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listen for a moment to the desponding doctrines of Calvin, of hispredecessors, or his successors, in the church of Christ.

“ Before I took my Bachelor of Arts’ degree, I had learned in-deed my catechism, as other boys do ; but I had never thoughteither of the truth of the Christian religion, or of the nature ofthe doctrines contained in it. My mind being after my degreeliberated from the severity of mathematical studies, expanded itselfand ranged into other fields of knowledge without control: Ithought freely on religious subjects; and I found nothing in re-vealed religion which in any degree lessened the natural notion Ihad formed respecting the Divine goodness, but many things toconfirm and enlarge it. I found, in truth, and lamented to find,in all Christian churches, a tendency to become wise above whatwas written, to require certain assent to doubtful propositions, toexplain modes of existence which cannot be explained to beingswith our faculties, and to mould the ineffable attributes of God according to the model of human imperfection. The doing ofthis I considered as (if the expression may be allowed) anthropo-morphitising in the worst sense the incomprehensible Author ofNature, and had always been averse from interpreting, in a strictliteral sense, such passages of Scripture as attribute to him theparts and passions, the corporeal and intellectual properties andimperfections of a man.

“ Why should we be disturbed by gloomy apprehensions ofdeath, since he who made us can and will, even in death, pre-serve us ? Unless we cease to love him, (which neither you norI can, I trust, ever do,) he will not cease to love us: the humanrace, in falling from their first estate, did not fall from the love ofGod . Are we not assured, that 4 God so loved the world’ (even