inconsiderable degree, in some religious communities: if he doth, he will be very ready, upon conviction, to acknowledge his error. Nor would he by any means insinuate that pious and sensible ministers of this class preach nothing else but these principles: he only means to intimate that they frequently constitute a leading part of their public discourses. Now, let us suppose, on the other hand, a Bishop Taylor or a Wilkins, a Clarke or a Tillotson, a Whichcote or a Foster, a Price or a Paley, engaged in the same design. He would probably, like the great founder of Christianity, begin with deducing his instructions from the things around him, and lead his hearers from nature, up to nature's God: he would display the wonders of creation, and the different effects which they produce, upon the mind of the attentive, and of the superficial observer:* he would expatiate on the nature and perfections of the Deity, as far as discoverable by us; his unity, and supremacy, his infinite power, preserice, wisdom, and goodness; and when they had arrived at some tolerable acquaintance with, and conviction of those important and fundamental principles, he would proceed to demonstrate the justice and holiness of God, the essential and unalterable distinction between moral good and evil, the obligation of gratitude to the Supreme Being for all his benefits, the necessity and advantage of constant and humble 'prayer in all created natures, and more especially in so frail, fallible, and dependent a being as man, not only as an essential means of religion, but as an integral and constituent part of it, and of conformity to the image of the great and glorious Being whom we wor ship, in all his imitable excellencies and perfections: he would proceed to demonstrate the evident traces of a moral, government, begun, but not consummated in the system around us, and the consequent inferences which wise men in all ages have hence deduced in favour of the belief in a future state of rewards and punishments; the natural equality of mankind, as creatures of the same God, endowed with powers and faculties alike in kind, though different in degree, and apparently designed for the same glorious end, and at the same time the necessary subordination of ranks in society, arising from the very constitution of human nature, our different talents, capacities and inclinations, and the prodigious variety of labours and occupations requisite in the circumstances in which we are placed; the sacredness of property, the necessity and advantage of civil order, and just government; our social and relative duties, as parents and children, masters and servants, subjects and rulers, neighbours, relatives, and friends; the evils and mischiefs arising from polygamy, adultery, and promiscuous concubinage; the harmony of families where two only are joined in wedlock; the benefits thence arising to the children and servants; and the probability of an original law in this behalf, from the great Creator, who manifests simplicity and harmony in all his designs and operations: he would dwell on the beauty and necessity of public as well as of personal and family worship; how admirably adapted it is to serve the cause of religion and morality; how it "wipes off the rust of the week," and attaches man to man in more close and intimate bonds: then he would lay before them a moral chart of the world we inhabit, and, perhaps, sometimes in private, a natural one; he would describe the different situations, climates, advantages and disadvantages of the globe; he would acquaint thereby to afford them just views of them with the outlines of astronomy, the grandeur and immensity of the universe; he would lead them from world to world, and from system to system, from this small speck of earth, to worlds and suns above, will then gradually unfold the history He would now proceed to consider the different religions in the world, and to shew that all nations have some religion: he would demonstrate that the Deity has various me thods of communicating his mind and will to his rational offspring, always and every where by the objects of nature, the course of Providence, and the powers of reason and conscience, sometimes by the instrumentality of superior beings, called angels, who have appeared occasionally in a glorious, and at other times in a human form; but that, as our present faculties are weak and imperfect, and we can scarcely bear the effulgence of angelic, and still less of Divine glory, he hath been graciously pleased for the most part to speak to us by the medium of sages, patriarchs, and prophets, men in all respects like ourselves, except in those extraordinary and supernatural powers with which they were occasionally endowed, and by means of which they were enabled to point out with authority the path of duty to an ignorant and benighted race, who, by neglecting the natural notices of God, and his Providence, and of their duty and expectations, had departed from their allegiance, and rendered themselves obnoxious to his displeasure he will show the evils of paganism, as a corruption of the true primitive religion, the absurdity of bowing down to stocks and stones, as to visible gods, which our hands have formed; for, how can those things help us, which, though we cannot create, we can alter or destroy? and even the folly of worshipping the host of heaven, which, though essentially serviceable to man by their benign influences, appear to be as much under a law, as the elements of fire and water which are more immediately under our cognizance: he He will represent the former and the latter prophets, and especially the great prophet of Nazareth and his apostles, as proving their Divine commission, by the performance of incontestible miracles-a species of evidence of which they will readily perceive the force and importance, when they are convinced that all things are equally subject to the Divine jurisdiction; that the same power which created, can easily change or destroy♦ and that none can work a true miracle but God, or those commissioned by him that therefore a miracle is an occasional departure from the common course of nature, by a Divine interposition, in attestation of the authority of a particular person, or for the accomplishment of some important