from the lowering sky. Distant hills reverberate and increase the alarming sound, and with rocking edifices declare to man that "vengeance belongeth unto God:" and, to enforce the solemn warning, repeated flashes of lightning, with horrible glare, dazzle his eyes, and with forked fires strike consternation into his breast; if they do not actually strike him dead in the midst of his shattered habitation.

Nor doth heaven alone dart destructive fires; earth, our mother earth, as if it were not enough frequently to corrupt the atmosphere by pestilential vapours, borrows the assistance of the devouring element to terrify and scourge her guilty children. By sudden, frightful chasms, and the mouth of her burning mountains, she vomits clouds of smoke, sulphureous flames, and calcined rocks; she emits streams of melted minerals; covers the adjacent plains with boiling, fiery lavas; and, as if she wanted to ease herself of the burden of her inhabitants, suddenly rises against them, and in battles of shaking, at once crushes, destroys, and buries them in heaps of ruin.

These astonishing scenes, like a bloody battle that is seen at a distance, may indeed entertain us: they amuse our imagination, when, in a peaceful apartment, we behold them beautifully represented by the pen of a Virgil, or the pencil of a Raphael. But to be in the midst of them, as thousands are, sooner or later, is inexpressibly dreadful: it is actually to see the forerunners of Divine vengeance, and hear the shaking of God's destructive rod: it is to behold at once a lively emblem, and an awful pledge of that "fire and brimstone, storm and tempest," which the righteous Governor of the world will "rain upon the ungodly," when "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth with all the works that are therein shall be burned up.'

Now, as reason loudly declares that the God of order, justice, and goodness, could never establish and continue this fearful course of things, but to punish the disorders of the moral world by those of the natural; we must conclude that man is guilty from the alarming tokens of Divine displeasure, which, sooner or later, are so conspicuous in every part of the habitable globe.

SECOND ARGUMENT.

We have taken a view of the residence of mankind: let us now be hold them entering upon the disordered scene. And here reason informs us that some mystery of iniquity lies hid under the loathsome, painful, and frequently mortal circumstances, which accompany their birth: for it can never be imagined that a righteous and good God would suffer innocent and pure creatures to come into the world skilled in no language but that of misery, venting itself in bitter cries or doleful accents.

It is a matter of fact, that infants generally return their first breath with a groan, and salute the light with the voice of sorrow: generally, I say, for sometimes they are born half dead, and cannot, without the utmost difficulty, be brought to breathe and groan. But all are born at the hazard of their lives: for while some cannot press into the land of the living without being dangerously bruised, others have their tender bones dislocated. Some are almost strangled; and it is the horrible fate of others to be forced into the world hy instruments of torture;

having their skull bored through or broken to pieces, or their quivering limbs cut or torn off from the unfortunate trunk. Again:

While some appear on the stage of life embarrassed with superfluous parts, others, unaccountably mutilated, want those which are necessary: and, what is more terrible still, a few, whose hideous, misshapen bodies seem calculated to represent the deformity of a fallen soul, rank among frightful monsters; and, to terminate the horror of the parents, are actually smothered and destroyed.

The spectators, it is true, concerned for the honour of mankind, frequently draw a veil over these shocking and bloody scenes; but a philosopher will find them out, and will rationally infer, that the deplorable and dangerous manner in which mankind are born, proves them to be degenerate, fallen creatures.*

THIRD ARGUMENT.

If we let our thoughts ascend from the little sufferers to the mothers that bear them, we shall find another dreadful proof of the Divine displeasure, and of our natural depravity. Does not a good master, much more a gracious God, delight in the prosperity and happiness of his faithful servants? If mankind were naturally in their Creator's favour, would he not order the fruit of the womb to drop from it without any more inconveniency than ripe vegetables fall from the opening husk, or full-grown fruits from the disburdened tree? But how widely different is the case!

Fix your attention on pregnant mothers: see their disquietude and fears. Some go beforehand through an imaginary travail, almost as painful to the mind as the real labour is to the body. The dreaded hour comes at last. Good God! What lingering, what tearing pains; what redoubled throes, what killing agonies attend it! See the curse,-or rather, see it not. Let the daughter of her who tasted the forbidden fruit without the man, drink that bitter cup without him. Flee from the mournful scene, flee to distant apartments. But in vain-the din of sorrow pursues and overtakes you there.

