It is equally a matter of undoubted fact, that in all questions of morals which restrain the vices, passions, and immediate interests of men, conviction is generally resisted, and the rule is brought down to the practice, rather than the practice raised to the rule; so that the most flimsy sophisms are admitted as arguments, and principles the most lax displace those of rigid rectitude and virtue. This is matter of daily observation, and cannot be denied. The irresistible inference from this is, that, at least, the great body of mankind, not being accustomed to intellectual exercises; not having even leisure for them on account of their being doomed to sordid labours; and not being disposed to conduct the investigation with care and accuracy, would never become acquainted with the will of the Supreme Governor, if the knowledge of it were only to be obtained from habitual ob. servation and reasoning. Should it be said, "that the intellectual and instructed part of mankind ought to teach the rest," it may be replied, that even that would be difficult, because their own knowledge must be communicated to others by the same process of difficult induction through which they attain it themselves, or rational conviction could not be produced in the minds of the learners. The task would therefore be hopeless as to the majority, both from their want of time and intellectual capacity. But, if practicable, the Theistical system has no provision for such instruction. It neither makes it the duty of some to teach, nor of others to learn. It has no authorized teachers; no day of rest from labour, on which to collect the auditors; no authorized religious ordinances by which moral truth may be brought home to the ears and the hearts of men: and, if it had, its best knowledge being rather contained in diffuse and hesitating speculation, than concentrated in maxims and first principles, imbodied in a few plain words, which at once indicate some master mind fully adequate to the whole subject, and suddenly irradiate the understandings of the most listless and illiterate,--it would be taught in vain.

Facts are sufficiently in proof of this. The sages of antiquity were moral teachers; they founded schools; they collected disciples; they placed their fame in their wisdom; yet there was little agreement among them, even upon the first principles of religion and morals; and they neither generally reformed their own lives nor those of others. This is acknowledged by Cicero:~ "Do you think that these things had any influence upon the men (a very few excepted) who thought, and wrote, and disputed about them? Who is there of all the philosophers, whose mind, life, and manners were conformable to right reason? Who ever made his philosophy the law and rule of his life, and not a mere show of his wit and parts? Who observed his own instructions, and lived in obedience to his own precepts? On the contrary, many of them were slaves to filthy lusts, many to pride, many to covetousness," &c.(8)

Such a system of moral direction and control, then, could it be formed, would bear no comparison to that which is provided by direct and external revelation, of which the doctrine, though delivered by different men, in different ages, is consentaneous throughout; which is rendered authoritative by divine attestation; which consists in clear aud legislative enunciation, and not in human speculation and laborious inference; of which the teachers were as holy as their doctrine was sublime; and which in all ages has exerted a powerful moral influence upon the conduct of men. "I know of but one Phædo and one Polemon throughout all Greece," saith Origen, "who were ever made better by their philosophy; whereas Christianity hath brought back its myriads from vice to virtue."

All these considerations, then still farther support the presumption that the will of God has been the subject of express revelation to man, because such a declaration of it is the only one which can be conceived ADEQUATE; COMPLETE; OF COMMON APPREHENSION ; SUFFICIENTLY AUTHORITATIVE; AND ADAPTED ΤΟ Let us however suppose the truth discovered, the THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF MANKIND. teachers of it appointed, and days for the communication of instruction set apart. With what authority would these teachers be invested? They plead no commission from Him whose will they affect to teach, and they work no miracles in confirmation of the truth of their

CHAPTER IV.

TAINTY OF HUMAN REASON.

THE opinion that sufficient notices of the will and purposes of God with respect to man, may be collected by rational induction from his works and government, attributes too much to the power of human reason and the circumstances under which, in that case, it must necessarily commence its exercise.

