Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 004.djvu/3

 ''this my free Address may have no appearance of uncomly obsequiousness, but may he supported by firm grounds of sober and generally acknowledged Truth. And in this Age of Calumny we have good cause to rejoyce in the Conspicuous Examples of such, as have personally assisted, and therein proved their fitness to officiate, at the highest Altars, for the Government, and for the Safety and Ornament of the Church, and who withall have made the deepest Researches into the Works of God, of Nature, and of Art. This it was in the first Model of the World, before fruitless Controversies and verbal Altercations had made a wide difference between the Works of God and'' the Notions of Men. Antiquity attributes the first Monumental Hieroglyphicks to Seths Pillars; the first Naval Architecture to Noah; the Syderal Arts to Abraham; the Holy Utensils, fittest for a portable Tabernacle, to Moses; the Architecture of the fairest Temple to Solomon; ''and generally the most Useful Sciences, to the no less Devout than Wise Men of the East. And those Illustrious Propagators of the Gospel, who in the Primitive conflicts and distresses of the Church were enabled to dispell the darkness of the Gentiles, both by their Writings and Sufferings, were many of them the best Philosophers of those Ages; at least of those Countryes, where they dispensed the Heavenly Mysteries.''

This Congratulation we owe more particularly to your Lordship for those Divine Discourses, in which you have publickely refuted Atheisme, ''and with it those Men, who stand in their own light, in denying the best Evidences of their own Priviledges and their surest Titles to an Happy Eternity. And hence also the Sensualists and Men of Animosities and of a endless Contentions may learn, that they, who follow closest to the streight Line, and are in the nearest approaches to the Center of Truth, and to the Fountain of Purity, as they are more secur'd from Deviations, and the loss of Time, so they have freer Spirits and better leisure to advance the General Benefit of Mankind. And hence I account myself well assured of your Lordships countenance, whilst I am faithfully devoted to these ends, being always''