lay these several things before themselves distinctly, and then with attention consider them together; instead of that cursory thought of them, to which we are familiarized. For being familiarized to the cursory thought of things as really hinders the weight of them from being seen, as from having its due influence upon practice. The thing asserted, and the truth of which is to be inquired into, is this: That over and above our reason and affections, which God has given us for the information of our judgment and the conduct of our lives, he has also, by external revelation, given us an account of himself and his moral government over the world, implying a future state of rewards and punishments; _i.e._ hath revealed the system of natural religion: (for natural religion may be externally[267] revealed by God, as the ignorant may be taught it by their fellow-creatures)--that God, I say, has given us the evidence of revelation, as well as the evidence of reason, to ascertain this moral system; together with an account of a particular dispensation of Providence, which reason could no way have discovered, and a particular institution of religion founded on it, for the recovery of mankind out of their present wretched condition, and raising them to the perfection and final happiness of their nature. This revelation, whether real or supposed, may be considered as wholly historical. For prophecy is nothing but the history of events before they come to pass; doctrines also are matters of fact; and precepts come under the same notion. The general design of Scripture, which contains in it this revelation, thus considered as historical, may be said to be, to give us an account of the world in this one single view, as God’s world: by which it appears essentially distinguished from all other books, so far as I have found, except such as are copied from it. It begins with an account of God’s creation of the world, in order to ascertain, and distinguish from all others, who is the object of our worship, by what he has done: in order to ascertain, who he is, concerning whose providence, commands, promises, and threatenings, this sacred book, all along, treats; [viz.] the Maker and Proprietor of the world, he whose creatures we are, the God of nature: in order likewise to distinguish him from the idols of the nations, which are either imaginary beings, _i.e._ no beings at all; or else part of that creation, the historical relation of which is here given. And John, not improbably with an eye to this Mosaic account of the creation, begins his Gospel with an account of our Savior’s pre-existence, and that _all things were made by him; and without him, was not any thing made that was made_:[268] agreeably to the doctrine of Paul, that _God created all things by Jesus Christ_.[269] This being premised, the Scripture, taken together, seems to profess to contain a kind of an abridgment of the history of the world, in the view just now mentioned: that is, a