NATURAL THEOLOGY. 181 



birth, could suppose that it would ever come to 

 understa.nd fluxions ;* or who then shall say, what 

 further amplification of intellectual powers, what 

 accession of knowledge, what advance and im- 

 provement, the rational faculty, be its constitution 

 what it will, may not admit of, when placed 

 amidst new objects, and endowed with a senso- 

 rium adapted, as it undoubtedly will be, and as 

 our present senses are, to the perception of those 

 substances, and of those properties of things, with 

 which our concern may lie. 



Upon the whole ; in every thing which respects 

 this awful, but, as we trust, glorious change, we 

 have a wise and powerful Being, (the author, in 

 nature, of infinitely various expedients for infi- 

 nitely various ends,) upon whom to rely for the 

 choice and appointment of means adequate to the 

 execution of any plan which his goodness or his 

 justice may have formed, for the moral and ac- 

 countable part of his terrestrial creation. That 

 great office rests with Am; be it ow^s to hope 

 and to prepare, under a firm and settled persua- 

 sion, that, living and dying, we are his ; that life 

 is passed in his constant presence, that death re- 

 signs us to his merciful disposal. 



* See Search's Light of Nature, passim. 



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