PREFACE WHEN I consider the absolute independency of God, and the necessary, total dependence of all created things on him their first cause; I cannot help standing astonished at the pride of impotent, degenerate man, who is so prone to consider himself as a being possessed of sovereign freedom, and invested with a power of self-salvation; able, he imagines, to counteract the designs even of Infinite Wisdom, and to defeat the agency of Omnipotence itself. Ye shall be as gods, said the tempter, to