5. On the authority of the Scriptures, they entertain so low an opinion of human nature, under the consequences of the fall, that they derive every thing in religion from revelation or tradition. A system may be fabricated, and called natural; but a religion it cannot be; for there never was a religion, among Jews or Gentiles, Greeks, Romans, or Barbarians, since the beginning of the world, without sacrifice and priesthood: of which natural religion, having neither, is consequently no religion. The imagination of man, by supposing a religion without these, has done infinite disservice to the only religion by which man can be saved. It has produced the deistical substitution of naked morality, or Turkish honesty, for the doctrines of intercession, redemption, and divine grace. It has no gift from God, but that nature, which came poor, and blind, and naked out of Paradise; subject only to farther misery, from its own lusts, and the temptations of the Devil. A religion, more flattering to the pride of man, pleases his fancy better than this; but it will never do him any good.

in its hand, need only light it, to see them all at work together. Air enters at the bottom, where the flame looks blue: fire and smoke from the snuff are at the top, and the brightest light is about the middle. No man can draw a line between them, or say where one ends and another begins. But here they are certainly; for, without air, the candle goes out: without fire, it will not burn us: and, with out light, we shall not see by it. And all this is no theory, but a plain, undeniable matter of fact. How wonderful, that a philosopher cannot see this; when a child or a ploughman may be made to understand it! Two strange events of the same kind are more credible than one. The people among the Jews, who knew most, were those who could see least.

When the good Lord President Forbes wrote his letter from Scotland, there were rocks and mountains in his way; and he had the mortification to see that he prevailed but little. These are now not nearly so formidable as they were then : great and unexpected events have intervened. Infidelity, the grand adversary, hath now overshot its mark; and is found to have in it so much more of the felon, than the philosopher, that gentlemen begin to be ashamed of its company. Its opponents are inspired with new zeal, and act with new vigour; as may be seen in two periodical publications of modern date. Attraction is going down; and the demonstration of a vacuum is not to be supported; as I shall shew in another place. Electricity hath risen up, and given us the knowledge of a new power in nature, which is an object of sense, and may be extended to the whole system of the world. Lord Forbes's letter to a Bishop was written with the best intention in the world; but, when a scheme is new, and admitted in all its parts, more weight is laid upon some things, than they will bear. He tells his reader many curious things, for which I have not room; neither would I choose to introduce them, because they depend on Hebrew evidence.

Hutchinson himself had so strong a sense of this, that he looked upon natural religion as Deism in disguise; an engine of the Devil, in these latter days, for the overthrow of the Gospel; and therefore boldly called it the religion of Satan or Anti-christ. Let the well-informed Christian look about him and consider, whether his words, extravagant as they might seem at first, have not been fully verified. I myself, for one, am so thoroughly persuaded of this, that I determine never to give quarter to natural religion, when it falls in my way to speak of the all-sufficiency of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We know very well how the Scripture is brought in to give its countenance to the notion of a natural religion: but we know also that dark texts are drawn to such a sense, as to render all the rest of the Scripture of no effect; as hath happened in the doctrines of predestination and natural religion; by the former of which we lose the Church, by the latter its Faith. Facts bring a dispute to a short issue. If Voltaire were alive, I would be judged by him, whether Christianity hath not been going down ever since natural religion came up. And we know, by what his disciples, the French, have done, that natural religion comes up, when Christianity is put down. These facts teach us, that they will not stand long together. Whether they possibly might or not is not worth an inquiry; because he, that has got Christianity, may leave natural religion to shift for itself.

6. Few writers for natural religion have shewn any regard to the types and figures of the Scripture, or known much about them. But the Hutchinsonians, with the old Christian Fathers, and the Divines of the Reformation, are very attentive to them, and take great delight in them. They differ in their nature from all the learning of the world; and so much of the wisdom of revelation is contained in them, that no Christian should neglect the knowledge of them. All infidels abominate them. Lord Bolingbroke calls St. Paul a Cabbatist for arguing from them; but the Hutchinsonians are ambitious of being such Cabbalists as St. Paul was.

7. In natural philosophy, they have great regard to the name of Newton, as the most wonderful genius of his kind. But they are sure, his method of proving a vacuum is not agreeable to nature. A vacuum cannot be deduced from the theory of resistances for, if motion be from impulsion, as Newton himself, and

some of the wisest of his followers have suspected; then the cause of motion will never resist the motion which it causes. The rule, which is true when applied to communicated motion, does not hold when applied to the motions of nature. For the motions of nature change from less to more; as when a spark turns to a conflagration: but communicated motion always changes from more to less: so that there is an essential difference between them, and we cannot argue from the one to the other. Mr. Cotes's demonstration, it is well known, is applicable only to' communicated motion: I mean such only as is violent or artificial. There is no need of a vacuum in the heavens: it is more reasonable and more agreeable to nature that they should be filled with a circulating fluid, which does not hinder motion, but begins it and preserves it.

