discover their mistake till they are landed in doubt and unbelief. They
find certain principles laid down by men in high repute for science, and
adopt them without hesitation, not considering that men of science are
sometimes mad, fanatical infidels, and that they manufacture principles
without regard to truth, for the simple purpose of undermining men's
faith in God and religion. Writers on science of one school tell you,
that in your study of nature, you must be careful never to admit the
doctrine of final causes; or, in other words, that you must never
entertain the idea that anything in nature was meant to answer any
particular purpose. You must, say they, if you would be a true
philosopher, shut out from your mind all idea of design or contrivance
in the works of nature. You must just look at what is, and not ask what
it is for. You may find wonderful adaptations of things to each other,
all tending to happy results; but you must never suppose that any one
ever _designed_ or _planned_ those adaptations, with a _view_ to those
happy results. You must confine yourself entirely to what you see, and
never admit the thought of a Maker whom you do not see. You must limit
your observations to what is done, and not dream of a Doer. You may see
things tending to the diffusion of happiness, but must not suppose that
there is a great unseen Benefactor, who gives them this blessed
tendency. And if you feel in yourself a disposition to gratitude, you
must treat it as a foolish, childish fancy, and suppress it as
irrational.

A sillier or a more contemptible notion--a notion more opposed to true
philosophy and common sense,--can hardly be conceived. How any one could
ever have the ignorance or the impudence to propound such an unnatural
and monstrous absurdity as a great philosophical principle, would be a
mystery, if we did not know how infidelity perverts men's
understandings, and, while puffing them up with infinite conceit of