Human reason must be taken, as it is in fact, a weak and erring faculty, and as subject to have its operations suspended or disturbed by the influence of vicious principles and attachment to earthly things; neither of which can be denied, however differently they may be accounted for.

doctrine. That doctrine cannot, from the nature of FARTHER PROOFS OF THE WEAKNESS AND UNCERthings, be mathematically demonstrated so as to enforce conviction, and it would therefore be considered, and justly considered, as the opinion of the teacher, and nothing but an opinion to which every one might listen or not without any consciousness of violating an obligation, and which every one might and would receive as his own judgment agreed with or dissented from his unauthorized teacher, or as his interests and passions might commend or disparage the doctrine so taught.(7) and dairy-maids, perfect mathematicians, as to have them perfect in ethics this way: having plain commands is the sure and only course to bring them to obedience and practice: the greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe. And I ask, whether one coming from heaven in the power of God, in full and clear evidence and demonstration of miracles, giving plain and direct rules of morality and obedience, be not likelier to enlighten the bulk of mankind, and set them right in their duties, and bring them to do them, than by reasoning with them from general notions and principles of human reason?"-LOCKE'S Reasonableness of Christianity.

(7) "Let it be granted (though not true) that all the moral precepts of the Gospel were known by somebody or other among mankind before. But where, or how, or of what use, is not considered. Suppose they may be picked up, here and there; some from SOLON, and BIAS, in Greece; others from TULLY in Italy, and, to complete the work, let CONFUCIUS as far as China be consulted, and ANACHARSIS the Scythian contribute his share. What will all this do to give the world a complete morality, that may be to mankind the unquestionable rule of life and manners? What would this amount to towards being a steady rule, a certain transcript of a law that we are under? Did the saying of ARISTIPPUS or CONFUCIUS give it an authority? Was ZENO a lawgiver to mankind? If not, what he or any other philosopher delivered was but a saying of his. Mankind might hearken to it, or reject it, as they pleased, or as it suited their interest, passions, princi

It is another consideration of importance, that the exercise of reason is limited by our knowledge; in other words, that it must be furnished with subjects which it may arrange, compare, and judge; for beyond what it clearly conceives its power does not extend.

It does not follow, that, because many doctrines in religion and many rules in morals carry clear and decided conviction to the judgment instantly upon their being proposed, they were discoverable, in the first instance, by rational induction; any more than that the great and simple truths of philosophy, which have been brought to light by the efforts of men of superior minds, were within the compass of ordinary understandings;

ples, or humours :--they were under no obligation: the opinion of this or that philosopher was of no AUTHORITY."-LOCKE's Reasonableness, &c.

"The truths which the philosophers proved by speculative Reason were destitute of some more sensible

authority to back them; and the precepts which they laid down, how reasonable soever in themselves, seemed still to want weight, and to be no more than PRECEPTS OF MEN."-Dr. SAM. CLARKE.

(8) Sed hæc eadem num censes apud eos ipsos valere, nisi admodum paucos, a quibus inventa, disputata, conscripta sunt? Quotus enim quisque philosophorum invenitur, qui sit ita moratus, ita animo ac vita constitutus, ut ratio postulat? &c.--Tusc. Quest. 2.

because, after they were revealed by those who made the discovery, they instantly commanded the assent of almost all to whom they were proposed. The very first principles of what is called natural religion(9) are probably of this kind. The reason of man, though it should assent to them, though the demonstration of them should be now easy, may be indebted even for them to the revelation of a superior mind, and that mind the mind of God.(1)

men, which they propose to defend, explain, demonstrate, or deny, according to their respective opinions. If we overlook the inspiration of the writings of Moses, they command respect as the most ancient records in the world, and as imbodying the religious opinions of the earliest ages; but Moses nowhere pretends to be the author of any of these fundamental truths. The book of Genesis opens with the words, " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;" but here the term "God" is used familiarly; and it is taken for granted, that both the name and the idea conveyed by it were commonly received by the people for whom Moses wrote.

