convince me of the fact, who have passed but a small portion of my time out of Ireland, as farther I need not have gone for a full proof on this behalf. An island, situated as this is, in the ocean, affords all the data required for the purpose. The surface of the sea, excepting as above excepted, must, in a calm, be every where equally distant from the centre of the globe. If, therefore, the sea hath every where round Ireland abated, it must have abated every where round the world. Now, this abatement must have been owing to one or other of these two things; either the waters must have subsided, or the land must have been elevated. The land might have been elevated in some places, but not in many, not by any means in all. It is ridiculous to suppose, that subterraneous fires have pushed up, and that so equally, the whole habitable part of the globe. If, therefore, the ocean hath retired from the shores, as above asserted and presently to be proved, either great parts of the waters have been annihilated, or have broken in upon some part of the land, equivalent to its abatement on the lands elsewhere. But the annihilation of so much water, or of even any particle of matter, in the world, is too much surely for infidelity to believe. It follows then, that if the sea hath made so general a retreat, it must have made some particular and proportionable encroachment on the land. That it hath made the retreat mentioned, is evident to the most cursory observer, who sees on both the eastern and western coasts of Ireland huge hills of seasand thrown up, and some of them to more than a hundred perpendicular feet above the highest spring tides at present; who sees, that several of these hills now stand a mile or two within land; and who sees, that the sea now never rises nearly on a level with, nor approaches, the bases of those hills, within a mile or two, and not even in the most violent in-blowing storms. That those hills were raised by such storms, some thousands of centuries ago, and at once somewhat higher than the then level of the sea, I grant; but they neither could be then, nor can the like hills now, be raised to so great a height above that level, above which the recent hills of sea-sand do never rise more than thirty or forty feet, and being exposed to the immediate action of the sea, are frequently washed away to the lowest grain, and thrown up in other places, while the more inland downs stand untouched, and as immoveable, as the Alps themselves. These ocular data considered, we cannot suppose, that the sea rose in ancient times less than thirty or forty perpendicular feet higher than it does at present.

To account for this by the comparatively minute encroachment of the sea here and there upon the land, is saying nothing which observation can vouch for; besides, in this case, I shall have a right to insist on the gradual encroachments of the land on the sea, as in Egypt, to a far greater extent, which must have proportionably raised the waters of the sea, supposing the abatement of the waters not to have been the principal cause of that encroachment. If by the loss of Atlantis, and by the wash of soil from the mountains, generally too steep to have been arable, the animal world hath literally lost ground, the retreat of the sea from the land, by laying bare the most fertile land, now possessed and cultivated, hath perhaps made an equivalent amends. A man is naturally led to this acknowledgment of providential goodness by standing on one of our highest sand hills, and from thence taking a view of thirty or forty miles square, which in many places he may do, of the finest countries now enjoyed by mankind, but proved by his elevated situation to have been once the resort of cod, turbot, &c. The whole Delta or Lower Egypt was gained in this manner; and by far the greater part of the lands in North America, occupied by the English, were probably added to the habitable part of the world by the same recess of the sea. At the shores they rise but a few feet above the sea, and continue low and flat to a great extent westward. Almost every where they are covered with a pretty deep bed of sand; and sea shells, in large parcels, are found some hundreds of miles from the sea, mouldering on or near the surface of the ground. How much more of the like character may be observed in other parts of the world, I know not, nor would it be necessary to support the point I have been speaking to. Although the rotation of the earth round its axis raises and keeps the ocean seventeen miles higher between the tropics, at least under the equator, than it is near the poles; it cannot be supposed, that this elevation hath been always increasing, so as to lay bare the lands I have been alluding to in higher latitudes. Were this the case, mount Atlas must have been under water long since, though the ancient fabulists thanked it for not suffering the skies to fall on their heads. But I have reason to think, that, in fact, the recess of the sea from the land, between the tropics, and near them, is as observable as about Ireland. So flat is the country about the river Gambia, that the tide flows there into the land some hundreds of miles, though they rise in the ocean but about five feet. And the country, on each hand, to a great distance, is very near as

sandy as that of Pennsylvania, and all southward to Cape Florida, inclusive. Rice grounds and swamps abound every where in the adjacencies of this river. What hath been said here of Gambia, is, I believe, as true of the river of Senegal, or the other and greater branch of the Niger and its adjacencies.

