he is. He could not be fuperior to the animal rank, without having powers and faculties fuperior to theirs. It is that which gives him his fuperiority over them: Nor could he have been inferior to the angelic order of beings, without falling short of their powers and faculties. It is the very thing which places him beneath them. Man, or whatever creature fhould have been made to fill up the chafm between the angelic and animal natures, muft have been exactly what we find our fpecies actually is; for, without fuch a rank as man, the moral fyftem could not have been perfect, confequently, could not have been at all; for it is impoffible that an abfolute perfect author fhould produce an imperfect work: So that there is no room to complain, that by creating man in fuch a ftation, that it was neceffary he should be endowed with nobler powers and faculties than the brutes, he comes to be put into a more elevated and more precarious fa:e. It is true, that very few of the brutes are likely to fall fhort of the happiness deftined for them, ha ving but few chances of miffing it, and being more effectually confined to the track appointed them, than it was proper fuch a creature as man fhould be. But is not the immenfe fuperiority of happiness to which a human mind may, with proper attention, rife, a very great over-batance for all the difadvantages our fpecies labours under, were there a thoufied for one? Would any man, who had his choice before-hand, whether he would be of the human

or

the brute fpecies, deliberately chufe the latter, in which he knew it was impoffible he fhould ever attain any confiderable degree of perfection and happinels, rather than the former, in which he was fure, if he was not wanting to himself, he might rife to greatnefs and felicity inconceivable; would any rational creature make this abfurd choice, merely upon the confideration, that, if he was with a fpecies endowed with

liberty, it was poffible he might be fo foolish, as to neglect his own in-. tereft, and with open eyes run into ruin and mifery? What no reasonable being would chufe, let not prefumptuous man blame his Maker for not putting in his choice. If man is what he ought to be, and placed where he ought to be, what has he to do, but think of filing his ftation with fuch propriety as is neceffary for a reasonable being to ftudy, who is defirous of attaining his own perfection and happiness, in the only way in which they are attainable?

If the perfect concurrence of reafonable beings, as well as others, with the divine fcheme, was neceffary to the very notion of a regular univerfal fyftem, with an univerfal Governor at the head of it, it was to be expected, that the final happiness of fuch beings as fhould ftudy to conform themselves habitually in difpofition and practice to the divine fcheme, fhould, by the positive ordination of the Ruler of the world, be closely connected with their character and behaviour. And if it be impoffible to conceive a plan of univerfal economy, laid by an universal and perfect mind, that should not be fuitable to his own neceffary nature and character, but founded in mere arbitrary will; it is likewife impoffible to conceive a fyftem in which the habitual conformity of reasonable beings to the grand fcheme of the univerfal Governor fhould not natu rally, and, as it were of itself, produce, happinefs. The divine scheme of government is founded, not in arbitrary will, but in the eternal and unchangeable rectitude of the divine nature. And, therefore, it is as much an impoffibility that it fhould be contrary to what it is, or that conformity to it fhould finally produce any thing but happiness, or, irregularity, any thing but mifery; as that the divine nature, which is neceffarily what it is, fhould have been otherwife. So that, till the time comes, when univerfal irregularity fhall have

the