This is rendered the more probable, inasmuch as the great principles of all religion, the existence of God, the immortality of the human soul, the accountableness of man, the good or evil quality of the most important moral actions, have by none who have written upon The same writer gives the history of ages much them, by no legislator, poet, or sage of antiquity, how-higher than his own, and introduces the Patriarchs of ever ancient, been represented as discoveries made the human race holding conversations with one anby them in the course of rational investigation; but other, in which the leading subjects of religion and they are spoken of as things commonly known among morals are often incidentally introduced; but they are never presented to us in the form of discussion; no (9) The term Natural Religion is often used equivo- Patriarch, however high his antiquity, represents himcally. "Some understand by it every thing in religion self as the discoverer of these first principles, though with regard to truth and duty, which, when once dis- he might, as Noah, be a "preacher" of that "righteouscovered, may be clearly shown to have a real founda- ness" which was established upon them. Moses mention in the nature and relations of things, and which tions the antediluvians, who were inventors of the arts unprejudiced reason will approve, when fairly proposed of working metals, and of forming and playing upon and set in a proper light; and accordingly very fair and musical instruments; but he introduces no one as the goodly schemes of Natural Religion have been drawn inventor of any branch of moral or religious science, up by Christian philosophers and divines, in which they though they are so much superior in importance to have comprehended a considerable part of what is con- mankind. tained in the Scripture Revelation. In this view, Natural Religion is not so called because it was originally discovered by natural reason; but because, when once known, it is what the reason of mankind duly exercised approves, as founded in truth and nature. Others take Natural Religion to signify that religion which men discover in the sole exercise of their natural faculties, without higher assistance."-LELAND.

(1) "When truths are once known to us, though by tradition, we are apt to be favourable to our own parts, and ascribe to our own understanding the discovery of what, in reality, we borrowed from others; or, at least, finding we can prove what at first we learned from others, we are forward to conclude it an obvious truth, which, if we had sought, we could not have missed. Nothing seems hard to our understandings that is once known; and because what we see, we see with our own eyes, we are apt to overlook or forget the help we had from others who showed it us, and first made us see it, as if we were not at all beholden to them for those truths they opened the way to and led us into; for knowledge being only of truths that are perceived to be so, we are favourable enough to our own faculties to conclude that they, of their own strength, would have attained those discoveries without any foreign assistance, and that we know those truths by the strength and native light of our own minds, as they did from whom we received them by theirs; only they had the luck to be before us. Thus the whole stock of human knowledge is claimed by every one as his private possession, as soon as he (profiting by others' discoveries) has got it into his own mind: and so it is; but not properly by his own single industry, nor of his own acquisition. He studies, it is true, and takes pains to make a progress in what others have delivered; but their pains were of another sort who first brought those truths to light which he afterward derives from them. He that travels the roads now applauds his own strength and legs that have carried him so far in such a scantling of time, and ascribes all to his own vigour; little considering how much he owes to their pains who cleared the woods, drained the bogs, built the bridges, and made the ways passable, without which he might have toiled much with little progress. A great many things which we have been bred up in the belief of from our cradles, and are now grown familiar (and, as it were, natural to us under the Gospel), we take for unquestionable, obvious truths, and easily demonstrable, without considering how long we might have been in doubt or ignorance of them had revelation been silent. And many others are beholden to revelation who do not acknowledge it. It is no diminishing to revelation, that reason gives its suffrage too to the truths revelation has discovered; but it is our mistake to think, that, because reason confirms them to us, we had the first certain knowledge of them from thence, and in that clear evidence we now possess them."-LOCKE.

In farther illustration it may be observed, that, in point of fact, those views on the subject just mentioned, which, to the reason of all sober Theists, since the Christian revelation was given, appear the most clear and satisfactory, have been found nowhere since patriarchal times, except in the Scriptures, which profess to imbody the true religious traditions and revelations of all ages, or among those whose reason derived principles from these revelations, on which to establish its inferences.

We generally think it a truth easily and convincingly demonstrated, that there is a God, and yet many of the philosophers of antiquity speak doubtingly on this point, and some of them denied it. At the present day, not merely a few speculative philosophers in the heathen world, but the many millions of the human race who profess the religion of Budhu, not only deny a Supreme First Cause, but dispute with subtlety and vehemence against the doctrine.

We feel that our reason rests with full satisfaction in the doctrine that all things are created by one eternal and self-existent Being; but the Greek philosophers held that matter was eternally coexistent with God. This was the opinion of Plato, who has been called the Moses of philosophers. Through the whole" Timæus," Plato supposes two eternal and independent causes of all things: one, that by which all things are made, which is God; the other, that from which all things are made, which is matter. Dr. Cudworth has in vain attempted to clear Plato of this charge. The learned Dr. Thomas Burnet, who was well acquainted with the opinions of the ancients, says, that "the Ionic, Pythagoric, Platonic, and Stoic schools all agreed in asserting the eternity of matter; and that the doctrine that matter was created out of nothing, seems to have been unknown to the philosophers, and is one of which they had no notion." Aristotle asserted the eternity of the world, both in matter and form too, which was but an easy deduction from the former principle, and is sufficiently in proof of its Atheistical tendency.

