doubtful the natural rule of life, and vain those talents, qualities, and principles, given us to exercife, to mature, and to confirm.

It may with truth be faid, that some of the most important parts of human knowledge are taught us by our ignorance. The proofs of our mental imbecility, which the daily trials of our understanding on the commoneft objects of nature present to us, are fo many leffons of humiliation by which human philofophy is bowed down to the earth before the unfearchable truths which lie buried in the counfels of the Almighty. I have been always very much pleased with a little book, called "Glanville's Vanity of Dogmatizing," in which there is a very complete map of human ignorance: we there perceive what a vast region of truth lies ftill unexplored by us, difqualified as we are to breathe in' the tenuity of its atmosphere. The infolvable nature of light, colours, gravity, motion, and matter," is touched upon with admirable vivacity in this" little treatife, and forces into the mind a conviction of its own unreasonableness, in difputing points which regard a life to come, on the ground of their incomprehenfibility, while at every step in this

I

prefent

prefent life our understandings encounter objects to the full as inexplicable.

I fhall transcribe a part of his chapter on the motion of the wheel in which the cause of ignorance is maintained with much ingenuity. "Befides the

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already mentioned difficulties, even the most or"dinary-trivial occurrents, if we contemplate them "in the theory, will as much puzzle us as any of "the former. And firft, if we abstractedly con"fider it, it feeins impoffible that a wheel should 46 move; I mean not the progreffive, but the mo"tion which is merely on its own centre; and

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were it not for the information of experience, it "is most likely that philofophy had long ago con"cluded it impoffible: for let us fuppofe the wheel "to be divided according to the alphabet. Now "in motion there is a change of place, and in the "motion of a wheel, there is a fucceffion of one "part to another in the fame place; fo that it feens “inconceivable that A should move until B hath "left its place: for A cannot move but it must ac

quire fome place or other: It can acquire none "but what was B's, which we fuppofe to be most "immediate to it. The fame space cannot con

"tain them both; therefore B must lose its place, "before A can have it; yea, and the nature of "fucceffion requires it. But now B cannot move "but into the place of C; and D must be out, be"fore C can come in: fo that the motion of D "will be pre-required likewife to the motion of it; "and fo onward, till it comes to Z. Upon the "fame account Z will not be able to move till A›

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moves, being the part next to it ; neither will A "be able to move (as has been fhewn) till Z hath: "fo that the motion of

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every part will be prerequired to itself. Neither can one evade, by say➡

ing that all the parts move at once: for, firstly, 66 we cannot conceive in a fucceffion but that fome

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thing fhould be firft, and that motion fhould "begin fomewhere, and secondly, if the parts may "all change places with one another at the fame "time without any respect of priority and pofte

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riority to each other's motion, why then may not

a company of bullets clofely crouded together, ❝in a box, as well move together by a like mutual "and fi nultaneous exchange? Doubtlefs the

reafon of this inaptitude to motion in this pofi❝tion is, that they cannot give way one to another, ❝ and motion can no where begin because of the

" pleni

plenitude. The cafe is just the fame in the in"stance before us; and therefore we need go no "farther for an evidence of its inconceivableness. "But yet, to give it one touch more, according to "the perepatetic nicenefs, which fays that one part "enters in at the same instant that the other goes "out.-Now in the instant that B leaves its place, "it is in it, or not: if it be in it, then cannot A "be in it in the fame inftant without quantitative "penetration; if not, then it cannot be faid to "leave it in that inftant, but to have left it the

inftant before. Thefe difficulties which pinch "fo in this obvious experiment, stand in their full "force against all motion in the hypothesis of ab"folute plenitude."

As a comment upon this passage, I shall produce another from the philofopher Malebranch, whose works, admirable as they are in many places, are fo buried in obscurity, that a fragment of them is almoft a curiofity." The profit that one may "draw from these speculations is not barely to ac"quire the knowledge they prefent, which of itself is "barren enough, but it is to learn the limits of our

understanding, and to force itto confefs thatthere

" are

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are truths which it cannot comprehend; and "therefore it is wholesome to fatigue the mind "with thefe fubtleties, the better to tame its pre"fumption and abate its confidence and audacity "in oppofing its feeble lights to the mysteries of religion, under pretence that it cannot compre hend them: for fince all the force of human "understanding is constrained to yield to the leaft "atom of matter, and to own that it fees clearly ❝that it is infinitely divifible, without being able "to comprehend how this may be; is it not plain"ly a fin against reason, to refuse to believe the "wonderful effects of the divine Omnipotence, merely because our understanding cannot com"prehend them ?”’

The only argument in which I recognize the fhadow of an anfwer to this plain kind of reafoning, is built on the fuperior importance of those truths which involve the concerns of a future life, and confequently the deeper intereft we have in their comprehenfibility. This argument, however, a little examination will prove to be more fpecious than folid, fince we car have no further practical concern with the truths of religion" VOL. III.

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