THEOLOGY.

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upon the sole authority of the Jewish and Christian scriptures;hut it is self-evident that we could not do either the one or theother, were we not convinced by natural means that God exists,that he is a Being of goodness, justice, and power, and that he in-spired with divine wisdom the penmen of these sacred volumes.

OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.

The existence of God is the foundation of all religion, and thefirst principle of the science which is the subject of this article.It is likewise a principle which must command the assent of everytnan who has any notion of the relation between effects and theircauses, and whose curiosity has ever been excited by the phacno-niena of nature. We see that the human race, and every otherspecies of animals, is at present propagated by the co-operation oftwo parents; but has this process continued from eternity? Amoment’s reflection will convince us that it has not. Let us takea »y one man alive, and, to avoid perplexity, let us suppose hisfather and mother dead, and himself the only person at presentexisting: how came he into the world? It will be said he wasproduced mechanically or chemically by the conjunction of hisparents, and that his parents were produced in the same mannerby theirs. Let this then be supposed ; it must surely be granted,fhat when this man was born, an addition was made to the seriesthe human race. But a series which can be enlarged may“kewise be diminished ; and by tracing it backwards, we mustal some period, however remote, reach its beginning. There musttherefore have been a first pair of the human race, who were not.Propagated by the conjunction of parents. How did these come“'to the world? Anaximander tells us, that the first men and alla "hmls were bred in warm moisture, inclosed in crustaceous skins“he crab fish or lobsters; and that when they arrived at a propera ge, their shelly prisons growing dry, broke, and made way fortheir liberty. Empedocles informs us, that mother Earth at firstbrought forth vast numbers of legs, and arms, and heads, &c."’hich, approaching each other, arranging themselves properly,a "d being cemented together, started up at once full grown men.Another of these philosophers relates, that there first grew up aSoi 't of wombs, which having their roots in the earth, attractedfhence a kind ot milk for the nourishment of the foetus, which inprocess of time broke through the membranes and shifted for it-self; whilst the Egyptian fathers of this hopeful school contentedthemselves with simply affirming, that animals, like vegetables,sprung at fust from the bosom of the earth. Surely those sa'>-es,or their followers, should have been able to tell us why the earthj'ss not in any climate this prolific power of putting forth vegeta-ble men or the parts of men at present. It this universal parentbe eternal and sell-existent, it must ire incapable of decay or theS'Uallest change in any of its qualities: if it be not eternal, weshall be obliged to find a cause tor its existence, or at least for itsj or >n and all its powers. But such a cause may have produced“e first human pair, and undoubtedly did produce them, without““'king them spring as plants from the soil. Indeed the growthplants themselves clearly evinces a cause superior to any vege-ative power which can he supposed inherent in the eartfi. Nofrom the sturdy oak to the creeping ivy, can he propagatedut by seed, or slips from the parent stock ; hut when one con-®“>plates the regular process of vegetation, the existence of everyimplies the prior existence of a parent-seed, and the exist-“ c « of every seed the prior existence of a parent-plant. Whichip 6 ” these, the oak or the acorn, was the first, and whence was^ existence derived ? Not from the earth ; for we have the evi-^ e “ce of universal experience that the earth never produces a treejjp bom seed, nor seed hut from a tree. There must thereforet some superior power which formed the first seed or the firsttaf 6 ’ 'tin tiie earth, and gave to it those powers of vege-

m, l0 “ by which tile species has been propagated to this day.'Us clearly do the processes of generation and vegetation indi-e a Power superior to those which are usually called the powers0 f “ a ture. The same thing appears no less evident from the laws^traction and repulsion, which plainly prevail through thesystem of matter, and hold together the stupendous struc-hol' ^' x Psriment shew6that very few particles of the most solidp ' J a,, e in actual contact with each other; (see Optics , and4 'arr S | lcs ’) a,u * that there are considerable interstices between the* “ties of every elastic fluid, is obvious to the smallest reflection.Vo L tv,—- no, 186 .

