Consequently, these
epistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any
progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament. I
am here only opening the _fountains_, and clearing the passage. To
deduce the _rivers_, to follow them in their course, and to observe
their effects, may be a task more agreeable.
EPISTLE I.
ARGUMENT
OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO THE UNIVERSE.
Of man in the abstract.--
I. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant
of the relations of systems and things, ver. 17, &c. II. That Man is not
to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his place and rank in the
creation, agreeable to the general order of things, and conformable to
ends and relations to him unknown, ver. 35, &c. III. That it is partly
upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the hope of a
future state, that all his happiness in the present depends, ver. 77,
&c. IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more
perfection, the cause of Man's error and misery. The impiety of putting
himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness,
perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice of his dispensations,
ver. 109, &c. V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of
the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is
not in the natural, ver.
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