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ON THE SIN AND THE EVILS

.OF

COVETOUSNESS;

AND

THE HAPPY EFFECTS WHICH WOULD FLOW

FROM A SPIRIT OF

CHRISTIAN BENEFICENCE.

ILLUSTRATED BY A VARIETY OF FACTS, SELECTED FROM SACRED

AND CIVIL HISTORY, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS.

BY THOMAS DICK, LL. D.

AUTHOR OF THE "CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER,' "" PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION'
"PHILOSOPHY OF A FUTURE STATE,"-"IMPROVEMENT OF SOCIETY BY THE
DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE, ""THE MENTAL ILLUMINATION
99
AND MORAL IMPROVEMENT OF MANKIND,' etc. etc.

NEW YORK.

ROBINSON, PRATT & CO.

259 PEARL STREET.

1836.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, by ROBINSON, PRATT & Co., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Connecticut.

Case, Tiffany & Co., Printers...... Hartford, Conn.

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1-16-59

PREFACE.

THE subject of the following treatise, considered in all its aspects, is one which has an important bearing on the happiness and improvement both of Christian and Civil society. Impressed with a deep conviction of this truth, the author intended, sometime ago, to address his fellow-men on the subject; but other engagements prevented him from entering on the consideration of the several topics connected with it, till about the month of August last, when a Prize, to be given for the best Essay on the subject, was announced in some of our religious periodicals. Being then engaged in conducting his work "On the Mental Illumination of Mankind," &c., through the press, and in various other avocations, he could not find leisure to finish the Essay within the time prescribed in the advertisement. It was, however, sent sometime afterwards, and returned unopened, on the ground “that the carriage and porterage of it were not paid ;" and had it not been for a particular circumstance, the package might have been lost, as there was no intimation on its exterior as to whom it should be addressed and returned. These circumstances the author was disposed to consider as little short of an exemplification of Covetousness-the very evil which the Essays advertised for were intended to counteract. For, although a hundred Essays had been sent, the carriage of which was two shillings each, the whole sum thus expended would not have amounted to above £10-which could only be a trivial sum to the individuals who offered the Prize. And equity required, that those who had been at the expense of paper and quills, and who had devoted a certain portion of their time to the subject, in compliance with the request of those gentlemen, should have been freed from the expense of carriage, especially when Avarice

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