“Again; if there be those who think, that the contractedness and debility of the human faculties in our present state, seem ill to accord with the high destinies which the expectations of religion point out to us, I would only ask them, whether any one, who saw a child two hours after its birth, could suppose that it would ever come to understand _fluxions_;[12] or who then shall say, what further amplification of intellectual powers, what accession of knowledge, what advance and improvement, the rational faculty, be its constitution what it will, may not admit of, when placed amidst new objects, and endowed with a sensorium, adapted, as it undoubtedly will be, and as our present senses are, to the perception of those substances, and of those properties of things, with which our concern may lie. “Upon the whole; in every thing which respects this awful, but, as we trust, glorious change, we have a wise and powerful Being, (the author, in nature, of infinitely various expedients for infinitely various ends,) upon whom to rely for the choice and appointment of means, adequate to the execution of any plan which his goodness or his justice may have formed, for the moral and accountable part of his terrestrial creation. That great office rests with him: be it ours to hope and prepare; under a firm and settled persuasion, that, living and dying, we are his; that life is passed in his constant presence, that death resigns us to his merciful disposal.” PALEY. Footnote 12: See Search’s Light of Nature, passim. Footnote 13: The theory of a nervous fluid, or animal spirits, is generally abandoned. Footnote 14: See this doubtful doctrine discussed post Quest. 60. Quest. III. QUEST. III. _What is the Word of God?_ ANSW. The holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience. In speaking to this answer, we shall consider the several names by which the scripture is set forth with the import thereof, and more particularly that by which it is most known; to wit, the Old and New Testament, and then speak of it as a rule of faith and obedience. I. There are several names given to the word of God, in Psalm cxix. one of which is found in almost every verse thereof. It is sometimes called his law, statutes, precepts, commandments, or ordinances,[15] to signify his authority and power to demand obedience of his creatures which he does therein, and shews us in what particular instances, and how we are to yield obedience to it.