moral purpose, immediate or remote: that, if they were to see four thousand persons fed in a : wilderness, without any apparent adequate means, a withered arm instantly "made whole as the other," or a dead body raised to life again, they must needs be assured of a Divine interposition: that if this were to happen now, it would be equally true 1800 years hence, and to all eternity, and that therefore, if it happened 1800 years ago, it is equally true now, and that we have all the evidence of the reality of these events, from testimony and a legitimate and infallible tradition, which, at this distance of time, the nature of the thing will admit of: that to doubt of the truth of miracles in former ages, because we see none at present, is the most foolish thing in the world, and a principle which would lead us to deny every thing but what we curselves behold: that an ignorant native of a burning climate might find it difficult, if not impossible to conceive, how water should ever be converted into a solid mass; yet that this is au absolute fact, which such persons ought to believe, upon the testimony of sufficient and credible reporters: that a person brought up in a mine might deny there was such a body as the sun, a man born blind, that there was such a thing as light, or one ignorant of letters, that language and sentiments could be transported to incalculable distances, without the sid of voice or sound: that the wonders of creation, of which we are daily witnesses, prove a sovereign and uncontrolable Power, who, for wise and obvious reasons does not think proper to depart from those fixed laws which he hath appointed, except in particular cases: that the creation of the world was a miracle in the eye of intelligent beings, then existing, and that a miracle may now take place before they are aware: that the solid ground may instantly give way under their feet, and they may sink into an unfathomable abyss: that the healthful air may become baleful and pestiferous, the sun descend to the earth, and burn it up with fire unquenchable, and afterwards himself be quenched in a mighty ocean, as a twinkling taper in the slender stream! and that all this would certainly happen, and the material universe become an absolute blank, should the Creator once withdraw his energy, or should not his wisdom and goodness continue to regulate and control the exercise of his power. He will point out to them the imitable as well as the peculiar and distinguishing character of Christ, his profound humility and submission to the Divine will, his perfect purity, his heavenly mindedness, his unlimited benevolence, and universal charity, extending even to his enemies, persecutors and murderers, the exalted state to which he is now advanced, and the important consequences that will ensue at his second glorious appearance, the superadditions which are made by the gospel to former systems, natural or revealed, not only in the charity of its precepts, and the immensity of its promises and prospects, but also, as to some of its essential forms and characteristics, namely, that although we may sometimes pray to God, considered only as Creator and Rector of the universe, in which practice the Lord's prayer itself will justify us, which appears to be founded in the principles of simple theism; yet, we are obliged more frequently in private, and invariably in the public religious assemblies, to pray as Christians-that is, in the name of Christ, and with a due regard to his person, character and sufferings, his mediation and intercession, principles often alluded to and inculcated in the New Testament, though we may not always fully comprehend their import, seeing they are such as "the angels desire to contemplate," and must ever be careful not to interpret the passages relating to them, and which are sometimes evidently figurative and metaphorical, in any sense inconsistent with, or dishonourable to the character of the Supreme Deity, who, as he is in himself the great source of all being and perfection, so, he is the original author of all the benefits we derive from the Christian dispensation, which are the effects and not the causes of his infinite and essential benevolence: and that without this open profession of Christian principles, "in the great congregation," we shall not only be guilty of high ingratitude to God, and to the Redeemer, but that also, by this unwarrantable omission, the churches of Christ may in the succession of time be converted into assemblies of Deists, or degene rate into a similarity with the schools of the heathen philosophers. He will often impress upon their minds that the doctrines and duties of the gospel are few and simple, but the methods of enforcing and illustrating them, multiform and indefinite; and hence the necessity and utility of an order of men set apart (primi inter pares) as ministers of Divine things, subject at all times to the authority of the great and only head of the church, and to the genuine dictates of the sacred writers; together with the beautiful simplicity and fitness of the two positive ordinances of the gospel, as admirably calculated, in connection with public worship and instruction, to preserve and maintain it in the world. the sea: that frost and snow in the northern regions fructify the earth, and make it approach in the succeeding seasons, to the paradisaical appearance of more genial and salubrious climes that earthquakes, though dreadful in themselves, are rare and partial, may render contiguous portions of ground more stable and secure, sometimes expose new land, more than they have taken away, and produce many valuable ends in the moral world, by alarming the careless and inconsiderate, who are not affected by the common course of nature and Providence: that those who die by these calamities will be impartially dealt with in a future state, and that their uncommon and painful lot may possibly serve to diminish the punishment of their iniquity hereafter: nor are we ever to judge of the character or future destination of individuals, by the nature or degree of their sufferings in the present world, where, in many respects, "all things come alike to all." That sometimes natural evil arises from natural good, and that we cannot enjoy the one, without danger of