CHAP. I. USES OF REASON. 13 



right and unperverted exercise of reason, which nothing 

 but a divine standard of laws can possibly clear away. 

 The Gospel was ushered into the world at a time when 

 human reason, in the polished schools of Greece, may 

 be said to have attained its height, on purpose to show 

 how utterly incompetent that wisdom was, to instruct 

 mankind in the true intentions of this faculty. In 

 perusing the works of the sages of that age, we find the 

 most noble, and even godlike sentiments, and the most 

 profound reflections, mixed up with others of a com- 

 pletely opposite character, reasoning so perverted, as 

 to sanction, in the first intellectual nation that ever 

 existed, acts which would disgrace savages, and from 

 which even the lowest of civilised beings would instinc- 

 tively turn with disgust. The heathen, indeed, has a 

 law written in his mind, which he is bound to fulfil, 

 and, if he walk by this, he is in the hands of a merciful 

 Judge ; but with the Christian it is far otherwise. His 

 Maker has given him, in revelation, a guide both for 

 his moral and religious duties : the right use of reason 

 is, to diffuse these principles into all his actions ; and 

 he has the exclusive power of communicating to his 

 cotemporaries, and of leaving to his successors, the 

 fruits of his own experience ; faculties which belong 

 not to that animal intelligence we term instinct. 



(16.) To pursue this subject further would be need- 

 less ; nor should we have entered thus far upon it, but 

 to refute what appears to us a most mistaken, if not a 

 dangerous, doctrine, namely, that all volition, or de- 

 termining motion, no less than consciousness, originates 

 in MIND. It is a law in the prosecution of physical 

 science, that every hypothesis, however ingenious, must 

 be rigidly tested by facts ; and that where the primary 

 causes, as in the present case, lie beyond our demon- 

 stration, we can only gain philosophic notions on the 

 nature and qualities of any subject, by looking to effects. 

 Now, the effects of determinate motion, as we have 

 seen, are so varied, that they can never be classed under 

 one title, seeing that these effects are intended to pro- 



