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ESSAYS

ON

MORAL SUBJECTS

AND

THE ECONOMY OF LIFE.

ESSAYS

ON

RELIGIOUS AND MORAL SUBJECTS

AND THE

ECONOMY OF LIFE.

ARTICLES OF BELIEF AND ACTS OF RELIGION.*

PART FIRST.

"Here will I hold. If there's a power above us,
(And that there is, all nature cries aloud,
Through all her works,) He must delight in virtue;
And that which he delights in must be happy."

ADDISON'S CATO.

FIRST PRINCIPLES.

I BELIEVE there is one supreme, most perfect Being, author and father of the gods themselves.

For I believe that man is not the most perfect being but one, but rather that there are many degrees of beings superior to him.

Also, when I stretch my imagination through and beyond our system of planets, beyond the visible fixed stars themselves, into that space that is every way infinite, and conceive it filled with suns like ours, each with a chorus of worlds for ever moving round him; then this little ball on which we move, seems, even in

*This paper bears the date of November 20th, 1728, when the author was twenty-two years old. It purports to be the FIRST PART; but the continuation has never been published.—EDITOR.

VOL. II.

1

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