tianity, with all the warnings and threatenings of the Scripture, would scarcely be found sufficient to secure us from relapsing into the ancient error, and taking once more the elements themselves for the gods that govern the world, ascribing intellectual power to organised matter, and smothering the distinction between body and spirit, which is the philosophy of Materialism; an unhappy system, which has always had its advocates, but can recommend itself only to the half-learned, inflated with the vanity of false wisdom, and destitute of the principle which the Scripture calls by the name of FAITH. In this plan I have no share: and it is part of the design of this work to guard the learned against it, and point out a more excellent way.

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The second use of Sacred Philosophy is

open the understanding, and enlarge the conceptions of the mind, by giving it a prospect of both worlds; of the one from the other; of the invisible from the visible: for, as all our ideas enter by the senses, we have no way of conceiving the objects of faith, but from the objects of sense. The powers of Nature are symbolical of the powers of the Deity, and are applied in that capa

city in numberless passages of the sacred writings; their operations are explanatory of the benefits we derive from him, and he who studies nature with a view to this particular use of it, and wishes to excel in Theology, will find a treasure opened to him which cannot easily be exhausted, and which, after long and frequent meditation, is to my mind one of the most valuable secrets in divine literature.

The third and last use of Sacred Philosophy, is to inspire us with devotion; and for this end Nature is described to us in such terms as display the wisdom of the Creator in ordaining, his power in effecting, and his goodness in administering all things, to the perfection, beauty, and grandeur of the world, and the happiness of all his creatures. With other philosophy we may live, and traffic, and amuse ourselves; but this is the philosophy with which a good man would wish to die. Of all these four different forms of Philosophy, the Mythological, the Systematical, the Experimental, and the Sacred, I have taken advantage, as I thought it would best promote the general design of my work.

Every author, if he could choose his read

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ers, would wish to have them properly disposed to enter into the spirit of his undertaking: and I must observe there are other qualifications in readers, besides that of sufficiin Literature, without which I can hope for no success. And first I must expect, that when the reader takes this book into his hand, he is well affected to its subject, and knows what it is to delight himself in the researches either of Natural Philosophy, or Natural History; without which I shall be holding up a spectacle to those who have no eyes to regard it. Curiosity then, and affection to the subject, are the first qualifications I wish to meet with: to which I would add some acquaintance with Arithmetic and Geometry. The mathematical learning of my reader cannot be too much, if it is joined to natural and experimental knowledge. Such a reader will look upon my book, as the sun looks upon the earth, to fetch out of it something more than appears, and raise a plant from a latent seed. But a very little mathematical learning will be more than enough, if it should unfortunately have infused the pedantry and emptiness which are found in some scholars of that class, who see nothing of the world but upon paper, and

think that with the knowledge of a few geometrical lines and abstract theorems, they have all that is essential in Philosophy, and are complete judges in the science. I have the satisfaction to know beforehand, that I shall have some readers who are adorned by nature and education with all the endowments I can wish for. There may be others as happily qualified, of whom I have no. knowledge; and my book may find those whom I shall never see.

To those who think they have no concern with Philosophy as a matter out of their reach, I can assure them, I have but rarely attempted to go where persons of common learning, with proper attention, will not be able to follow me. Some of the Discourses are familiar and easy, from the nature of their subject others are made so, as much as the case would admit, as being intended partly for the instruction of beginners, and actually applied to that purpose in some private lectures. The Discourse on Motion is necessarily abstruse in some parts of its argument, and cannot be well understood without an acquaintance with the common systematic forms of Philosophy, and the state of it in the last and present age: though, I apprehend,

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hend, some hints I have given in this Introduction will help to make it easier. That on Fossils will be less useful, when the bodies referred to are not at hand: but this defect I have in some measure supplied, by introducing several figures of fossil bodies into the plates. The Discourse on Music requires some knowledge of the composition and resolution of ratios: it goes farther than I intended at first to carry it; and in some parts of it, a practical as well as a theoretical knowledge of the science is necessary: though it has many curious facts throughout, which, if they should demand a little more attention than ordinary, no philosophical reader who bestows that attention will repent of it. As I have taken an unbeaten track in the greater part of this book, I must warn the reader, that he will meet with some things which will appear strange to him, only because they are new, or, if old, but little thought of; which, on farther examination, and by comparison with other new things, will appear in a very in a very different light. Things

remote from common observation are at first indistinctly seen, like the remote objects in a prospect. We are in doubt whether they are hills or clouds which appear in the skirts

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