The same doctrine was extensively spread at a very ancient period throughout the East, and plainly takes away a great part of the foundation of those arguments for the existence of a Supreme Deity, on which the moderns have so confidently rested for the demonstration of the existence of God by rational induction, whether drawn from the works of nature or from metaphysical principles; so much are those able works which have been written on this subject indebted to that revelation on which their authors too often close their eyes, for the very bases on which their most con vincing arguments are built. The same Atheistical results logically followed from the ancient Magian doctrine of two eternal principles, one good, and the other evil; a notion which also infected the Greek schools, as appears from the example of Plutarch, and the instances adduced by him.

No one, enlightened by the Scriptures, whether ho

acknowledges his obligations to them or not, has ever been betrayed into so great an absurdity as to deny the individuality of the human soul; and yet, where the light of revelation has not spread, absurd and destructive to morals as this notion is, it very extensively prevails. The opinion that the human soul is a part of God, enclosed for a short time in matter, but still a portion of his essence, runs through much of the Greek Philosophy. It is still more ancient than that, and, at the present day, the same opinion destroys all idea of accountability among those who in India follow the Brahminical system. "The human soul is God, and the acts of the human soul are therefore the acts of God." This is the popular argument by which their crimes are justified.

These instances might be enlarged; but they amply show that they who speak of the sufficiency of human reason in matters of morals and religion neglect almost all the facts which the history of human opinion furnishes; and that they owe all their best views to that fountain of inspiration from which they so criminally turn aside. For how otherwise can the instances we have just mentioned be explained? and how is it that those fundamental principles in morals and religion, which modern philosophers have exhibited as demonstrable by the unassisted powers of the human mind, were either held doubtfully, or connected with some manifest absurdity, or utterly denied by the wisest moral teachers among the Gentiles, who lived before the Christian revelation was given? They had the same works of The doctrine of one Supreme, All-wise, and Uncon- God to behold, and the same course of providence to trollable Providence commends itself to our reason as reason from, to neither of which were they inattentive. one of the noblest and most supporting of truths; but They had intellectual endowments, which have been we are not to overlook the source from whence even the admiration of all subsequent ages; and their reathose draw it who think the reason of man equal to son was rendered acute and discriminative by the disciits full developement. So far were pagans from being pline of mathematical and dialectic science. They able to conceive so lofty a thought, that the wisest of had every thing which the moderns have except the them invented subordinate agents to carry on the af- BIBLE; and yet on points which have been generally fairs of the world; beings often divided among them-settled among the moral philosophers of our own age selves, and subject to human passions; thereby de- as fundamental to natural religion, they had no just stroying the doctrine of providence, and taking away views and no settled conviction. "The various apprethe very foundation of human trust in a Supreme hensions of wise men," says Cicero, "will justify the Power. This invention of subordinate deities gave doubtings and demurs of skeptics, and it will then be birth to idolatry, which is sufficiently in proof both of sufficient to blame them, si aut consenserint alii, aut its extent and antiquity. erit inventus aliquis, qui quid verum sit invenerit, when others agree, or any one has found out the truth. We say not that nothing is true; but that some false things are annexed to all that is true, tanta similitudine ut iis nulla sit certa judicandi, et assentiendi nota, and that with so much likeness, that there is no certain note of judging what is true, or assenting to it. We deny not, that something may be true; percipi so to be: for, quid habemus in rebus bonis et malis explorati, what have we certain concerning good and evil? Nor for this are we to be blamed, but NATURE, which has hidden the truth in the deep, naturam accusa quæ in profundo veritatem penitus abstruserit."(3)

