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An Essay

CONCERNING

THE NATURE OF MAN.

INTRODUCTION.

To a being like Man, endowed with reason and possessed of free will, there can scarcely be any inquiry so interesting as that which concerns his nature, and but few objects of acquirement equal in value with a true knowledge of it. For if, on the one hand, he rate himself so low in the scale of creation as to esteem the period between his birth and death all that of conscious existence shall ever be his, it necessarily follows, as experience has shewn*, that he can have no, or

* The savages of New Holland, who appear to be the furthest removed from civilization of the human race, seem from all accounts to have no or very little idea of religion, and not much more of right and wrong; and the most hardened villains and unrelenting murderers in civilized countries have generally been without any, or at best with but a very indistinct notion of a future state. The terrors, and what is mis

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at least very little, sense of a moral tie; while, on the other hand, if he attribute to himself qualities of the existence of which he has no proof, but which he believes to be analogous to those possessed by unknown beings of a higher order than himself, there is not only the danger of his being puffed up with that secret pride so grateful to the human heart, which makes him think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but also that he shall involve himself in an inextricable labyrinth of errors, out of which no clue exists to guide him.

As the author of these pages is a firm believer in the authenticity and sacred character of the Scriptures, as received by the Protestant churches, and never knew a single individual (and perhaps none ever existed) who had examined and compared them seriously and dispassionately, that was not so, they will furnish, almost exclusively, the materials of his work, as he thinks they ought to have done for the works of those who have preceded him on the same subject; at the same time, for the reason before given, (namely, that those who know the Scriptures believe them,) it is no part of his plan to enter on a disquisition to prove their

named the repentance, of such, when frightened at a description of impending punishment, do not invalidate the argument.

truth, though, in addition to the numerous irrefragable arguments already in existence, he thinks many, and those very powerful ones too, might be offered, in support of that position.

As the nature of Man will be exhibited in a light essentially different, not only from the commonly received notions of the multitude, but from that in which it has been viewed by a long and illustrious series of the acutest reasoners, the deepest thinkers, and the best men of many ages, it may be deemed presumption in an humble and not learned individual (for it is his misfortune not to understand Hebrew) singly to oppose himself to such a host. The objection can occur to no one more forcibly than it has done to the author, who, though long satisfied of the correctness of his own views, has delayed for many years to lay them before the world, from a distrust of his own judgment, as it is at variance with the accumulated labours of ages. Nothing but a conviction, not only of the truth but of the importance of those views, and that it is a duty which every man owes to his fellow men to do them all the service in his power, (and what greater service can be rendered them, than to give them a true knowledge of themselves?) could have induced him to adopt a course which he is well aware will expose him to many heavy charges and much obloquy. If, however, the doctrines which will be advocated in the follow

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