ments with gratitude, and adopt them with simplicity.

With sentiments of deepest awe and reverence, I enter upon this province of sacred truth, which though protected, as it ought to be, from outrage and open violence, by the civil power, is ever to maintain its authority over the minds of men, by its own inherent worth and native evidence. This exalted study is not the less perplexed in all its parts, nor rendered the less difficult in its arrangement and discussion, by the number and diversity of champions, who in succession, have taken this consecrated ground. The society of the learned, in this as well as in all other departments, may be divided into two classes-the one consisting of the few, the other of the many. The former are those bold and enterprising geniuses, who advance before their fellows in the road of science, in the discovery of truth, or the arrangement of method. The latter lag behind, at a humble distance, content with the inferior praise of admiring and tracing their steps, without attempting to advance beyond

them; patronising their inventions, espousing their opinions, and adopting their errors*. The former, who are naturally capable of thinking for themselves, by becoming too much wedded to their own systems and inventions, from which they are unwilling to depart, are often rendered by their success unable to proceed in the advancement of knowledge: whilst a peasant from the plough, with a strong and active mind, undebauched by system, is almost a fairer candidate in the field of literature, than those of the second class, accompanied with all the parade of learning, without any of the power.

Affecting neither to dictate on the one hand, nor implicitly to follow on the other, but soliciting to be examined and improved on these, as I have done hitherto in the departments of human learning, let me here also beg leave of systematic divines, without any disrespect or contempt for their labours,

"Those which give themselves to follow and imitate others, were in all things so observant sectators of their masters, whom they admired and believed in, as they thought it safer to condemn their own understandings, than to examine them," is an observation of the great Raleigh on the learned men of his time.-Hist. of the World, chap. iii. § 1.

to claim the privilege of a free adventurer in the search of truth, and to treat this great argument of theology, after my own way. Though truth may be most easily and frequently found in the broad and beaten path, and not the less to be valued, because overtaken in the common road; yet by following each other in the same unvaried track of formal cultivation, with a sacred care never to deviate from it, philosophers, both divine and human, confirm many errors, without improving many truths: and though, in the other mode of proceeding, errors are perhaps more liable to be incurred, they will sooner be detected; whilst, from the candour and liberality it professes, they should no sooner be detected, than abandoned.

Theology is the queen of sciences. To her, all the sister-parts of learning should minister and subserve." The virgins that be her fellows should bear her company,"-to cultivate the understanding and prepare the heart, to exalt and purify the imagination for this sublimer service. To train the mind in the gradual search of knowledge, to raise it

as it imperfectly gathers strength, from one subject to another, to direct its progression from science to science; to facilitate and enlarge its comprehension, whilst the exercise of its faculties is confined within the sphere of their distinct and proper action; to know its capacity and compass when stretched to their utmost reach, and, above all, to rest contented in the fruition of truth, whatever it may be, or however found,-this is that divine and philosophic discipline by which mortals may best improve and direct their energies. This is the proper end and object of theological study. Whilst it exalts the intellect to the summit of attainable knowledge, it subdues the will to virtue, and engages the imagination as their mutual support and ornament; and thus, by its admirably useful culture prepares the mind, as a bridal chamber, for the reception and entertainment of those diviner truths, which may hereafter exalt that honour into permanent and substantial glory.

CHAP. II.

THE THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE.

HE kinds of truth which form the several

TH

departments of human knowledge belonging to the different provinces of the theoretic, the practic, and the poetic mind, are the inferences and deductions of natural reason. They result from principles existing in the nature and constitution of subjects, material or mental, to which they respectively relate1. And thus a part of that truth, which in the Divine Mind is universal and intuitive, is by the use of sense and reason, conveyed progressively into the human; where it exists, according to the nature of the subjects from which it is derived, and in proportion to the mind in which it dwells2.

But truth, as we have observed, is origi