5.

Salvation is not of Works, lest any Man should boast.

6.

Real Christians are the Workmanship of God, in a very sublime and exclusive

sense.

7.

There is no true Happiness, but what is founded upon the Principles, and derived from the Sources, of Christianity *.

peditious, and less obscure, than that, which this great Philosopher and Logician has prescribed, the Mass of society must for ever remain irrational, and unbelieving.

"So that, he, who will take out his portion in this life, must lose it in the next. What then, against our nature, and against our reason, hinders us from prosecuting our chiefest Good? Want of Faith. All is resolvable into that alone. For, indeed, the supreme Happiness and Misery of rational Beings, through all variation of circumstances, and through every period of their existence, is of a pieceor of the same kind. What then are the good and bad, but the wretched and happy? I like not a certain modest

8.

The habitual practice of Piety, and Virtue, is the grand Evidence of our being in a State of Grace, and Salvation.

9.

A supernatural Agency is indispensably necessary to form the Christian Character*.

10

All the divine Favours and Blessings, which relate to their supreme Excellence

Faint-heartedness in the friends and advocates of what is Truth and Virtue. A Christian should let see what ap Animation there is in Christianity, above all that the world may admire besides. Christianity should be the Boast, as well as the Comfort, of our hearts."

There can be no stronger proof, that the Character itself is entirely unknown, where the necessity of this Agency is disputed. If the time and talents, which have been wasted in some polemical contests, had been applied to the maintenance and establishment of this great practical Thesis, Mankind might have been much better informed in theologic Science, and christian Virtue.

and Bliss, are communicated to the human Race, through the great Mediator, and Redeemer. He is the central Point of union between God and Men. 1 Cor. i. 29-31. Eph. i. 3-10.

11.

It is a principal Design of the Godhead, in the Economy of Redemption, most illustriously to display the exceeding riches, or, the glory, of his Grace*,

It is therefore requisite, that we should be acquainted with the whole of that Economy; so far, I mean, as it is revealed in the sacred Volume. "Nothing, it has been said, is so rare, as a Genius comprehending at once the whole of any subject. As nothing in the military art is so rare as that self-possession, which enables a General to pervade a whole army, and to be present, and to speak, in every part of the field of battle-so, in the sciences, nothing is so uncommon, as that comprehensive kind of attention, which enables a man always to think, and, speak, in perfect harmony with himself; and so to avoid destroying one part of his Thesis, while he establishes the other."

To us, however, it does not seem to require any thing like a Genius so extraordinary; otherwise, we should have been the last person to have engaged in such an en

12.

Christianity is altogether a Religion of Grace*.

terprize. The twelve Propositions, here submitted, comprize an entire System; which, a moderate Capacity, and that degree of Consideration, which we flatter ourselves they deserve, may easily grasp, and retain. The Method, we have pursued in the following Arrangement, is, to descend from these first Principles to their necessary Consequences, and to dispose every Truth in its due. place, with order, clearness, and precision. "For, what is a System-but a Chain of truths well combined? whatever be their nature, whether mathematical, physical, or moral. All weak and effeminate minds, that surface of Truth, that have not force enough to try its depths, and that cannot support a continued series of reasoning, very naturally exclaim against Systems. Generally speaking, they can relish nothing but poetical fiction, sprightly imagination, and sparkling wit."

hover about the

* We have heard, and we have read, of the superstitions of Reason, and Learning-of the idolatries of Paganism-and of the Mahometan imposture; but, to call either of those, by the sacred and honourable name of, Religion, is, in our idea, a most preposterous, not to say, impious, abuse of words. The fact is, that, from the eventful crisis of " Man's first disobedience," there never has been but one Religion in the world-or, Christianity,

We could wish, that all these Propositions may be considered, as so many

under different forms, and in several successive editions; such as, Christianity, in Promise-in Type-and in Prophecy; under the patriarchal-under the mosaic, or levitical-and, under the prophetic Dispensation; until "the fulness of the time was come," when this great "Mystery of Godliness" was to be consummated in the Person, Sacrifice, and Resurrection, of THE MESSIAH, A Mystery, which from the beginning has been removed, as far as possible, from any thing like a Religion of Nature, Reason, and Philosophy-if by that be intended, as I presume, a Religion, which the Light of nature, reason, or philosophy, could of itself discover, and frame. For, it has been from the beginning, and in every varied modification, A Religion of Grace: which we pledge ourselves fully to demonstrate to every impartial and ingenuous mind.

By others, it has been already and repeatedly proved, with laborious Research, and profuse Erudition, that, "Vestiges of all the principal doctrines of the Christian Religion are to be found in the monuments, writings, or mythologies, of all nations, and ages; and that these vestiges are Emanations of the ancient, primitive, universal Religion of mankind, transmitted from the beginning of the world by the antediluvian to the postdiluvian patriarchs; and, by them, to their posterity, that peopled the face of the earth."-Those, who have any legal claim to the title of, learned, cannot be ignorant of this: and some