The beautiful and well-sustained series of arguments which have often in modern times been brought to support the presumption "that the human soul is immortal," may be read with profit; but it is not to be accounted for, that those who profess to confine themselves to human reason in the inquiry, should argue with so much greater strength than the philosophers of ancient times, except that they have received assist-posse negamus, but we deny that it can be perceived ance from a source which they are unfair enough not to acknowledge. Some fine passages on this subject may be collected from Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and others but we must take them with others which express sometimes doubt and sometimes unbelief. With us this is a matter of general belief; but not so with the generality of either ancient or modern pagans. The same darkness which obscured the glory of God, proportionably diminished the glory of man,-his true and proper immortality. The very ancient notion of an absorption of souls back again into the Divine Essence was with the ancients, what we know it to be now in the metaphysical system of the Hindoos, a denial of individual immortality; nor have the demonstrations of reason done any thing to convince the other grand division of metaphysical pagans into which modern heathenism is divided, the followers of Budhu, who believe in the total annihilation both of men and gods after a series of ages, a point of faith held probably by the majority of the present race of mankind.(2)

(2) "The religion of Budhu," says Dr. Davy, "is more widely extended than any other religion. It appears to be the religion of the whole of Tartary, of China, of Japan, and their dependencies, and of all the countries between China and the Burrampooter.

"The Budhists do not believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, self-existent and eternal, the Creator and Preserver of the Universe; indeed, it is doubtful if they believe in the existence and operation of any cause besides fate and necessity, to which they seem to refer all changes in the moral and physical world. They appear to be materialists in the strictest sense of the term, and to have no notion of pure spirit or mind. Prane and hitta, life and intelligence, the most learned of them appear to consider identical: seated in the heart, radiating from thence to different parts of the body, like heat from a fire; uncreated, without beginning, at least that they know of; capable of being modified by a variety of circumstances, like the breath in different musical instruments;-and like a vapour, capable of passing from one body to another;--and like a flame, liable to be extinguished and totally annihilated. Gods, demons, men, reptiles, even the minutest and most imperfect animalcules, they consider as similar beings, formed of the four elements-heat, air, water, and that which is tangible, and animated by prane and hitta. They believe that a man may become a god or a demon; or that a god may become a man or an ani

On this subject Dr. Samuel Clarke, though so great an advocate of natural religion, concedes, that" of the philosophers, some argued themselves out of the belief of the very being of a God; some by ascribing all things to chance, others to absolute fatality, equally subverted all true notions of religions, and made the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and a future judgment needless and impossible. Some professed open immorality, others, by subtle distinctions patronised particular vices. The better sort of them, who were most celebrated, discoursed with the greatest reason, yet with much uncertainty and doubtfulness, concerning things of the highest importance, the providence of God in governing the world, the immortality of the soul, and a future judgment."

If such facts prove the weakness and insufficiency of human reason, those just thoughts respecting God, his providence, his will, and a future state, which sometimes appear in the writings of the wisest heathen, are not however, on the contrary, to be attributed to its strength. Even if they were, the argument for the sufficiency of reason would not be much advanced thereby; for the case would then be, that the reason which occasionally reached the truth had not firmness enough to hold it fast, and the pinion which sometimes bore the mind into fields of light could not maintain it in its elevation. But it cannot even be admitted, that the truth which occasionally breaks forth in their works was the discovery of their own powers. There is much evidence to show, that they were indebted to a traditional knowledge much earlier than their own day, and that moral and religious knowledge among them received occasional and important accessions from the descendants of Abraham, a people who possessed records which, laying aside the question of their inspiration for the present, all candid Theists themselves will malcule; that ordinary death is merely a change of form; and that this change is almost infinite, and bounded only by annihilation, which they esteem the acme of happiness ""-Account of Ceylon. (3) Vide De Nat. Deorum, lib. I, n. 10, 11. Acad. Qu. lib. 2, n. 66. 120.

acknowledge, contain noble and just views of God and a correct morality. While it cannot be proved that human reason made a single discovery in either moral or religious truth, it may be satisfactorily established, that just notions as to both were placed within its reach, which it first obscured, and then corrupted.

CHAPTER V.

The Origin of those Truths which are found in the Writings and Religious Systems of the Heathen. We have seen that some of the leading truths of religion and morals which are adverted to by heathen writers, or assumed in heathen systems, are spoken of as truths previously known to the world, and with which mankind were familiar. Also that no legislator, poet, or philosopher of antiquity ever pretended to the discovery of the doctrines of the existence of a God, of providence, a future state, and of the rules by which actions are determined to be good or evil, whether these opinions were held by them with full conviction of their certainty, or only doubtfully. That they were transmitted by tradition from an earlier age; or were brought from some collateral source of information; or that they flowed from both; are therefore the only rational conclusions.

