authors whofe names are prefixed to them, whether they have been enlarged, diminished, or any way corrupted by the artifice or ignorance of translators, or transcribers; whether in the historical parts the writers were inftructed by a perpetual, a partial, or by any infpiration at all; whether in the religious and moral parts, they received their doctrines from a divine influence, or from the inftructions and converfation of their master; whether in their facts or fentiments there is always the most exact agreement, or whether in both they fometimes differ from each other; whether they are in any cafe mistaken, or always in

6

fallible ;

'fallible; or ever pretended to be fo, I shall not here difpute: let the Deift avail himself of all these doubts and difficulties, and decide them in conformity to his own opinions, I fhall not contend, because they affect not my argument: all that I affert is a plain fact, which cannot be denied, that fuch writings do now exist.

PRO

PROPOSITION II.

MY fecond proposition is not quite fo fimple, but, I think, not lefs undeniable than the former, and is this: that from this book may be extracted a system of religion intirely new, both with regard to the object, and the doctrines, not only infinitely fuperior to, but totally unlike every thing, which had ever before entered into the mind of man: I fay extracted, because all the doctrines of this religion having been delivered at various times, and on various occafions, and here only hiftorically recorded, no uniform or regular

fyftem of theology is here to be found; and better perhaps it had been, if lefs labour had been employed by the learned, to bend and twist these divine materials into the polished forms of human fyftems, to which they never will fubmit, and for which they were never intended by their great author. Why he chofe not to leave any fuch behind him we know not, but it might poffibly be, becaufe he knew, that the imperfection of man was incapable of receiving fuch a fyftem, and that we are more properly, and more fafely conducted by the diftant, and scattered rays, than by the too powerful funfhine of divine illumination:

mination: "If I have told you "earthly things," fays he," and ye "believe not, how fhall ye be"lieve, if I tell you of heavenly "things*?" that is, if my instructions concerning your behaviour in the prefent as relative to a future life, are so difficult to be understood, that you can fcarcely believe me, how fhall you believe, if I endeavoured to explain to you the nature of celestial Beings, the defigns of Providence, and the myfteries of his difpenfations; fubjects which you have neither ideas to comprehend, nor language to

exprefs?

John iii. 12.

C 2

Firt