PREFACE. SEVERAL EVERAL years ago, Mr. Burnett, a Scottish gentleman, among other instances of distinguished munificence, which have rendered it impracticable to comply with his own earnest wish of keeping his name concealed *, bequeathed premiums of the sums of twelve hundred and four hundred pounds, for two Treatises upon the following subject: "The Evidence that there is a Being all-powerful, wise, and good, by whom every Thing exists; and particularly to obviate Difficulties regarding the * A more detailed memoir of this gentleman has been prepared by Dr. Brown, Professor of Divinity, and Principal of Marischal College in Aberdeen; and is prefixed to his Treatise on the same subject, to which the premium of twelve hundred pounds was adjudged. Wisdom and the Goodness of the Deity; and this, in the first place, from Considerations independent of written Revelation; and in the second place, from the Revelation of the Lord Jesus: and from the whole, to point out the Inferences most necessary for, and useful to Mankind." The Ministers of the established Church, and the Principals and Professors of King's and Marischal colleges of Aberdeen, and the Trustees of the Testator, were appointed to nominate three Judges who should decide upon the comparative merits of the Treatises that might be laid before them, with sealed mottos, by the Ist of January 1814. In this liberality the following Treatise originated, to which the premium of £400 was awarded by the judges chosen according to the instructions of the Testator namely, the late Professor Gerard, whose death the university has since had to lament, and Professors Hamilton and Glen. nie, of Aberdeen. The first view of the subject thus proposed for consideration, presents the appearance of a country, every spot of which is appropriated and pre-occupied. The EVIDENCES of religion, it is true, were not the earliest objects of British theology. The great divines who led the Reformation, and those who followed their steps during the first half of the succeeding century, were chiefly employed in clearing the majestic fabric of Christianity, from the weeds and rubbish by which it had been so long obscured. Attention is first due to those within the Church: it was, therefore, for some time a sufficient labour to extricate the true doctrines of the Gospel from the errors which had long overrun them and when a right faith had been once laid as a foundation, and an Apostolical worship established, to raise upon it that pure and holy practice which is its fit and proper ornament, instead of that lax and compromising morality which is the decisive condemnation of the church of Rome, and the inveterate scandal of its professors. When, however, the genius of this illustrious age had set up the Protestant faith, and the rule of life belonging to it, on an immoveable basis, the attention was naturally directed, in the next place, to those without the pale of Christianity. Accordingly, its agreement in all points, with the universal tenets of natural religion; the insufficiency, at the same time, of natural religion both to inform and to sanction; the acquaintance we derive from reason with the Creator and his attributes, and the conformity of the appearance of the universe with the conclusions at which reason arrives: these subjects of perpetual interest have called forth talents worthy of their importance, and have received an accession of light from learning, genius, and industry, through the successive generations of Stillingfleet, Clarke, Butler, Warburton, and Paley. If it is hopeless to look out for a va 5 |