uneasiness, and enjoying the pleasant thought of any finite or inferior beauty, would make him discontent with any below what is supreme, or the highest possible, which must be infinite; for the meaning of finite is that than which there might possibly be a greater.

The name by which we sometimes distinguish the highest beauties or perfections of any kind, even finite beauties in mind or matter, is glory, as the glory of sun and stars, and of angels.

One of the properest terms we have to signify the sufficiency of supreme glory to give perpetual fulness of joy, (below which nothing, as was observed before, can give true and full contentment), is beatific.

I remember to have heard a question proposed in a company, some years ago, to this effect, WVhether or not it might be possible, in the nature of the thing, for any thing we know, that a rational creature might have beatitude, or perpetual fulness of joy, in the mere contemplation of created things; of which contemplation, indeed, God would be the source and cause, but not the object? It will be no digression, I think, from the question which is the occasion of this little essay, to consider that question I have named; for the answer of either of them serves both.

Let us suppose, then, a rational creature having access to know and contemplate the universal system, intellectual and material, and consider the consequences.

It is evident he would not be content to be confined to the knowledge of a part; for that, however durable the pleasure of it would be, in comparison of our short-lived joys, yet would cloy through time. When a man is in a beautiful chamber in a prison, the beauty of it may give some pleasure at first; but let us suppose him confined to that contemplation for innumerable mil

lions of ages, it would certainly prove a very great and growing torment; yea experience shews it would prove a sensible pain in a few days, if a man have no other pleasant thoughts to entertain him.

There is some proportion between the parts of the material beauty and the whole; for the very nature of material beauty includes proportions between the whole and the parts. In matter, want of proportion is deformity. This proves, that the system of matter, which is beautiful, is finite; for if it was infinite, there would be no proportion between the finite parts and the infinite whole. Besides that form and figure, which are the beauty of matter, are qualities of the limits, the bounds, or surface of matter; the world, therefore, has limits. To make matter infinite, would make the world a beautiful point, shut up in a hollow case of infinite deformity and confusion; and the inside of that case having limits, and consequently a figure, however irregular, that figure not being essential to it, (for no particular figure is so), would argue an external cause or mind having power over its substance. But mind cannot produce infinite useless deformity and confusion; because mind always works with inclination and design, and its workmanship bears the marks and impression of it.

But not to insist on this, since there are so many other arguments to prove that matter is finite, and since all that belongs to the present subject is, that all the matter that has order and beauty in it, or that can afford pleasant contemplation, is finite; its being finite, and the proportion between the whole and parts in beauty, which is the cause of joy, proves a proportion between the whole and parts in that joy, which is the effect of beauty; and therefore, since the beauty of any part of it is cloying, it is an argument, that the like may be said

of the whole; only the beauty of the whole would stand out longer against satiety and distaste, than that of a part. But that object which is not sufficient to stand out infinite repetitions, if I may speak so, is insufficient for eternal or perpetual duration. Any part of the world has a proportion to the whole, but no part of perpetual duration has proportion to the whole of it.

This argument may be applied, not only to the material, but also to the intellectual system of creatures; and we may justly say, that a society that had no joyful contemplation of the Creator, but only of the creation, and of one another, would, in a finite space of time, (and consequently at the beginning of eternity), find the world a narrow confinement and a dungeon, and find the pleasure of their mutual society degenerate into melancholy solitude. For suppose that all of them knew all the world, so that none of them had any thing to show or communicate but what all of them knew already, and all of them were weary of, the whole of their contemplation and enjoyment behoved to eorrupt and turn nauseous.

A rational creature in the above-mentioned cir.cumstances, advancing in the contemplation of God's works, could not possibly very long avoid the knowledge of the glory of God, so visible in all his works.

This would give him some knowledge of a beauty superior to that to which we supposed him confined; and the knowledge of an object infinitely superior to all the creatures, would hinder contentment, if he was denied that higher degree and kind of contemplation of the same object, which is called enjoyment, or vision, and which will be considered afterwards.

Since mental pleasure is in knowledge, the knowledge of the effect does not fully satisfy the mind without knowing the cause, and consequently without knowing the first cause.

1

Thus we have three properties of that glory, the view of which is so requisite to beatitude: it must be supreme, original, and underived. This shows, that the view of divine glory (such as will not cloy) is necessary to beatitude. That it is sufficient, may be made evident thus: That excellency, the view of which has been already experienced (which I desire to mention with veneration) sufficient to eternal fulness of joy in a being capable of, or rather incapable of wanting infinite happiness, must be much more sufficient to an eternal fulness of joy in finite beings. If that beauty and excellence, without change, interruption, variety, or progress, in the view of it, was not, and could not, be cloying to an infinite knowledge and intelligence: much less can the fullest view of what a finite mind is capable of, ever turn less pleasant, unless constant progress be possible and needful, and therefore attainable.

IN

PART II.

N considering the cause of the greatest mental joy or beatitude, we must consider not only the -external or objective cause, but also the internal or subjective cause.

The objective cause is supreme excellency; but the subjective, or inherent internal cause, (which must exist in us, though not from us), is our knowledge or contemplation of it, and affection or disposition of mind with which we contemplate it. SECT. I.-Different kinds and degrees of contempla

tion.

Irrational animals have no real enjoyment (if any thing they have deserve such a name) but what comes from the Creator as its first cause. Beatitude, as was proved before, requires not only such joy as shall have the first cause for the author of it, but such as shall have him for the object of it.

Brutes, and brutal men, have all their real pleasure from the Creator; but they have no joy in him, since their joy is not in the knowledge of him.

As there are various beauties or objects of pleasant knowledge, so there are various degrees or kinds of knowledge of the same object. Supreme glory, as was proved, is the only beatific object; but every degree or kind of contemplation of it, is not beatific contemplation; yea, some contemplations of it, to some dispositions, are more cloying and unpleasant than almost any other contemplations of other objects; and we may conceive such a contemplation of it is in some, as might be, a most effectual and most just cause of anguish. Let us consider the different views the mind may have of inferior beauties, mental or material. Let us suppose a man enjoying the most pleasant and most ravishing prospect on earth, in the springtime, delighting himself with all the charms of that place, and of that beautiful season; and then let us suppose him afterwards, in a dark winter-night, remembering, or contemplating, that prospect; the object of contemplation is the same in both cases, but the contemplations themselves so different, that whereas the former was the cause of joy, the latter may be the cause of the contrary, that is, melancholy.

In vision or sight of material beauty, we are. passive recipients, if I may so speak. In imagination, or pure intellection, which sometimes, perhaps, is the strict sense of idea, we are active cauThe latter, abstracting from composition, abstraction, &c. is a mere picture, an imitation of the former. The former is properly an effect of the Creator's power, the latter of our own. The one

ses.

is the work of nature; the other, in a manner, a work of art. No wonder the former be a greater cause of joy.

It is not needful to insist long, in shewing the