ADVERTISEMENT. OST of the principles and reasonings, MOST contained in this volume, were publish ed in a work in three volumes, called A Treatife of Human Nature: A work which the Author had projected before he left College, and which he wrote and published not long after. But not finding it fuccefsful, he was fenfible of his error in going to the prefs too early, and he caft the whole anew in the following pieces; where fome negligences in his former reasoning, and more in the expreffion, are, he hopes, corrected. Yet feveral writers, who have honoured the Author's Philofophy with answers, have taken care to direct all their batteries against that juvenile work, which the Author never acknowledged, and have affected to triumph in any advantages which, they imagined, they had obtained over it: A practice very contrary to all rules of candour and fair-dealing, and a strong inftance of those polemical artifices, which a bigoted zeal thinks itself authorised to employ. Henceforth the Author defires, that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical fentiments and princi ples, 2 A |