13 / 652
SERM.
Li
NATURAL
RELIGION,
ITS
MRS
AND
DERECTS.
.
1.
We may come to
the
knowledge
of
his
existence,
or
that
there
is
such a glorious
Being
who
made
all
things.
This
is
evident and certain,
that
nothing
could
make
itself.
It
'is
impossible,
that
any thing which once
had no
being,
should ever
give
being
to
itself;
or
that
once
upon
a
time
it
should
of
itself
burst
out
of
nothing,
and
begin tó
be.
Since
therefore there
is
a
world with
mil-
lions
of
beings
in it,
which
are born and
die,
it
is
certain
there
is
some
Being, who
had
no
beginning,
but
had life
in himself
from all
eternity, and
who.gives.life'
and
being
to
all
other
things.
..This
is
the
Being whom
we
call
God..
Of
all
the
visible beings
that
we
are
acquainted
with,
man
is
the highest
and,most noble
;
but
he
is
forced to
confess
he
is
not
his own
maker. By sending
our
thoughts and enquiries
a 'little
backwards,
we
find
that
we
came into being
but:
a
few
years
ago
;
and
we
are
daily convinced,
that
we
perish and
die.in
long
succes-
sion.
Our
parents, or
our
ancestors,
were no more
able
to
make themselves
than
we
are
;
for most of
them
are
dead,
and
the
rest are
going
the
way
of
all
flesh
:
they
cannot
preserve
our
lives,
nor their
own
;
and
therefore
it
is
plain,
that though
we
borrowed
life
from
them
at
first,
yet they
are not
the
original and self-sufficient
authors
of
life,
and being to
themselves,
or
to
us
;
they
are but
in-
struments
in
the hands
of
some
superior
first cause,
some
original and
eternal Maker
of
us all.
Or
if
some
atheist
should
say, we
must run up from
son to
father, and from
father
to
grandfather,
in endless
generations,
without
a beginning,
and without any first
cause.;
hanswer,
that
is
impossible
:
for
if
ten
thousand
generations cannot subsist
of
themselves
without depend -
ance
on something
before
them,
neither
can
infinite
or
endless generations subsist
of
themselves
without
de-
pendance.
Suppose
a
chain
of
ten
thousand
links
hung
down from the
sky,
it
could
not support itself
unless
some mighty
power upheld
the
first
link
:
then
it
is
cer-
tain, a
chain
of
ten
thousand
times ten
thousand links,
or
an endless chain, could
never
support
itself. As
the_,
chain
grows
longer
and heavier,
the addition
of
new
links
can never make the
chain
more
independent,
or
better
support
itself.
There
must be
therefore
some first bird, some
first
beast, some first
man, from
whom all these
succeeding