INTRODUCTION. Deo optimo, Maximo, Unico, Rerum Universitatis conditori Conservatorique. AMONG the opinions which it most highly concerns all men to settle and embrace, the chief are those which relate to Almighty God!! as the great Creator and Governor of the Universe. That there is really existing a Supreme Being from whom all other things derive their original, and the principal of their motion, not as from a dull and senseless power as the weight, for example, in a clock; but as from a cause endued with understanding and with freedom of choice. That this Eternal Being exercises a sovereignty not only over the whole world, or over mankind in general, but over every individual; whose knowledge nothing can escape; who, by virtue of his imperial right, hath enjoined men such certain duties by natural law, the observance of which will meet with his approbation, the breach B or the neglect with his displeasure: and that he will for this purpose require an exact account from every man of his proceedings, without corruption and without partiality.-Puffend. 155. To him whose heart the true maxims have pierced, the shortest and most common hint is a sufficient memorial to keep him free of sorrow and fear.-Anton. 394. (Glasc. Ed.) A man may at any hour he pleases retire into himself, and no where will he find a place of more quiet and leisure than in his own soul; especially if he has that furniture within, the view of which immediately gives him the fullest tranquillity. Allow yourself continually this tranquillity, and refresh and renew yourself. Have also at hand some short elementary maxims, which may readily occur, and suffice to wash away all trouble, &c.-Anton. (Glasc.) 140. In the accounts remaining of the earliest times, the attention every where paid to religion, the deep interest taken in it by individuals and by communities, by people polished equally and unpolished, is peculiarly striking. A sense of dependency on some superior Being seems, indeed, inseparable from man; it is in a manner instinct in him. Παντες δὲ Θεῶν κατέουσ ̓ ἄνθρωποι. -Homer's Odys. 1. 3. c. 48. His own helplessness, compared with the stupendous powers of nature, which he sees constantly exerted around him, makes the savage ever anxiously look for some Being of a higher order on whom to rely; and the man educated to exercise the faculties of his mind, has only to reflect on himself, on his own abilities, his own weakness, his own knowledge, his own ignorance, his own happiness, his own misery, his own beginning, and his end, to be directed, not only to belief in some superior Being, but also to expectation of some future state, through mere conviction that nature hath given him both a great deal more and a great deal less than were necessary to fit him for this alone. Religion, therefore, can never be lost among mankind; but through the imperfection of our nature, it is so prone to degenerate, that superstition in one state of society, and scepticism in another, may, perhaps not improperly, be called Nature's Works. The variety, indeed, and the grossness of the corruptions of religion, from which few pages in the annals of the world are pure, may well, on first view, excite our wonder; but if we proceed to inquire after their origin, we find immediately such sources in the nature and condition of man, that evidently nothing under a constant miracle could prevent those effects to which the history of all countries, in all ages, bears testimony. The fears of ignorance, the interest of cunning, |