, and as the old Irish chronicle informs us, was once a place where large and populous towns appeared, till for the great iniquity of the inhabitants, the people and their fair habitations were destroyed in an earthquake, and mighty waters from the earth covered the place, and formed this lake. Could the electrical stroke produce this sea that was not to be found there before the destruction? Is it not more reasonable to suppose, that such vast waters have been forced by a supernatural commotion from the great abyss, in the earthquake that destroyed the towns which once stood in this place?
To this then, (till I am better informed), I must ascribe such earthquakes as produce great rivers and lakes: and where no waters appear, I believe the earthquakes are caused

by the immediate finger of God; either operating on the abyss, tho' not so as to make the water break out on the earth; or by directing the electrical violence or stroke; or otherwise acting on the ruined cities and shattered places.

For my part, I think it is a grievous mistake in our philosophical enquiries, to assign so much to second causes as the learned do. The government of the universe is given to matter and motion, and under pretence of extolling original contrivance, the execution of all is left to dead substance. It is just and reasonable (even Newton and Maclaurin say) to suppose that the whole chain of causes, or the several series of them, should centre in him, as their source and fountain; and the whole system appear depending upon him, the only independent cause. Now to me this supposition does not appear either just or reasonable. I think the noble phoenomena of nature ought to be ascribed to the immediate operation of the Deity. Without looking for a subtle elastic medium, to produce gravity; which medium Sir Isaac confesses he had no proof of; nor is there in reality such a thing in the universe; I imagine the divine Newton would have done better, if, after establishing the true system of nature, by demonstrating the law of gravity, he had said this gravity was the constant and undeniable evidence of the immediate influence

of the Deity in the material universe. A series of material causes betwixt Deity and Effect, is, in truth, concealing him from the knowledge of mortals for ever. In the moral government of the world, second causes do, because free-agents act a part; but, in the material universe to apply them, to me seems improper, as matter and motion only, that is, mechanism, come in competition with