To tradition the wisest of the heathen often acknowledge themselves indebted.

A previous age of superior truth, rectitude, and happiness, sometimes called the golden age, was a commonly received notion among them. It is at least as high as Hesiod, who rivals Homer in antiquity. It was likewise a common opinion, that sages existed in ages anterior to their own, who received knowledge from the gods, and communicated it to men. The wisest heathens, notwithstanding the many great things said of nature and reason, derive the origin, obligation, and efficacy of law from the gods alone. "No mortal," says Plato in his Republic, " can make laws to purpose." Demosthenes calls law εvonua kaι dwoor Oes, "the invention and gift of God." They speak of vouoi aypaḍot, "unwritten laws," and ascribe both them and the laws which were introduced by their various legislators, to the gods. Xenophon represents it as the opinion of Socrates, that the unwritten laws received over the whole earth, which it was impossible that all mankind, as being of different languages, and not to be assembled in one place, should make, were given by the gods.(4) Plato is express on this subject. "After a certain flood, which but few escaped, on the increase of mankind, they had neither letters, writing, nor laws, but obeyed the manners and institutions of their fathers as laws; but when colonies separated from them, they took an elder for their leader,

and in their new settlements retained the customs of their ancestors, those especially which related to their gods: and thus transmitted them to their posterity; they imprinted them on the minds of their sons; and they did the same to their children. This was the origin of right laws, and of the different forms of government."(5)

This so exactly harmonizes with the Mosaic account, as to the flood of Noah, the origin of nations, and the Divine institution of religion and laws, that either the patriarchal traditions imbodied in the writings of Moses had gone down with great exactness to the times of Plato; or the writings of Moses were known to him; or he had gathered the substance of them in his travels from the Egyptian, the Chaldean, or the Magian philosophers.

Nor is this an unsupported hypothesis. The evidence is most abundant, that the primitive source from whence every great religious and moral truth was drawn, must be fixed in that part of the world where Moses places the dwelling of the patriarchs of the human race, who walked with God, and received the law from his mouth.(6) There, in the earliest times, civilization and polity were found, while the rest of the earth was covered with savage tribes,-a sufficient proof that Asia was the common centre from whence the rest of mankind dispersed, who, as they wandered from these primitive seats, and addicted themselves more to the chase than to agriculture, became in most instances barbarous.(7)

In the multifarious and bewildering superstitions of all nations we also discover a very remarkable substratum of common tradition and religious faith.

The practice of sacrifice, which may at once be traced into all nations, and to the remotest antiquity, affords an eminent proof of the common origin of religion; inasmuch as no reason drawn from the nature of the rite itself, or the circumstances of men, can be given for the universality of the practice: and as it is clearly a positive institute, and opposed to the interests of men, it can only be accounted for by an injunction, issued at a very early period of the world, and solemnly imposed. This injunction, indeed, received a force, either from its original appointment, or from subsequent circumstances, from which the human mind could never free itself. "There continued," says Dr. Shuckford, "for a long time among the nations usages which show that there had been an ancient universal religion; several traces of which appeared in the rites and ceremonies which were observed in religious worship. Such was the custom of sacrifices expiatory and precatory, both the sacrifice of animals and the oblations of wine, oil, and the fruits and products of the earth. These and other things which were in use among the patriarchs obtained also among the Gentiles.".

The events, and some of the leading opinions of the earliest ages, mentioned in Scripture, may also be traced among the most barbarous, as well as in the Ori

(4) Xen. Mem. lib. 4, cap. 4, sect. 19, 20.-To the same effect is that noble passage of Cicero cited by Lac-ental, the Grecian, and the Roman systems of mythotantius out of his work De Republica.

logy. Such are the FORMATION OF THE WORLD; the FALL AND CORRUPTION OF MAN; the hostility of a powerful and supernatural agent of wickedness under his appropriate and scriptural emblem, the SERPENT; the DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD BY WATER; the REPEO

(5) De Leg. 3.

