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perceived, but they believe also the perfection proper
to mankind is that, after a certain knowledge of an
Almighty Creator, they attain the future spiritual
existence in an exalted station of the rational world,
and become blessed with an abundance of every
beatitude; they acknowledge a powerful intrinsic
virtue of the intellect in the acquisition-of this ever-
lasting beatitude, which, with the essence of wis-
dom, has no want of another gift of any sort what-
ever. Disgrace means the opposition to the mode
of laudable reason, and law is the mode in which
the wise have settled the common affairs of the
individuals of mankind conformably with rectitude.
There is another sect which, assuming the con-
viction of a material and immaterial world, and the
power of reason, believe in a prophet, and say, that
these distinguished persons have established the law
for the good of God's creatures and the order of
cities; and to that effect they possess a knowledge
of the highest and most perfect kind; they are sup-
ported by the self-existing Being for the establish-
ment of regulations and the decision of what is
legal and forbidden, and what they announce con-
cerning the world of spirits, angels, the ninth hea-
ven, the throne of God, the tables of destiny, the
written characters, and the like, are all ingenious
inventions, rendered sensible to the understanding
of the vulgar under forms which strike the imagina-