THE

ADVANTAGE AND NECESSITY

OF THE

CHRISTIAN REVELATION,

SHOWN FROM THE

State of Religion

IN THE

ANCIENT HEATHEN WORLD:

ESPECIALLY WITH RESPECT TO

THE KNOWLEDGE AND WORSHIP OF THE ONE TRUE GOD:

A RULE OF MORAL DUTY:

AND

A STATE OF FUTURE REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.

TO WHICH IS PREFIXED,

A Preliminary Discourse on Matural and Revealed Religion.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

BY JOHN LELAND, D. D.

AUTHOR OF THE VIEW OF THE DEISTICAL WRITERS, &c.

THE THIRD EDITION.

VOL. II.

GLASGOW:

Printed at the University Press,

FOR R. PRIESTLEY, LONDON: AND A. AND J. M. DUNCAN,

TRONGATE GLASGOW.

1819.

PREFACE

TO THE

SECOND VOLUME.

ALTHOUGH in the general preface prefixed to the former volume, I have given an account of the nature and design of this work, yet I think it not amiss to say something farther in the beginning of this volume, for removing or obviating some prejudices, which might be conceived against the plan I have formed, and the manner in which it is executed:

Some learned persons seem not willing to admit, that the main principles of religion and morality were originally communicated by Divine Revelation to the first parents of mankind, and from them conveyed by tradition to their posterity. They think it more probable, that they were led by their own natural sense and reason to the knowledge of those principles. I readily own, that those principles, when once discovered, will be found upon examination to be perfectly agreeable to the best reason of mankind; but I think enough is offered in this treatise to show, that in fact the first notices of these things were communicated to the first ancestors of the human race by a revelation from God. And in this I have the satisfaction of agreeing with many eminent divines, and with those two great masters of reason, and who are justly reckoned among our best writers on the law of nature, Grotius