pointing out the weakness and fallacy of those arguments, which have been laid by church divines for a foundation to the being of God, and consequently of all religion- take it in these words-I do freely and honestly, as in the presence of God, and under a sense of his revealed name, declare, that in studying and perusing, for years together, the systems, defences, delineations, and demonstrations, as they will have them to be, of natural religion, particularly the sermons at Boyle's lectures, I found myself betrayed into-first, absolute scepticism in religion-then downright deism at heart, till, in the reading of Tindal, whose system, (as the most consistent in my opinion I had seen,) I had implicitly embraced, it pleased God to awaken me, and make me to attend to the Scriptures, after I had found that subtle author proving to a demonstration, that he had advanced nothing but in the very words, or direct consequences, of my favourite church divines and philosophers-As it was with me, and perhaps with Tindal himself at the beginning, so, for aught I know, it may be with thousands-It is dangerous walking on such a surface, as, if it fail under you, will transmit you down into eternal fire, and in a moment drown you, soul and body, in the bottomless pit.

Hence see the egregious folly and absurdity of offering to steal from revelation-for all the noise and stir of the philosphical divines, in this business, is nothing else but a gross attempt at stealing from revelation, a character for God, to make a present of the same to blind corrupt reason, that she may try her manufacturing abilities upon it, and dress out for us a divinity of her own framing-without accounting for the entry and reigning of sin and death in the world, in a consistency with, and for the illustration of, all the attributes of God, which can be accounted for only by the word of God itself; and which, if unaccounted for, will render all such curious theories, fine-spun reasoning, and metaphysical inquiries, but a reckoning without the hostor, as if a doctor should issue forth his prescriptions,

without considering the circumstances, disease, and condition of his patient-a mere wind-mill rencounter, and arrant Quixotism.

A NOTE FROM MR. SANDEMAN.

BUT here perhaps they will shift hands, change their ground, and endeavour to fight the cause of infidelity with spiritual weapons, deeming themselves sufficient to maintain, even from the word of God itself, as before-hinted:-"That we both can and must know God without the word, otherwise we can never know Him at all; for the word itself, according to them,) can only be admitted to be the word of God on the evidence of our natural knowledge of God, which," say they, "we have without the word, and before we know any thing thereof at all.”

Thus, one of their latest and most sanguine advocates has boasted so much of his natural knowledge of God, that he has not scrupled to assert, that it is not possible for a revelation to be ascertained, (even by God himself for in this case, he must mean that, or nothing to his purpose, or indeed any purpose,) as coming from God, without the help of some natural notices of God in the conscience, which he speaks of; and by which he tells you, he himself and all other men are distinguished from the brutes: for all other distinctions, it seems with him, between man and beast, drawn from the human soul, its operations and passions, are precarious and deceitful; it is the knowledge of God in the conscience of the natural man that distinguishes him from the brutes that perish!

O Sandeman, a sharp disputant thou! But who, pray, ascertains to thee those same applauded natural notices of thine? Do they more for themselves than God's word and Spirit, according to thy own account, can attain to; even ascertain themselves in thy conscience without any help from abroad?

May we ask you :-Would not some earlier natural notices, which also behoved to be ascertained by some

other notices earlier still, be as necessary to ascertain these same last natural notices, as they to ascertain God's word to thee? Why take the first impressions for granted, which come without any previous recommendations, and refuse future impressions from the word, because they require nothing but their own manifestation to recommend them, without making any appeal to the first notices more than the first did to the last? What inconsistencies are not you and all your friends (who, in this matter, are indeed the bulk of mankind) guilty of? But what worse than bedlamite ravings about God are not all men guilty of, when once they have left his word to run riot in their own conceits?

NO WHERE TOLD IN SCRIPTURE, THAT THERE IS A GODDENIED.

BUT let us hear them out-For a preamble, perhaps, they will lay it down for a matter of incontestible fact, as they have done a score of times before, "That we are no where in all the scripture told, that there is a God; but that the being of God is a postulate," as they call it," in revelation, even a point all along taken for granted and supposed, as an inwrought and essential character in the frame of all human creatures, incorporated with their very being-or, at least, as a matter lying so very near them, and within the reach of their natural inquiries, that the Scriptures meddle nothing with telling them that there is a God; but proceed to instruct them about other affairs, leaving them to themselves about that point."

Amazing! what unaccountable lengths in the assertion way will not men go, rather than be without saying something! Is not the whole sum-total of revelation the sum of this argument, That there is a God? Does not the very first sentence in the Bible begin with a declaration that there is a God, (Elohim, the Eternal Three, who are one, as afterwards illustrated and explained through the whole scriptures) the Creator of

the heavens and the earth?-But this is nothing to stop their mouths; in spite of God's testimony they will insist in their own note, and have it their own way.

Yet they will perhaps grant you, at least some of them, "That the true and saving knowledge of God and his attributes, is indeed to be had only from the word; but not a declaration of his Being; which is supposed as already known, and upon the knowledge whereof the word itself can only be received." Is there no juggle here?

Well, all this is as if they should say, "The works, the ways, the attributes and perfections of God can be discovered in a true and saving way only by the word; yet the very being itself of God is not discovered thereby, but is supposed as already known. By which supposition of the antecedent knowledge of God's being, all the wheels of revelation are set a-going; and without which they behoved to stop." Nay, believe Mr. Sandeman, and God himself, as you have heard, could not make them go forward.

Well, will they have us to make a separation between the being of God and his attributes? And were not that a separation of God from God?-How absurd! For what kind of God or being is left behind, when you take away not only his works and ways, but also his very attributes and perfections? These last, methinks, exhaust the whole of his being and character; and where these are taken away, there can be no knowledge nor traces left behind of his existence."

So, by the most favourable interpretation, their meaning lands in this glaring absurdity, "That the shining of the essential uncreated light, which is God, is indeed only manifested in the word; but it is not by the shining thereof that the very Being of that light is manifested; for by us the light cannot be known for light by its own evidence, but only by that which we can have no evidence for, even the abstract being of it, without light, without revelation; which being of the light must be taken for granted, as a thing known and

perceived to have an existence, before it can be known, or perceived, or seen by us through its own shining evidence to have that same existence!!!"

Well is the scripture fulfilled, which saith, "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." For the ways, works, attributes, perfections, and whole revealed character of God, what are they all but the eternal, essential, uncreated, selfexistent Light breaking out, the Sun of righteousness and glory, in the firmament of his power, and tabernacling in his word, and from thence shining forth upon all the children of his love?-How absurd then is it, to allow what cannot be denied, "That God discovers his ways and perfections only in his word, for the salvation of men; and yet at the same to maintain, that he never once tells you in that word, that he hath a being; but supposes you know he hath a being, before you can know he hath a being, or, which is the same thing, before you discover by his word his perfections, which are his very essence or being!"

But how expressly, as if he had been guarding us against this very error, does he say, "I, even I Jehovah, am the God alone; and there is none besides me-Know ye, that the Lord he is God-In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Would the words there is a God, have been a more sure and certain declaration of the being of God than what we have already?—And indeed, if that will suffice, these very words are written, "Verily there is a God." It will not, I hope, be said, that these words are less to the purpose, because it is added, "He judgeth in the earth.'

NECESSITY OF KNOWING GOD BEFORE REVELATIONDENIED.

But you have seen nothing as yet. They will even prove from scripture, provided you will take the scripture in their sense, "That you can have, and do have,