19. At least since the days of Bishop Hare, a man of more learning than judgment, and even before him, a jingling sort of objection hath been repeatedly echoed against the style of the holy Scriptures by all the class of infidels, that it is figurative, metaphorical, allegorical, parabolical, &c. From hence obscurity and uncertainty of interpretation have been inferred by them all. It is however plain, first, that in no language, nor on any subject of discourse, is it possible for mankind to express themselves, in regard to their general or abstracted thoughts, without borrowing a great part of their terms or words from sensible objects and operations; secondly, that of all expressions or terms, these are found to be both the most intelligible, and the most beautiful; and, thirdly, that in the holy Scriptures these are, wherever it is intended they should be so, the most easily understood, and the most powerfully affecting. The objection itself can find no other terms, whereby to utter its malignity, than figurative terms, as may be seen by considering those I have just taken from their mouths, and others of the like import and use. It is not a little uncouth in the philosophers and mathematicians to urge a plea, so directly against themselves, who abound with them on all occasions, on many indeed wherein they use them, not for want of any more common and more easy terms, but purely to darken what they are saying, and give it an air of depth and mystery. The ellipsis, the parabola, the hyperbola, the diameter, the diagonal, are of this sort, and perhaps are unavoidable; but surely the same excuse cannot be made for calculation, fluxion, planet, comet, orbit, planes of an orbit, all translated from one thing to another, all mathematically figuring mere abstract ideas by objects of sight, much less for the squares and cubes of spaces, numbers and times. Had they not been studious of unnecessary ornament, or desirous of enveloping their little ordinary thoughts in scientifical fogs, they might, for purposes like these, have found plainer words, which the writers of technical dictionaries, and the explainers of their philosophical oracles, are forced to find. Tradesmen, philosophers, mathematicians, and I know not who, may, all of them, be allowed their mysteries, and their mystical way of talking; but a

metaphor or parable in Christianity is not to be tolerated, though every body knows its meaning, and feels its force.

20. In speaking, there are really but three stops, as to time, the full stop (.), the semicolon (;), and the comma (,). Interrogation and admiration, are not concerned with the breathing of the speaker, but fall, according to the sense of the period, into one or other of the three aforesaid times; and as to the parenthesis, it should follow, and be followed, by either of the two last, but should never be too long for the one or the other of them. As to the colon (:) as defined and used, it is, as to time too near the full stop to make an equal, or any determinate division, of time or breathing, between the full stop and that which is commonly called a semicolon. Any one, much accustomed to speak aloud in public, if but moderately observant and careful, must have perceived the truth of what is said above.

21. It is, with some, a shrewd objection, as they think, to Christianity, that necessary as it makes itself to the real happiness of mankind, it hath even yet been known but to a small part of the human race, in comparison of the rest, who know, or could have known, nothing of it. What humility is here from philosophers, who magnify their own, and vilify the understandings of other men! Cannot such exalted genii walk by themselves on the strength of their own superior reason? Are they jealous of that reason, or of a system, adhered to by a minority? Must they have a multitude to go before them, or to carry them forward? A multitude, consisting almost entirely of the most stupid and ignorant of mankind? This objection hath not been heard from the mouths of any, who know what Christianity is, or at least, have given themselves the trouble to consider it with a small degree of attention. God never intended to force the faith of any one mortal. No, he hath left all men at liberty, and infidels in particular, to their idolized freedom of thought. Of this sort were the great majority of those, who saw our Saviour's miracles, heard his doctrines, and yet persecuted him to death. This kind of men, wedded to their vanity and other vices, abound in every age, and shut themselves up from every species of instruction, which leads to self-abasement, self-denial, and virtue. If therefore millions, having the requisite proofs offered to them, have rejected these proofs, I insist it was the fault of those rejectors, not the deficiency of the proofs, that they remained infidels. As to such in remote islands, &c. to whom those proofs have not

yet been offered, the Christians, real or pretended, who ought to have, long ago, preached it to them, they, not Christianity, are to answer for it; but by no means they, who had no opportunity of hearing. But we are told, that Paganism and Mahometism are in possession of the far greater part of the world. It may be so, and it would be idle, if not impossible on this occasion, to count noses, in a case where nothing but noses can be counted. Here I will fairly aggravate the objection, by allowing, that in Christian countries, where proof is fully afforded, there is not perhaps one in a thousand, who is, both in faith and practice, a real Christian; and what then? If it was impossible, and never so much as intended, that faith, and virtue the child of faith, should be forced on free beings, why in the name of common sense, are the means of notification to be arraigned? Do all Pagans and Mahometans believe or live up to their own avowed principles? Yet they all declare the necessity of so doing, as we do in regard to ours. Single out the real good even among them; do the same among Christians, and we shall have the majority, if living up to the dictates of right reason, and of original uncorrupted nature, is the character of a good man. After all, is a muster-roll, of mere nominal professors to decide on this subject? Is it not a fair comparison of principles, whether Christian, Mahometan, or Pagan, whereon the merits of this argument are to be determined? Most certainly, the point to be examined here is by no means geographical, but purely rational and moral, and comes out entirely in favour of Christianity, whether we look into the original history of these sorts of religion, or into the tendency and spirit of their principles. However, can the deistical objector count even noses with us on the footing of mere profession or on that of real virtue? So far from it, that, of his thin class of professors, he will find it difficult to assign a single individual, who, at least in Christian countries, is a Deist for any other reason, than because he was first, a slave to his passions and vices. For my own part, among mankind, with whom I pretend to no more than a superficial acquaintance, I know not who is a Christian, or who is not. This I say of myself, as a very indifferent searcher of my own heart. But one thing I perfectly know, that of all who have ever taken upon them to instruct mankind in religious principles, Christ Jesus hath given the most consummate proofs of knowledge in the subject; the most genuine demonstrations of kindness to the human race; and hath voluntarily suffered the