in a future work on the same subject, the deficiencies of which she has been guilty, to rectify the errors which she may have committed, to rescue the cause which she may have injured. Barley-Wood, January 20. 1815. AN ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER AND PRACTICAL WRITINGS OF SAINT PAUL. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE MORALITY OF PAGANISM, SHEWING THE NECESSITY OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION. It cannot, we presume, be thought foreign to our purpose to introduce an Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of St. Paul, with a brief retrospect of the moral condition of the Gentile nations at that period when the great apostle of the Gentiles first published Christianity among them. The morality of a people necessarily partakes of the nature of their theology; and in proportion as it is founded on the knowledge of the true God, in such proportion it tends to improve the conduct of man. The meanest Christian believer has here an advantage over the most enlightened heathen philosopher; for as what he knows of the nature of God, arises chiefly from what he knows of Christ, and entirely from what is revealed in Scripture, he gains from those divine sources more clear and distinct views of the Deity than unassisted reason could ever attain; and of consequence, more correct ideas of what is required of himself, both with respect to God and man. His ideas may be mean in their expression, compared with the splendid language of the sages of antiquity; but the cause of the superiority of his conceptions is obvious. While they go about to establish their own wisdom, he submits to the wisdom of God, as he |