best claim to our attention, and if we find that it contains many doctrines of the greatest importance, which human reason could never have deduced from the phenomena of nature, and, at the same time, nothing which is palpably contradictory to such deductions, it is unquestionably our duty to study it in the first place; and to adhere to it as to the religion of our fathers, if we find that its claim to a Divine origin rests on a stable foundation.

The doctrines and precepts of the Christian religion are all to be found in a series of revelations, which have successively been vouchsafed to mankind at sundry times, and in divers manners, since the beginning of the world; and all these revelations are recorded in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. These Scriptures, therefore, you must study with the closest attention, and without prejudice, either favourable or unfavourable, to the established creed of any particular Church; and the common advice given to students of theology, is to study them in the original languages. This, however, is an advice which is very seldom followed, or indeed capable of being followed; because few young men are sufficiently acquainted with the Hebrew language to read it with ease and facility. I therefore recommend to you a very different method of proceeding.

Our authorized version of the Old and New Testaments, though certainly not faultless, is universally acknowledged to be on the whole very accurate. You ought, therefore, in the first place, to

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read, with great attention, that version of the Scriptures, and read it merely as a detail of doctrines, and as the history of the people to whom those doctrines were immediately revealed; marking, as you proceed, such passages as appear to be of the greatest importance, or most difficult to be understood; without, however, stopping, at the first reading, to inquire critically into their import. You will find great advantage likewise in reading the books of Scripture, not in the order in which they are commonly published, but in the order of time when they were written, which you will find clearly stated by Mr Townsend in his Holy Bible Arranged, &c. Along with this perusal of the Scriptures you will do well to read Stackhouse's History of the Bible; the most useful edition of which is in three vols. 4to, published 1817; Shuckford's Connection of the Sacred and Profane History of the World, in four vols. 8vo, 1743; Prideaux's Connection of the Old and New Testaments, in four vols. 8vo, 1808; Hales's Analysis of Chronology, in three vols., but generally bound up in four parts, 4to; Wells's Geography of the Old and New Testaments; and Havercamp's edition of the Works of Josephus the Jewish Historian, published at Amsterdam, in two vols. folio, 1726, of which a valuable translation was published by the famous Whiston, at London, in the year 1737. I need not surely add, that, when reading merely to acquire historical information, you ought not to pass over the apocryphal books, in which, though they are not

inspired writings, there are many things recorded which throw light upon some passages in the Hebrew Scriptures. The first book of Maccabees is indeed an authentic and valuable history, from which Josephus seems to have derived much of his information respecting the heroic exploits of that illustrious family.

The only historical books of the New Testament are the four Gospels, with the Acts of the Apostles; but you will do well, even at this reading, to peruse likewise the Epistles, especially those of St Paul ; and to compare such historical information as is incidentally given in them, with what is falsely recorded of the Christians by the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius.

When you have gone over the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in this manner, you must have acquired such a general knowledge of the doctrines and principles which they contain, as may enable you to inquire what evidence there is, that those doctrines and precepts were revealed to mankind by God. That the Father of Spirits may communicate his will to some individuals of the human race in a way altogether different from that in which we are enabled to discover many truths both physical and moral, by the proper use of our senses and reasoning powers, is what no consistent Theist will not readily admit; but what evidence, it is asked, could any man produce, that he had been favoured with such communications of the Divine will as had been withheld from others? It is not denied

that God may reveal himself by supernatural means to any man or body of men, if it seem good to his infinite wisdom, and that he may make the person or persons so favoured, distinctly perceive from whom the favour comes; but surely we are not bound to believe-indeed we cannot believe-on the bare assertion of such persons, that they are admitted farther into God's counsels than we who are equally his creatures with themselves, and probably as desirous to fulfil his will.

This must be admitted. No man can believe in the inspiration of another on less evidence than the testimony of God himself; and that testimony can be given only by the inspired person working a miracle in attestation of his truth. A miracle is a suspension or change of some of the known laws of nature, or, in other words, of the ordinary and regular course of events; but these laws were established at the formation of this world by its Creator, whose volition or agency is the sole cause of every event, in the inanimate parts at least, of the universe; and therefore we are as certain as of the truth of any geometrical axiom, that no real miracle can be wrought, or the laws of nature changed or suspended, but by the power of God. Were a man, in proof of his being inspired, to give sight to a person born blind, merely by anointing his eyes with clay; or instantly to calm the raging of the sea and the blowing of the winds merely by commanding them to be still, we could not entertain a doubt

but that so powerful a word proceeded from God, and that he who uttered it was indeed inspired.

Now the miracles recorded of Moses, in the Pentateuch; of Joshua, in the book that goes under his name; of Christ, in the four Gospels; and of Peter, John, and Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, are all, such as could not have been wrought, but by the power of God; and hence it follows that all the doctrines which are taught in these books must be the truths of God. But, say the philosophical infidels, though we admit that real miracles would, to those who actually saw them, be sufficient evidence that he who wrought them was inspired by God, yet to those who did not witness them, the mere testimony of men could be no sufficient evidence that they were really wrought; for we have universal experience for the stability of the laws of nature, and daily experience that human testimony is often false.

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This, I am sorry to say, must be granted. man testimony is often false; and in all ages of the church, it has been given for the reality of miracles that were never wrought, and gained credit with large bodies of Christians, to the great injury of Christianity; but the testimony borne to the miracles of Christ and Moses cannot have been false, as you may easily convince yourself, by an attentive perusal of Leslie's short method with the Deists; Dr Campbell of Aberdeen's Dissertation on Miracles ; Dr Adams's Treatise on the same subject; Bishop Douglas's Criterion; and a dissertation which I