A child of man is at the point of being born; his tortured mother proclaims the news in the bitterest accents. They increase with her increasing agony. Sympathize and pray, while she suffers and groans, -perhaps while she suffers and dies: for it is possibly her dying groan that reaches your ear. Perhaps nature is spent in the hard travail; her son is born, and, with Jacob's wife, she closes her languid eyes and expires. Perhaps the instruments of death are upon her; the keen steel

Logicians will excuse the author, if he prefers the common unaffected manner of proposing his arguments, to the formal method of the schools. But they may easily try his enthymemes by giving them the form of syllogisms, thus:First Årgument. If the rod of God is fearfully shaken over this globe, the disordered habitation of mankind, it is a sign they are under his displeasure.

But God's rod is fearfully shaken over this globe, &c. Therefore mankind are under his displeasure.

Second Argument. A pure and innocent creature cannot be born under such and such deplorable circumstances.

But man is born under such and such deplorable circumstances. Therefore man is not a pure and innocent creature.

mangles her delicate frame; as Cesar's mother, she generously suffers her body to be opened, that her unborn child may not be torn from her in pieces; and the fertile tree is unnaturally cut down that its fruit may be safely gathered.

Perhaps neither mother nor child can be saved, and one grave is going to deprive a distracted mortal of a beloved Rachel, and a longexpected Benjamin. If this is the case, O earth, earth, earth! conceal these slain; cover their blood, and detain, in thy dark bosom, the fearful curse that brought them there! Vain wish! Too active to be confined in thy deepest vaults, it ranges through the world: with unrelenting fierceness it pursues trembling mothers, and forces them to lift up their voice for speedy relief: though varied according to the accents of a hundred languages, it is the same voice, that of the bitterest anguish ; and while it is reverberated from hamlet to hamlet, from city to city, it strikes the unprejudiced inquirer, and makes him confess that these clouds of unbribed witnesses, by their loud consentaneous evidence, impeach sin, the tormentor of the woman and murderer of her offspring. But suppose the case is not so fatal, and she is at last delivered: her labour may be over, yet not her pain and danger; a lingering weakness may carry her slowly to her grave. If she recovers, she may be a mother, and yet unable to act a mother's part. Her pining child sucks her disordered breast in vain: either the springs of his balmy food are dried up, or they overflow with a putrid, loathsome fluid, and excruciating ulcers cause the soft lips of the infant to appear terrible as the edge of the sword.

If she happily escape this common kind of distress, yet she may date the beginning of some chronical disease from her dangerous lying-in ; and, in consequence of her hard wrestling for the blessing of a child, may with the patriarch go halting all her days. How sensible are the marks of Divine indignation in all these scenes of sorrow! And consequently, how visible our sinfulness and guilt!

Nor can the justness of the inference be denied, under pretence that the females of other animals, which neither do nor can sin, bring forth their young with pain as well as women. For, if we take a view of the whole earth, we shall not see any females, except the daughters of Eve, who groan under a periodical disorder, that entails languor and pain, weakness and mortal diseases, on their most blooming days. Nor do we in general find any that are delivered of their offspring with half the sorrow and danger of women. These two remarkable circumstances loudly call upon us to look for the cause of sorrow which attends the delivery of female animals, where that sorrow is most sensibly felt; and to admire the perfect agreement that subsists between the observations of natural philosophers, and the assertion of the most ancient historian. Gen. iii, 16.

FOURTH ARGUMENT.

If we advert to mankind, even before they burst the womb of their tortured mothers, they afford us a new proof of their total degeneracy. For reason dictates that if they were not conceived in sin, the Father of mercies could not, consistently with his goodness and justice, com. mand the cold hand of death to nip them in the unopened, or just-opened

bud. This nevertheless happens every hour. Who can number the early miscarriages of the womb? How many millions of miserable embryos feel the pangs of death before those of birth, and preposterously turn the fruitful womb into a living grave! And how many millions more of wretched infants escape the dangers of their birthday, and salute the troublesome light only to take their untimely leave of it, after languishing a few days on the rack of a convulsive or torturing disorder? I ask again, Would a good and righteous God seal the death warrant of such multitudes of his unborn, or newly born creatures, if their natural depravity did not render them proper subjects of dissolution?

It is true, the young of beasts suffer and die, as well as infants; but it is only because they are involved in our misery. They partake of it as the attendants of a noble traitor share in his deserved ruin. Sin, that inconceivable, virulent, and powerful evil, drew down God's righteous curse upon all that was created for man's use, as well as upon man himself. Hence only spring the degeneracy and death that turn beasts to one promiscuous dust with mankind. Compare Gen. iii, 17; Rom. v, 12; and viii, 22. We may then justly infer, from the sufferings and death of still-born or new-born children, that man is totally degenerate, and liable to destruction, even from his mother's womb.