"Est quidem vera lex, recta ratio, naturæ congruens, diffusa in oranes, constans, sempiterna, quæ vocet ad officium jubendo, vetando a fraude deterreat; quæ tamen neque probos frustra jubet, aut vetat; nec improbos jubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi nec abrogari fas est; nec derogari ex hac aliquid licet; neque tota abrogari potest. Nec vero aut per senatum, aut (6) The East was the source of knowledge from per populum solvi hac lege possumus; neque est qua- whence it was communicated to the western parts of the rendus explanator, aut interpres ejus alius. Nec enim world. There the most precious remains of ancient traalia lex Romæ, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac; sed dition were found. Thither the most celebrated Greek et omnes gentes, et omni tempore, una lex et sempi- philosophers travelled in quest of science, or the knowterna, et immutabilis continebit; unusque erit commu-ledge of things divine and human, and thither the lawnis quasi magister et imperator omnium Deus, ille legis givers had recourse, in order to their being instructed hujus inventor, disceptator, lator; cui qui non parebit, in laws and civil policy."-LELAND. ipse se fugiet, ac naturam hominis aspernabitur; atque hoc ipso luet maximas pænas, etiamsi cætera supplicia, quæ putantur, effugerit." From which it is clear that Cicero acknowledged a law antecedent to all human civil institutions, and independent of them, binding upon all, constant and perpetual, the same in all times and places, not one thing at Rome and another at Athens; of an authority so high that no human power had the right to alter or annul it; having God for its author, in his character of universal master and sovereign; taking hold of the very consciences of men, and following them with its animadversious, though they should escape the hand of man and thenalties of human codes. ¦ other.

(7) The speculations of infidels as to the gradual progress of the original men from the savage life, and the invention of language, arts, laws, &c., have been too much countenanced by philosophers bearing the name of Christ, some of them even holding the office of teachers of his religion. The writings of Moses sufficiently show that there never was a period in which the original tribes of men were in a savage state, and the gradual process of the developement of a higher condition is a chimera. To those who profess to believe the Scriptures, their testimony ought to be sufficient: to those who do not, they are at least as good history as any

PLING OF IT BY THE SONS OF NOAH; the EXPECTATION OF ITS FINAL DESTRUCTION BY FIRE; and, above all, the promise of a great and Divine DELIVERER.(8)

The only method of accounting for this is, that the same traditions were transmitted from the progenitors of the different families of mankind after the flood; that in some places they were strengthened and the impressions deepened by successive revelations, which assumed the first traditions, as being of Divine original, for their basis, and thus renewed the knowledge which had formerly been communicated, at the very time they enlarged it: and farther, that from the written revelations which were afterward made to one people, some rays of reflected light were constantly glancing upon the surrounding nations.

Nor are we at a loss to trace this communication of truth from a common source to the Gentile nations; and also to show that they actually did receive accessions of information, both directly and indirectly, from a people who retained the primitive theological system in its greatest purity.

We shall see sufficient reasons, when we come to speak on that subject, to conclude that all mankind have descended from one common pair.

If man is now a moral agent, the first man must be allowed to have been a moral agent, and, as such, under rules of obedience, in which rules it is far more probable, that he should be instructed by his Maker by means of direct communication, than that he should be left to collect the will of his Maker from observation and experience. Those who deny the Scripture account of the introduction of death into the world, and think the human species were always liable to it, are bound to admit a revelation from God to the first pair as to the wholesomeness of certain fruits, and the destructive habits of certain animals, or our first progenitors would have been far more exposed to danger from deleterious fruits, &c., and in a more miserable condition through their fears, than any of their descendants, because they were without experience, and could have no information.(9) But it is far more probable, that they should have express information as to the will of God concerning their conduct; for until they had settled, by a course of rational induction, what was right and what wrong, they could not, properly speaking, be moral agents; and from the difficulties of such an inquiry, especially until they had had a long experience of the steady course of nature, and the effect of certain actions upon themselves and society, they might possibly arrive at very different conclusions.(1)

But in whatever way the moral and religious knowledge of the first man was obtained, if he is allowed to have been under an efficient law, he must at least have known, in order to the right regulation of himself, every truth essential to religion, and to personal, domestic, and social morals. The truth on these subjects was as essential to him as to his descendants, and more especially because he was so soon to be the head and the paternal governor, by a natural relation, of a numerous race, and to possess, by virtue of that office, great influence over them. If we assume, therefore, that the knowledge of the first man was taught to his children, and it were the greatest absurdity to suppose the contrary, then, whether he received his information on the principal doctrines of religion and the principal rules of morals by express revelation from God, or by the exercise of his own natural powers, all the great principles of religion, and of personal, domestic, and social morals, must have been at once communicated to his children immediately descending from him; and we clearly enough see the reason why the earliest writers, on these subjects never pretend to have been the discoverers of the leading truths of morals and religion, but speak of them as opinions familiar to men, and generally received. This primitive religious and moral system, as far as regards first principles and all their important particular applications, was also complete, or there had been neither efficient religion nor morality in the first ages, which is contrary to all tradition and to all history; and that this system was actually trans

(8) See note A, at the end of this chapter.

