all they may very probably resemble their author, whose name is Legion: yet I apprehend they will all be found reducible to the four following heads, 1. of Infidelity; 2. Enthusiasm; 3. Lukewarmness; and 4. Superstition. 1. For promoting the first of these, Infidelity, there are and have been many agents at work, who all agree in the same general mistake of ascribing to natural reason a power which it hath not, and an office with which it was never invested. Man, they tell us, as a creature accountable to his Maker, is under the direction of his own nature, and not under that of a divine light and authority*. But if nature were now in its perfect state, it doth by no neans follow that it would be a lawgiver to itself; it being far the most reasonable to believe, that the mind, even of Adam himself before his fall, stood as much in need of a divine light to reveal heavenly things to it, as the eyes of his body needed the light of the sun, in order to discover terrestrial objects. If nature is now imperfect, they can be none of its friends who would impose upon it the fruitless labour of working without *The heathens have said many things which will rise up in judg ment against our modern Deists, who go to greater lengths for the most part than ever the heathens did. Nec natura potest justo secernere iniquum, HOR. lib. i. sat. iii. Pliny, in the preface to his 7th book, speaking of human nature, hath these and other remarkable words:- -flens animal-a sup pliciis vitam auspicatur, unam tantùm ob culpam quia natum est. Heu dementiam ab iis initiis existimantium ad superbiam se geni tos!-Cætera sentire naturam suam, alia pernicitatem usurpare, alia præpetes volatus, alia vires, alia nare: hominem scire nihil sine doc. trinâ, non fari, non ingredi, non vesci breviterque non aliud naturæ sponte quam flere- light, and with a depraved judgment, in order to forge its own religion. That human reason cannot furnish itself with truth out of its own stores, will appear best from an undoubted matter of fact; namely, that it is in many cases unable to distinguish that truth which is offered to it; after which it will hardly be expected, at least by any christian disputant, that reason should be able to invent, what of itself it hath not power to receive. The history of past ages, and the experience of the present, would supply us with many notable examples to this purpose, bnt I shall propose to you no more than one. The doctrine of the resurrection gives life and importance to the whole body of religion; without this, all other speculations have small power to affect us, and are but of little value in a world subject to death and dissolution. In the natural creation a variety of resurrections are exhibited to our senses. The light of every day dies and rises again: the body of man sleeps and wakes, emerging as it were every morning from a temporary death: seeds and roots which lie buried in the earth spring up again, and are quickened out of corruption in the autumn, the whole verdure of the summer falls dead upon the ground, but returns to its former state at the appearance of the spring. So that if the reasoning faculties of men could have inferred with precision any spiritual truth from an analogy in nature (the only proper ground of natural religion), it must have been this of a resurrection; which yet did never make any part of the religion or philosophy of the heathens. This doctrine was at length preached to them by St. Paul upon unques. tionable authority: but we are told, that when they heard of the resurrection of the dead they mocked.* It was the best intelligence ever brought into the world: it was published at Athens, a seat of learning, by as great an orator as ever spoke: all nature suggests and confirms the truth of it: but philosophers, through wisdom, neither believed nor understood it! Human reason then, viewing things by its own light, could neither discover this doctrine nor receive it. The first of these defects demonstrates its impotence, the second its corruption. Yet it is trusted to, as if it were capable of dictating infallibly upon the highest subjects. It is boasted of as all-sufficient by the whole tribe of Deists: and alas! it is sometimes recommended in a strain not much inferior by divines, that is, by some men who speak out of a pulpit: from whence I am well assured it hath given great offence to the christianly-affected part of the laity: many of whom having laid a much greater stress than either prudence or charity will warrant upon the example of a few, and I hope but a few clergymen have wandered from the temple in search of better intelligence at the tabernacle. The office our unbelievers have assigned to reason, is that of knowing and judging of things by inspection or intuition whence it is plain, they either know not the proper use of reason, or think it their interest to misrepresent it. For to reason, is to investigate the truth or falsehood of any proposition, by comparing it with its evidence; and this evidence ought to be some fact, of which the outward senses are competent judges. But, to consider any proposition abstracted from its evidence, as they consider the doctrines of revelation, is not to reason, but to ima * Acts xvii. 32. ! gine and conjecture: in which case, appetite, passion, prejudice, and interest, will have the place of evidence; wit, ridiculè, and a few splendid expressions, will have the place of argument; and opinion, not knowledge, will be the result of all. Therefore God never appeals to our reason as to an absolute judge of the propriety of what is revealed; but applies to it through the senses, with such evidence as cannot be resisted*: after which reason hath nothing more to do with the contents of revelation, than to search the scripture, and implore the divine grace that it may be enabled to understand and see the fitness of them. It was wisely and piously observed by the great Lord Verulamt, that if we believe only what is agreeable to our own apprehension of things, we give consent to the matter and not to the author; which is no more than we should allow to a suspected or discredited witness: but that faith which was accounted to Abraham for righteousness, was of such a point as whereat Sarah laughed; who therein was an image of natural reason. If you are attentive to the distinction between knowledge and opinion, and also between the use of reason and the abuse of it, you will be able to see through most of the workings of infidelity, and be secured against the delusion of it. You will likewise see the reason, why they who are infidels in respect to the christian mysteries, are frequently sceptics at large in respect of other things: this being the natural consequence of their method, which is radically absurd, and can lead them regularly to no conclusion whatsoever. me. * The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of John x. 25. + Adv. of Learn. 2. But we are now to be upon our guard against another species of deceivers, the Enthusiasts of the present age. Wise men have observed, that extremes naturally produce one another. Reason is now exalted to a super-eminence which it never possessed before in the Christian world. It aspires, like Lucifer, to be higher than God himself; and in the attempt frequently falls below the measures of common sense. The enthusiast observing this, determines to make no use of it but delivers himself up wholly to divine impulses and immediate revelations. He thinks himself so filled with the power of religion as to be above the forms of it. He is for taking Christ as his saviour, without submitting to (and generally without understanding) the rules of his gospel as the necessary conditions of his salvation. He values the grace of God, but despises the outward means by which it is administered; and thereby reduces himself to the miserable dilemma of being unable to distinguish between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. The grace of God, by his own appointment, is always conveyed to us through some outward and visible institutions, which serve as pledges to assure us of its reality, and as signs or marks to secure us from all deceit and imposition. Our blessed Saviour, by his own immediate authority, hath given us an outward church, an outward ministry, an outward baptism, an outward communion, an outward revelation; and hath appointed the fruit of good works, visible to all men, as the external witness of our internal adoption. His religion is of a like nature to man for whose benefit it was designed: it consists of a soul and a body, and if these are separated, death is the consequence. The enthusiast however cannot set up for himself till |