FIFTH ARGUMENT.

But take your leave of the infant corpse, already buried in the womb, or deposited in a coffin of a span long; fix your attention on the healthy sucking child. See him stupidly staring in his nurse's lap, or awkwardly passing through childhood to manhood. How visible is his degeneracy in ever stage!

Part of the Divine image, in which he was made in Adam, consisted in purity, power, and knowledge; but now he is naturally the least cleanly, as well as the most helpless and ignorant of all animals. Yes, if the reader could forgive the indelicacy of the assertion for the sake of its truth, I would venture to show that there is no comparison between the cleanliness of the little active animals which suck the filthy swine; and of helpless infants, who suck the purer breasts of their tender mothers. But, casting a veil over the dribbling, loathsome little creatures, without fear of being contradicted, I aver, that the young of those brutes, which are stupid to a proverb, know their dams, and follow them as soon as they are dropped; while infants are months without taking any particular notice of their parents, and without being able, I shall not say to follow them, but even to bear the weight of their swaddled body, or stand upon their tottering legs.

With reference to the knowledge necessary for the support of animal life, it is undeniable that brutes have greatly the advantage of mankind. Fowls and fishes immediately, and with amazing sagacity, single out their proper nourishment among a thousand useless and noxious things: but infants put indifferently to their mouth all that comes to their hand, whether it be food or poison, a coral or a knife; and what is more astonishing still, grown-up persons scarce ever attain to the knowledge of the quantity, or quality of the meat and drink which are most suitable to their constitutions.

All disordered dogs fix at once upon the salutary vegetable that can

(in some cases) relieve their distress: but many physicians, even after several years' study and practice, hurt, and sometimes kill their patients by improper medicines. Birds of passage, by mere instinct, find the north and the south more readily than mariners by the compass. Untaught spiders weave their webs, and uninstructed bees make their combs to the greatest perfection: but fallen man must serve a tedious apprenticeship to learn his own business; and with all the help of masters, tools, and patterns, seldom proves an ingenious artist.

Again: other animals are provided with a natural covering that answers the double end of usefulness and ornament; but indigent man is obliged to borrow from plants, beasts, and worms, the materials with which he hides his nakedness, or defends his feebleness; and a great part of his short life is spent in providing, or putting on and off garments, the gaudy tokens of his shame, or ragged badges of his fall.

Are not these plain proofs that man, who, according to his superior rank and primitive excellency, should in all things have the pre-eminence, is now a degraded being, cursed for his apostasy with native uncleanliness, helplessness, ignorance, and nakedness, above all other animals?

SIXTH ARGUMENT.

Man's natural ignorance, great as it is, might nevertheless be overlooked, if he had but the right knowledge of his Creator. But, alas! the holy and righteous God judicially withdraws himself from his unholy, apostate creatures. Man is not properly acquainted with Him "in whom he lives, and moves, and hath his being." This humbling truth may be demonstrated by the following observations :

God is infinitely perfect; all the perfection which is found in the most exalted creatures, is but the reflection of the transcendent effulgence be longing to that glorious Sun of spiritual beauty; it is but the surface of the unfathomable depths of goodness and loveliness, which regenerate souls discover in that boundless ocean of all excellence. If therefore men saw God, they could far less help being struck with holy awe, overwhelmed with pleasing wonder, and ravished with delightful admiration; than a man born blind, and restored to sight in the blaze of a summer's day, could help being transported at the glory of the new and unex. pected scene: "Could we but see virtue in all her beauty," said a heathen," she would ravish our hearts."* How much greater would our ravishment be if we were indulged with a clear, immediate dis. covery of the Divine beauty, the eternal original of all virtue, the exuberant fountain of all perfection and delight! But, alas! how few thus behold, know, and admire God, may easily be seen by the impious or vain conduct of mankind.

If a multitude of men ingenuously confess they know not the king; if they take his statue, or one of his attendants for him; or, if they doubt whether there be a king, or sport with his name and laws in his presence; we reasonably conclude that they neither see nor know the royal person. And is not this the case of the superstitious, who, like the Athenians, worship an "unknown God?" Of idolaters, who bow to favourite mortals, or lifeless images, as to the true God? Of infidels,

* Si virtus conspiceretur oculis, mirabiles amoris excitaret sui.--Cicero.