have the mind impreffed with the idea of its being in a ftate of moral government, and that our actions have great and diftant confequences, is of admirable ufe in this refpect; and this, we find, was the fituation of Adam prefently after he came

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from the hands of his maker. permitted the free ufe of all the trees in the garden of Eden except one, which he was forbidden to meddle with under fevere penalties. In thefe circumftances he was under a neceffity of looking before him, and attending to the diftant confequences of what he was doing. He faw (as is generally understood) an immortal existence before him in cafe of obedience, and of prudence and regularity in the gratification of his appetites; and death (of the meaning of which he was, no doubt, informed) in cafe of difobedience and irregular indulgence.

If we confider the importance of having enlarged views, and of the attention being engaged upon objects, beyond the prefent moment, we muft fee how vaftly fuperior this fituation was, with refpect to the improvement of his faculties, to a ftate in which he fhould have been left to the random indulgence of his appetites, without any intimation of the confequence, except what he could learn by flow experience. The more we think upon this fubject, the greater

greater will this advantage appear to be. Mankind might, for ages, have been little more than brutes, without fome provifion and affiftance of this kind.

If the object of this trial, viz. the abftaining from the fruit of a tree, appear trifling, we should confider the infantile state of the first man, and the only dangerous exceffes that, in his fituation, he could be guilty of; and we may fee the greatest propriety in this very circumftance. Would it not have been much more abfurd to have forbidden him to fteal, to commit adultery, or, indeed, to have enjoined him the obfervance of any of the ten commandments of the moral law. What is more natural, or common with ourfelves, than to forbid children to eat of certain kinds of food, or to meddle with things that are most in their way, by which they are liable to do harm to themselves or others. They are not'capable of offending in any other refpects, or of understanding any higher precepts. We are not made acquainted with all the reftrictions under which our firft parents were I 3

laid;

laid; but it cannot be doubted, but that they must have been of a falutary nature, whether they themselves might be aware of it or not. We do not always give our children the reafon of the restrictions we lay them under, because they are not always capable of understanding them. The prohibition to eat of a particular fruit is the only one that is mentioned by Moses, because that was the cafe in which Adam tranfgreffed; but, for any thing we know, he might have been as exprefly forbidden to jump from a precipice, or to plunge into a pit of water; and the forbidden fruit might have been as naturally hurtful to him as either of them.

It is by no means improbable, but that fomething of fable may have mixed with fo antient a history as that of the Fall; and the prefent condition of man was, no doubt, both forefeen and intended by our all-wife creator, as the best for us upon the whole; but I think we cannot reasonably object to the leading circumftances in Mofes's account of the manner in which we came in

to

to it. And as it reprefents man as entering upon existence under a fenfe of moral government, it is far more agreeable to the ideas we conceive of the wisdom and goodnefs of God, more favourable to the human race, and more confonant to the natural provifion he has made for enlarging the comprehenfion of the human mind, and thereby perfecting our natures, and advancing our happiness; and therefore far fuperior to the condition in which Lucretius, and the rest of the Epicureans, reprefent the introduction of man into the world, i. e. with no greater advantage for looking before him, enlarging his views, and increafing his happiness, than the loweft of the animal

creation.

In the fentence paffed upon man after the fall, we fee an opportunity is taken of carrying the views of the human mind to objects ftill more remote; and encouraging, though obfcure views are opened to him, in the promise, that the feed of the woman fhould bruife the ferpent's head.

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