appeal for the early history of mankind, informs us that the state of
our first parents was a state of innocence and happiness; but that, soon
after their creation, sin and misery entered into the world. The poets
in their fables, most of which, however extravagant they may seem, had
their origin in truth, speak the same language. Some of these represent
the first condition of man by the figure of the golden, and his
subsequent degeneracy and subjection to suffering by that of the silver,
and afterwards of the iron age. Others tell us that the first female was
made of clay; that she was called Pandora, because every necessary gift,
qualification, or endowment, was given to her by the gods, but that she
received from Jupiter, at the same time, a box from which, when opened,
a multitude of disorders sprung, and that these spread themselves
immediately afterwards among all of the human race. Thus it appears,
whatever authorities we consult, that those which may be termed the
evils of life existed in the earliest times. And what does subsequent
history, combined with our own experience, tell us, but that these have
been continued, or that they have come down in different degrees through
successive generations of men, in all the known countries of the
universe, to the present day?

But though the inequality visible in the different conditions of life,
and the passions interwoven into our nature, (both which have been
allotted to us for wise purposes, and without which we could not easily
afford a proof of the existence of that, which is denominated virtue,)
have a tendency to produce vice and wretchedness among us, yet we see,
in this our constitution, what may operate partially as preventives and
corrective of them. If there be a radical propensity in our nature to do
that which is wrong, there is, on the other hand, a counteracting power
within it, or an impulse by means of the action of the divine Spirit
upon our minds, which urges us to do that which is right. If the voice