(9) See DELANEY'S Revelation examined with Candour, Dissertations 1 and 2.

(1) "It is very probable," says Puffendorf," that God taught the first men the chief heads of natural law" B

mitted is clear from this, that the wisdom of very early ages consisted not so much in natural and speculative science as in moral notions, rules of conduct, and an acquaintance with the opinions of the wise of still earlier periods.

The few persons through whom this system was transmitted to Noah (for, in fact, Methuselah was contemporary both with Adam and Noah) rendered any great corruption impossible; and therefore, the crimes charged upon the antediluvians are violence, and other immoralities, rather than the corruption of truth; and Noah was "a preacher of righteousness," rather than a restorer of doctrine.

The flood, (2) being so awful and marked a declaration of God's anger against the violation of the laws of this primitive religion, would give great force and sanction to it as a religious system, in the minds of Noah's immediate descendants. The existence of God; his providence; his favour to the good; his anger against evil-doers; the great rules of justice and mercy; the practice of a sacrificial worship; the observance of the Sabbath; the promise of a deliverer, and other similar tenets, were among the articles and religious rites of this primitive system: nor can any satisfactory account be given why they were transmitted to so many people in different parts of the world; why they have continued to glimmer through the darkness of paganism to this day; why we find them more or less recognised in the mythology, traditions, and customs of almost all ages, ancient and modern, except that they received some original sanction of great efficacy, deeply fixing them in the hearts of the patriarchs of all the families of men. Those who deny the revelations contained in the Scriptures have no means of accounting for these facts, which in themselves are indisputable. They have no theory respecting them which is not too childish to deserve serious refutation, and they usually prefer to pass them over in silence. But the believer in the Bible can account for them, and he alone. The destruction of wicked men by the flood put the seal of Heaven upon the religious system transmitted from Adam; and under the force of this Divine and unequivocal attestation of its truth, the sons and descendants of Noah went forth into their different settlements, bearing for ages the deep impression of its sanctity and authority. The impression, it is true, at length gave way to vice, superstition, and false philosophy; but superstition perverted truth rather than displaced it; and the doctrines, the history, and even the hopes of the first ages were never entirely banished even from those fables which became baleful substitutes for their simplicity.

In the family of Abraham the true God was acknowledged. Melchizedeck was the sovereign of one of the nations of Canaan, and priest of the Most High God; and his subjects must, therefore, have been worshippers of the true Divinity. Abimelech, the Philistine, and his people, both in Abraham's days and in Isaac's, were also worshippers of Jehovah, and acknowledged the same moral principles which were held sacred in the elect family. The revelations and promises made to Abraham would enlarge the boundaries of religious knowledge, both among the descendants of Ishmael, and those of his sons by Keturah; as those made to Shem would, with the patriarchal theology, be transmitted to his posterity-the Persians, Assyrians, and Mesopotamians.(3) In Egypt, even in the days of Joseph, he and the king of Egypt speak of the true God as of a being mutually known and acknowledged.

(2) Whatever may be thought respecting the circumstances of the flood as mentioned by Moses, there is nothing in that event, considered as the punishment of a guilty race, and as giving an attestation of God's approbation of right principles and a right conduct, to which a consistent Theist can object. For if the wili of God is to be collected from observing the course of nature and providence, such signal and remarkable events in his government as the deluge, whether universal, or only co-extensive with the existing race of men, may be expected to occur; and especially when an almost universal punishment, as connected with an almost universal wickedness, so strikingly indicated an observant and a righteous government.

(3) See Bishop HORSLEY'S Dissertations before referred to; and LELAND'S View of the Necessity of Rovelation, part i. chap. 2.