308 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



trammelled with any creeds, but only to promise, 

 with the help of God, to instil into the minds of 

 their hearers the purest religious adoration of the 

 Omnipotent, and the best maxims of morality. In 

 this the Scriptures would supply them with its pure 

 and sublime precepts, and, above all, the still more 

 sublime and amazing works contained in the great 

 Book of the Creation are amply spread out before 

 them, and made up of the living, the visible, words 

 of God, so plainly to be seen, read, and felt, that 

 howsoever miraculous and astonishing they are, it 

 would require no stretch of faith to believe in them 

 all. From these, such a clergy, one after another 

 in succession for ages, might take their texts, ever 

 new, and preach from them to all eternity ; for, as 

 to the number of subjects to preach from and ex- 

 plain, they would be found to be endless even on 

 this globe we dwell upon, without soaring to those 

 in the regions of immensity ; and, if its wonders 

 were productive of disease, enlightened men would 

 die of wondering ! 



Were a clergy of this description established, 

 there could be no fears entertained of their teach- 

 ing anything wrong; they would, on the contrary, 

 from their knowledge and virtue, be the pillars of 

 the state and the mainstays and ornaments of 

 civilisation. Every church ought to have its 

 library of good books, and its philosophical ap- 

 paratus, to illustrate or explain the various 

 phenomena of nature, and the amazing magnitude 

 and distances of the "Heavenly bodies;" or, 

 rather, the incalculable number of suns and worlds 

 floating about with the velocity of light, in im- 

 measurable, endless space. It is from these 

 contemplations that something like the truest 



