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The CONTENTS.
EPISTLE I.
Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to the Universe.
OF man in the abstract.———That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things. ver. 17 &c. to 69. 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, 69, &c. 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, 73, &c. 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. 109 to 120. 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, 127 to 164. The unreasonableness of his complaints against providence, while on the one hand he demands the perfections of the angels, on the other hand the bodily qualifications of the brutes, 165. That to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable, 181 to 198. That, throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a subordi-nation
