and very particularly in the brute creation. In the tiger, and all ferocious savage animals, man might read from his own right reason, and just sentiments, or conscience, how detestable cruelty, treachery, and all injustice, were to the Deity, speaking to the soul, through the voice of these witnesses. In the fox, and all the tribes of little cunning, creeping thieves, he might learn the baseness of cunning, deceit, and fraud; in the goat and monkey he might see the filthiness of uncleanness; and in the swine of gluttony and drunkenness. On the other hand, he might see and feel the beauty of love and purity in the dove; of innocence in the lamb, of honesty and industry in the ox, and of humility and patience in the ass; and so From all this I concluded, that virtue and goodness consisted in the choice of such things as resembled the moral nature of the Divinity, in the manifestations of himself, which he had graciously made in man by means of reason and conscience; and that vice was the choice and preference of such things as were manifestly discordant to the moral nature of the Deity, as declared by the same witnesses.

on.

I then concluded from innumerable analogies, that the law of right reason, being fixed and immutably proportionate, was shadowed forth by the elements of geometry, as in Euclid's Elements; and that the unsearchable laws

of the imagination and heart, being altogether variable, and fluctuating continually between good and evil, were represented truly and accurately by the doctrine of fluxions and attractions; and that the comprehensive and universal expressions of algebra were nothing more or less than emblems of the respective natures and relative operations of good and evil, virtue and vice, truth and falsehood, which in like manner were eternally plus and minus to each other. That man was placed as it were in the centre, between the negative and positive scales, which might be expressed by two triangles, formed by the intersection of two straight lines, their equidistant bases being the extremes of good and evil, and of course at the greatest distance from each other; whilst man, at the point of intersection, had both before him, and was free to choose either the one or the other, being in equilibrio*.

هيد

* The diagram imagined in the above paragraph may possibly lead some reader to suppose I mean, that the two triangles being equal, therefore the power of God in himself is only equal to that of the enemy. To obviate the suspicion of such an idea (impious and absurd) I must observe, that the latter is, I believe, in itself to the former, as less than unity to infinite numbers. But yet, in the heart of a wicked man, it is certain that the power of Satan is much greater than that of God, in determining his conduct. How then are these apparent contradictions to be recon

All this appeared clear to me; but to make it equally so to the world, would, I feared, even from the little experience which I then had, be an arduous task (though I saw not then a tenth part of the difficulty, which, without divine assistance, appears now to me, like digging down a mountain with a penknife). I therefore resolved in the first place to take my Euclid, and try, by comparison, how far the elements of natural geometry did correspond to the law of the rational mind. I therefore divided my subject into three parallel heads and columns; the first

ciled? To this question (which, it seems, must come from an unbeliever) I desire to reply, humbly and simply, thus: the power of the Lord's grace in man (with reverence I desire to speak, as a worm of the dust) extends not, I believe, to absolute arbitrary force. HE does not, I believe, make men saints by absolute compulsion; for salvation is a free gift. In this way of coercion I humbly suppose HE could convert Satan, if it pleased HIM. HE graciously places good and evil, life and death, before every man, in the most effectual and sufficient manner, and then permits him to make his choice; as Moses declares in Deuteronomy, viz. "I call heaven and earth to record this "day against you, that I have set before you life and "death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both "thou and thy seed may live." I therefore believe, that the negative scale, or triangle, is as attractive to the flesh, as the positive one is to the spirit; for the first contains carnal things, and the latter spiritual things; so that the carnal will be attracted by the carnal, and the spiritual by the spiritual.

being common geometry; the second, I called (as it appeared to me to be an idea of my own) by the name of corpo-metry, including the impressions of external objects on the human body by means of the senses, and their effects on the animal spirits; the third column, I called ani-metry, regarding the internal laws or reason, imagination, and sentiment, in respect to the impressions made on the soul through the medium of the body; also, that subsequent arrangement of them under the heads of good and evil, which we perform by the assistance of reason and conscience.

I began with the consideration of a point in each; to define which clearly, so as to preserve any congruity with the definition of a point in Simpson's Euclid, and at the same time to lay a solid foundation for my figurative building, I found to be the most difficult, or rather, the most near to impossible of any part of my work because not only the kinds, but the degrees of these points appeared to me innumerable; whereas the points of geometricians have only one kind, and no degree at all, being absolutely nothing; on which, therefore, their whole system is built*.

* This consideration always brings to my recollection the address of the Holy Spirit to carnal philosophers, in Isaiah, xli. "Produce your CAUSE, saith the Lord; bring "forth your STRONG REASONS, saith the King of Jacob. "Let them bring THEM forth, and show us what shall happen :

But my mind expanding to my subject as I proceeded, I actually got through the whole of the definitions of the first book of Simpson's Euclid, in each column; very imperfectly, and in many respects very erroneously, no doubt; yet so much to my conviction and satisfaction, and in a manner that appeared to me so truly mathematical, or rational, that I had not a doubt remaining of the reality and general foundation in truth of my speculations; nor that I should be enabled gradually to disentangle, and arrange with sufficient clearness, the chaos of materials which I perceived in my mind, though as yet without form, and void of proper connection and regularity.

But I was here drawn aside from the straight line of this abstruse inquiry, into a collateral branch, which I slided into, through what I would call the capillary attraction of my wandering imagination.

"let them show the former things, what they be, that we may "consider them, and know the latter end of them ; or declare "us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do "good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it "TOGETHER. Behold, ye are of NOTHING, and your work "of NOUGHT." This Scripture not only exposes the vanity of mere carnal wisdom, but also shows, to those who believe the divine inspiration of Isaiah, one or more beings, or persons, as co-agents with the Holy Spirit, on co-equal terms; a duality at least!