ABSTRACT
There a man or woman cannot love the very person they ought not to have loved nor does jealousy ever fan the flame. But an acquaintance with the nature of man and virtue, with just sentiments on the attributes, would be sufficient, without a voice from heaven, to lead some to virtue, but not the mob. Perfection indeed must, even then, be a comparative idea – but the wisdom, the happiness of a superior state, has been supposed to be intuitive, and the happiest effusions of human genius have seemed like inspiration the deductions of reason destroy sublimity. The flights of the imagination, and the laboured deductions of reason, appear almost incompatible. But a cultivated mind would not thus have described the creation for, arguing from analogy, it appears that creation must have been a comprehensive plan, and that the Supreme Being always uses second causes, slowly and silently to fulfil his purpose.
