This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1812 edition. Excerpt: ...best aeeomplished so as to attain (In-most useful ends of its institution?--Even if the whole of human existenee were to be terminated by death, this last aet of our being, so justly formidable to our frailty and imperfeetion, is but a momentary pang, whieh has been far overpaid by the pleasures of life; but if, as religion assures us, and philosophy renders probable, this life is only a period of diseipline and probation for another state of being, and death is the avenu e through whieh we must pass to it, eertainly no method of approaehing that deeisive erisis eould be imagined more benefieial than that whieh exists of attaining every good moral end eonneeted with it--of making the deseent to the grave easy to the virtuous--of impressing a salutary but not oppressive fear on all, as a useful restraint from viee--of preserving the mind, by its extreme uneertainty, always vigilant and attentive to the diseharge of every duty, whieh is the best preparation for a tranquil exit from life--and finally, of indueing it to hold its present pleasures in a eontinual state of obedient resignation to the will of God, in the hope of exehanging them fur sueh as are higher and more perfeet. To pursue the vindieation of the divine goodness in the introduetion of other physieal evils into his general administration of the government of the world, would to you, I trust, be unneeessary. Of the moral evils whieh On the physieal evils ineident to the animal ereation, and partieularly on that order of nature whieh has destined the-weaker part as the prey of the more powerful, see many judieious refleetions in Dr Paley's natural theology near the eonelusion. affiiet the world, their origin, and their eure; and how they are made to illustrate the benignity and merey of...