Yet the particles of solid bodies strongly cohere, whilst those ofelastic fluids repel each other. Iiow are these phenomena ac-counted for? To say that the former is the effect of attraction andthe latter of repulsion, is only to say that two individual phamo-rnena are subject to those laws which prevail through the whole ofthe classes under which they are respectively arranged; whilst thequestion at issue is concerning the origin of the laws themseives,tiie power which makes the particles of gold cohere, and those ofair repel eacli other. Power without substance is inconceivable;and by a law of human thought, no man can believe a being tooperate hut where it is in some manner or other actually present:but the particles of gold adhere, and the particles of air keep at adistance from each other, by powers exerted where no matter ispresent. There must therefore be some substance endowed withpower which is not material. Of this substance or being the poweris evidently immense. The earth and other planets are carriedround the sun with a velocity which human imagination canhardly conceive. That this motion is not produced by the agencyof these vast bodies on one another, or by the interposition of anymaterial fluid, has been shewn elsewhere; and since it is a law ofour best philosophy, that we are not to multiply substances with-out necessity, we must infer that the same Being which formedthe first animals and vegetables, endowing them with powers topropagate their respective kinds, is likewise the cause of all thephenomena of nature, such as cohesion, repulsion, elasticity, andmotion, not excepting even the motions of the heavenly^bodiesthemselves. If this powerful Being, who is tiie parent of vegeta-ble and animal life, and the source of all corporeal motions, beself-existent, intelligent, and independent in his actions and voli-tions, he is an original or first cause, and that Being whom we de-nominate God . If he be not self-existent and independent, theremust be a cause in the order of nature prior and superior to Him,which is either itself the first cause, or a link in that series of causesand effects, which, however vast we suppose it, must be tracedultimately to some one Being, who is self-existent, and has in him-self the power of beginning motion, independent of every thinghut his own intelligence and volition. In vain the Atheists al-leged, that the series may ascend infinitely, and for that reasonhave no first mover or cause. An infinite series of successivebeings involves an absurdity and contradiction: but not to insistupon this at present, we shall only beg leave to consider such aseries as a whole, and see what consequences will flow from thesupposition. That we may with logical propriety consider it inthis light, is incontrovertible; for the birth of every individual ofthe human race shews that it is made up of parts; but parts implya whole as necessarily as an attribute implies its substance. As inthis supposed series there is no cause which is not likewise an ef-fect, nor any body moving another which was not itself movedby a third, the whole is undeniably equivalent to an infinite ef-fect, or a finite body moved : hut if a finite effect must necessarilyhave proceeded from a cause, and a finite body in motion musthave been put into that state by a mover, is there a human mindwhich can conceive an infinite effect to have proceeded from nocause, or an infinite body in motion to have been moved by no-thing ? No, surely ! An infinite effect, were such a thing supposa-ble,would compel us to admit an infinite cause, and an infinitebody in motion a mover of infinite power. This great cause is God ,whose wisdom, power, and goodness, all nature loudly proclaims.'Fhat the phxnomena which we daily see evince the existence ofone such Being, has just been shewn ; and that we have no reasonto infer the existence of more than one, a very few reflectionswill make abundantly evident. For, not to lay more stress than itwill bear upon that rule of Newton’s, which forbids us to multi-ply substances without necessity, such a harmony prevails throughthe whole visible universe, as plainly shews it to he under the go-vernment of one intelligence. That on this globe the several ele-ments serve for nourishment to plants, plants to the inferior ani-mals, and animals to man ; that the other planets of our system areprobably inhabited, and their inhabitants nourished iri the same ora similar manner; that the sun is so placed as to give light andheat to all, and by the law of gravitation to bind the whole planetsinto one system with itself— are truths so obvious and so univer-sally acknowledged, as to supersede the necessity of establishingthem by proof. The fair inference therefore is, that the solar[j system and all its parts are under the government of one intelli-|! P U genee,