are heated with any confideration that bears a more than ordinary weight with it: the learned Heathens may be looked upon as neuters in the matter, when all thefe prophecies were new to them, and their education had left the interpreta tion of them free and indifferent. Befides, these learned men among the pri mitive Chriftians, knew how the Jews, who had preceded our Saviour, interpreted these predictions, and the feveral marks by which they acknowledged the Meffiab would be difcovered, and how those of the Jewish Doctors who fucceeded him, had deviated from the interpretations and doctrines of their forefathers, on purpose to ftifle their own con

viction.

VII. This fet of arguments had therefore an invincible force with thofe Pagan Philofophers who became Christians, as we find in most of their writings. They could not disbelieve our Saviour's history, which fo exactly agreed with every thing that had been written of him many ages before his birth, nor doubt of thofe circumftances being fulfilled in him, which could not be true of any perfon that lived in the world befides him

E 4

himself. This wrought the greatest confufion in the unbelieving Jews, and the greatest conviction in the Gentiles, who every where speak with astonishment of thefe truths they met with in this new magazine of learning which was opened to them, and carry the point fo far as to think whatever excellent doctrine they had met with among Pagan writers, had been ftole from their converfation with the Jews, or from the perufal of these writings which they had in their custody.

ADDITIONAL

DISCOURSES.

SECT. I.

Of GoD, and bis Attributes.
Qui mare & terras variisque mundum
Temperat boris:

Unde nil majus generatur ipfo,
Nec viget quicquam fimile aut fecundum.

Hor.

IMONIDES being ask'd by Dionyfius the tyrant what God was, defired a day's time to confider of it before he made his reply. When the day was expired, he defired two days; and afterwards, inftead of returning his anfwer, demanded ftill double the time to confider of it. This great poet and philofopher, the more he contemplated the nature of the Deity, found that he Es waded

waded but the more out of his depth; and that he loft himself in the thought, instead of finding an end of it.

If we confider the Idea which wife men, by the light of reafon, have framed of the Divine Being, it amounts to this: That he has in him all the perfection of a fpiritual nature; and fince we have no notion of any kind of spiritual perfection but what we difcover in our own fouls, we join Infinitude to each kind of these perfections, and what is a faculty in an human foul becomes an attribute in God. We exift in place and time, the Divine Being fills the immenfity of space with his prefence, and inhabits eternity. We are poffeffed of a little power and a little knowledge, the Divine Being is Almighty and Omniscient. In fhort, by adding Infinity to any kind of perfection we enjoy, and by joining all these different kinds of perfections in one Being, we form our idea of the great Sovereign of

nature.

Though every one who thinks muft have made this observation, I fhall produce Mr. Locke's authority to the fame purpose, out of his effay on human understanding. If we examine the idea

• we

we have of the incomprehenfible fupreme Being, we fhall find, that we come by it the fame way; and that the complex ideas we have both of God and separate spirits, are made up of the fimple ideas we receive from reflection: v. g. having from what we experiment in our felves, got the ideas of existence and duration, of knowledge and power, of pleasure and happiness, and of feveral other qualities and powers, which it is better to have, than to be without; when we would frame an idea the moft fuitable we can to the fupreme Being, we enlarge every one of thefe with our idea of infinity; and fo putting them together, make our complex idea of God.

It is not impoffible that there may be many kinds of fpiritual perfection, befides those which are lodged in an human foul; but it is impoffible that we fhould have ideas of any kinds of perfection, except thofe of which we have fome fmall rays and fhort imperfect ftrokes in our felves. It would be therefore a very high prefumption to determine whether the fupreme Being has not many more attributes than thofe which enter into our conceptions

of