1

eye, his penetrating endeavours to pry into the mysteries of fuperior worlds, discovers the local manfions of departed fpirits, whether confined by* adamantine walls, not chains, in penal fires; in the centre of this earth, or affembled in the fun, with glory beaming from their splendid robes.

If Dean Digby has endeavoured to convert Hebrew roots into fpiritual food, Mr. King has in a moft fingular manner endeavoured to feed the hungry fheep, with delicious. morfels of criticifm. The darkness of the one, is of fo grofs a texture, as to become a ftumbling block, whilft the stereoma, or folidity of the other vanishes in air.

Mr. King, in his comment on the first of Genefis, from whence he deduces the ftrangeft ideas, the wildeft fancies, the most distracted reveries; infomuch that the tales of the genii appear, when compared to his differtations, to be fober truths. In expounding the words and God faid, let there be a spre firmament in the midst of the water, to divide the water from the water," where the evident intention was, that the firmament fhould prove a feparating medium between the waters: he alledges that Stereoma

*Alludes to Mr. King's Theory.

may

Stereoma means a confolidating substance, to confolidate component parts," whereas the office annexed to it in the text, (which alone fhould confiftently be attended to) is to separate component parts, which is ef fected when the atmosphere chymically (if I be allowed the expreffion) operates on the furface of the waters, and becomes a medium of raifing vapors, which are condenfed into clouds that float on the exand the panfe. The Greek word Latin word, Firmamentum, feem to have been formed rather in times of ignorance, than with any intention to explain true

phyfical ideas.

Γεργώμα

From the Greek word ws Mr. King endeavours to prove the fun to be heaven, and its brilliancy to proceed from the garWhether this great ments of the faints. light of information could, through the immediate influence of the folar beam, have been communicated to fo enlightened an author, or by reflection from the moon, in her plenitude of borrowed luftre, may be a point deferving enquiry. I fay then, it could not have been from the moon, for the originality of Mr. King's ideas has not the fmallest appearance of borrowed luftre; and

it is very astonishing that St. Paul, who was carried up into the third heaven, should never have thought proper to fatisfy our curiofity in this matter, but fhould leave the discovery to Mr. King.

Non fani effe hominis, non fanus juret oreftes,

SKETCH

SKETCH IX.

CAUTIONS IN RELIGIOUS INQUIRY— THE LAWS OF NATURE INSCRUTABLE

IN all inquiries after knowledge, prejudice

of every kind fhould carefully be avoided. A man who is improperly credulous, as well as the profeffed fceptic, is easily drawn into any hypothefis, however abfurd, which favours his prepoffeffions. This often becomes a truly pitiable, nay, contemptible, and what is worse, a dangerous fituation; when either weak principles or wrong notions of the difpenfations of providence, are imbibed to the fubverfion of pure morality; but when good men, in order to fubftantiate the evidence of even orthodox opinions, either advance ftrange and inadmiffible theories, founded on an erroneous zcal for folving all

apparent

apparent difficulties, they are not aware what injury they do religion, by giving fubtle adversaries room for infulting those divine truths which they will not receive, not becaufe they are defiitute of fatisfactory evidence, but because they fet bounds to licencious principles.

We fhould not therefore endeavour to account for miracles, for this would be to deftroy revelation; we must not endeavour to explain the manner in which God created the world; we must not ftrain at an explanation of the facred Trinity, a doctrine which we should reverently receive on the authority of the fcriptures, but should never arrogantly endeavour to inveftigate. In all religious inquiry, true zeal must be influenced by caution truth lies obvious to candor and ingenuity, and is to be received in her fimpleft attire; she needs not the tinsel ornaments of fickly imaginations, nor to be feen through the magnifying glaffes of monsterforming comments, which instead of procuring diftin& vifion, paint her beautiful image in the form of a fpe&tre, terrifying even to common sense. To be guilty of pious fraud, and wilful perverfions of facred writ to fupport a favourite hypothefis under the pre

tence