"Now, if the natural and revealed dispensation of things are both from God, if they coincide with each other, and together make up one scheme of Providence, our being incompetent judges of one, must render it credible that we may be incompetent judges also of the other. Since, upon experience, the acknowledged constitution and course of nature is found to be greatly different from what, before experience, would have been expected; and such as, men fancy, there lie great objections against; this renders it beforehand highly credible, that they may find the revealed dispensation likewise, if they judge of it as they do of the constitution of nature, very different from expectations formed beforehand, and liable, in appearance, to great objections-objections against the scheme itself, and against the degrees and manners of the miraculous interpositions by which it was attested and carried on."-BUTLER'S " Analogy of Religion," Part II. Revealed Religion, Chap. iii. ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND JOHN JACKSON, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF LONDON, THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED AS A SMALL TOKEN OF ESTEEM AND LOVE FOR THAT GENTLE HOLINESS AND PURITY WHICH, UNITED WITH WISE FIRMNESS, RENDER HIM BELOVED AND HONOURED IN THE HIGH STATION WHICH HE HAS BEEN CALLED IN THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD TO OCCUPY. |