They cannot allow inert matter to be capable (as mind is) of active qualities; but ascribe attraction, repulsion, &c. to subtle causes, not immaterial. There may be cases very intricate and difficult; but they take the rule from plain cases, and supposing nature to be uniform and consistent, they apply it to the rest.

8. In natural history, they maintain, against all the wild theories of Infidels, which come up, one after another, like mushrooms, and soon turn rotten, that the present condition of the earth bears evident marks of an universal flood; and that extraneous fossils are to be accounted for from the same catastrophe. Many of them are therefore diligent collectors of fossil bodies, which are valuable to the curious in consideration of their origin.

9. What commonly passes under the name of learning, is a knowledge of Heathen books: but it should always be admitted with great precaution. For they think of all Heathens, that, from the time when they commenced Heathens, they never worshipped the true God, the Maker of heaven and earth; but, instead of him, the elements of the world, the powers of nature, and the lights of heaven: that the love of vice and vanity was the real cause of their ignorance: they did not know the true God, because they did not like to know him: and that the same passions will give us an inclination to the principles of Heathens, rather than to the principles of Christians; and that most of the ill principles of this age come out of the Heathen School. The favourers of Mr. Hutchinson's scheme are therefore reputed to be the enemies of learning. But they are not so. They are

enemies only to the abuses of it, and to the corruptions derived from it. To all false learning, that is to human folly, affecting to be wisdom, they have indeed a mortal aversion in their hearts, and can hardly be civil to it in their words; as knowing, that the more a man has of false wisdom, the less room there will be for the true. Metaphysics, which consist of words without ideas; illustrations of Christian subjects from Heathen parallels; theories founded only on imagination; speculations on the mind of man, which yield nɔ solid matter to it, but lead it into dangerous opinions about itself; these and other things of the kind, with which modern learning abounds, they regard as they would the painting of a ghost, or the splitting of an atom *.

10. Of Jews they think, that they are the inveterate enemies of Christianity; never to be trusted as our associates either in Hebrew or Divinity. No Philo, no Josephus, no Talmudist, is to be depended upon; but suspected and sifted, as dangerous Apostates from true Judaism. It is plausibly argued, that Jews, as native Hebrews, must, like other natives, be best acquainted with their own language. But the case of the Jews is without a parallel upon earth. They are out of their native state; and have an interest in deceiving Christians by every possible means, and depriving them of the evidence of the Old Testa

ment.

11. They are of opinion, that the Hebrew is the primæval and original language; that its structure shews it to be divine; and that a comparison with other languages shews its priority.

12. The Cherubim of the Scriptures were mystical figures, of high antiquity and great signification. Those of Eden, and of the Tabernacle, and of Ezekiel's vision, all belong to the same original. Irenæus has enough upon them to justify the Hutchinsonian acceptation of them. The place they had in the Holy of Holies, and their use in the Sacred Ritual, sets them very high. Their appellation, as* Cherubim of glory, does the same; and the reasoning of Saint Paul, from the shadows of the law to the priesthood of Christ, sets them highest of all; obliging us to infer, that they were symbolical of the Divine Presence. The TEG capa wa in the Revelation of Saint John (improperly called beasts; for one of them was a man, and another a bird) must be

τεστ

* See more on this abject in the Life. + Compare Acts vii, 'Q Osos ʊng dogns.

taken from the same: where the figures of the old law bow down and surrender all power and glory to the evangelical figure of the Lamb that was slain. Here the doctrine is thought to labour a little but, if the wa are considered only as figures, the case alters. And, if this great subject should have parts and circumstances not to be understood, we must argue from what is understood. They seem to have been known in the Christian Church of the first centuries; but not with the help of the Jews. So also was the analogy of the three agents (Ows, wup, vauμa,) these being express mentioned by Epiphanius, as similitudes of the Divine Trinity.

In their physiological capacity, so far as we can find, the Cherubim seem never to have been considered before Mr. Hutchinson; who very properly derives from thern all animal-worship among the Heathens. This subject is of great extent and depth; comprehending a mass of Mythological learning, well worthy of a diligent examination.

These things come down to us under the name of John Hutchinson; a character sui generis, such as the common forms of education could never have produced: and it seems to me not to have been well explained, how and by what means he fell upon things, seemingly so new and uncommon: but we do not enquire whose they are, but what they are, and what they are good for. If the tide had brought them to shore in a trunk, marked with the initials J. H. while I was walking by the sea-side, I would have taken them up, and kept them for use; without being solicitous to know, what ship they came out of, or how far, and how long, they had been floating at the mercy of the wind and waves. If they should get from my hands into better hands, I should rejoice; being persuaded they would revive in others the dying flame of Christian faith, as they did in Bishop Horne and myself. And why should any good men be afraid of them? There is nothing here, that tends to make men troublesome, as Heretics, Fanatics, Sectaries, Rebels, or Corrupters of any kind of useful learning. All these things a man may believe, and still be a good subject, a devout Christian, and a sound member of the Church of England: perhaps more sound, and more useful, than he would have been without them. For myself I may say, (as I do in great humility) that, by following them through the course of a long life, I have found myself much enlightened, much assisted in evidence