the other: that if the system of the universe is maintained by the same law which causes a stone unsupported to fall from the top of a hill, this law may be the occasion of serious accidents or death in particular cases: that if the fire is to warm us at a distance, and to dress our food, it must be something of prodigious force and efficacy, and which will necessarily hurt or destroy those substances or beings which approach too near it, or unheedingly rush into its bosom: that if the water is to assuage our thirst, to quench the raging flames, to serve the important purposes of navigation and commerce, and to answer many other valuable ends, it will sometimes, from the effect of winds and tides, overflow its banks, and must needs suffocate those animals which are immersed in it, and whose organs are not fitted to live in this element: that in a state of primitive If any of these children of nature, whose spiritual wants we are now contemplating, more sagacious and inquisitive than the rest, should ask how so much evil can arise, under the dominion of an all-wise, gracious, and infinitely powerful Being? the faithful minister will reply, that natural evil is, in one view, a mark of the degeneracy of the mundane system, on account of the transgression of its first in habitants, serving as a perpetual and awful manifestation of the Divine displeasure on that account; of which there appears striking and ample proof in the disorders of the elements, the infirmities of human nature, the general prevalence of death, the discord of the lower orders of beings around us, the peculiar sufferings of women, the necessity of extreme and painful labour in some of the various concerns and avocations of life, which often destroys the individual prema turely, and of animal food to the sustenance of man; none of which circumstances we can reasonably suppose to have taken place in his first state, or to have constituted a part of the original plan of Providence, and of which they will know more, when they shall have become acquainted with the history of the old world, and better understand the methods of the Divine administration: that even here the Deity brings good out of evil: that by the increasing knowledge of the laws of nature, and the progressive improvements in society, painful and excessive labour becomes much diminished: that storms, tempests and volcanoes purify the air and of expatiating upon them. How it is "Though winter had been none, had And carth be punished for its tenants* man been true, sake Yet, not in vengeance!” COWPER. + The reader may perhaps think these cases are so plain, that there was no need innocence, man must have been liable to accidents, from his very frame and constitution, though we have reason to believe he was then in the possession of sufficient means to prevent their fatal effects, of which at present we are entirely ignorant: that nevertheless in our fallen state, the Deity hath graciously provided many remedies, both in the contexture of our animal bodies, and in the science of medicine, that a broken bone placed in a due position, will unite of itself; that a deep wound, will, in common cases, if properly closed, heal without any further trouble; and a deeper still, attended with loss of substance, by suitable manage ment, be gradually restored: that there are medicines adapted to every organ of the human frame, to assuage the raging fever, to brace the debili tated fibres, to remove or tranquillize slight pains, and imperiously to command a truce in the most grievous sufferings that " flesh is heir to:" that sickness often ends in confirmed health, and that "to the righteous, death is the gate of life." That moral evil arises from the neglect or abuse of our rational faculties and voluntary powers, which every man knows and finds by his own bitter experience, and which, as far as he has been a means of producing, he has no one to blame for but himself: that the sufferings which we endure from natural evil, or from the moral evil of others, often tend to our own good, and will serve, if patiently borne, to increase our future reward; and that the Deity hath provided for the reduction of the latter, by means of religion: that we have reason to think it is gradually decreasing, at least as to some of its prominent and flagrant enormitiessuch as war, tyranny, persecution, and slavery: that, in this view, even the present world may be approximating to a paradisaical state; and that the Almighty hath doubtless prepared with him, is uncertain; but the writer has often heard (otherwise) sensible persons inquire, why Providence should suffer an ancient tenement to fall in upon its inhabitants, or good men to be shipwrecked, burnt, or drowned! The argumeut has also been lately alluded to in this work by the eloquent Mr. Howe. means for this purpose, in the depths of eternal ages, of which, at present, we can form no conception. That the evil of imperfection is incident to all created beings, and indeed inseparable from their very nature: that it is probable the sublimest intelligencies have passed through a state of trial before they arrived at their supreme felicity, because holiness by influx, or without the co-operation of our own powers, would make a rational being a mere machine, which, though it might indeed render him happy, could never constitute him a moral agent, or worthy of praise; and that though none but God is impeccable, yet, by long established habits of virtue, a perfect freedom from temptation, and the benefits of correspondent society, rational beings may attain to a state of holiness and happiness, from which it is morally impossible that they should ever deviate: and that this is the state we call heaven, "which is first a temper, and then a place."* That the happiness of heaven, as it will be proportioned to our attainments and the improvement of our talents, hath the nature of a reward; but as it is the possession of immortal life, is a "free gift," and the restoration, through Jesus Christ, of a forfeited inheritance. He will teach them that in contemplating human nature we should equally guard against a pharisaical pride and a false humility; that the gospel clearly ascertains what reason suggests, that man is placed here as a candidate for futurity; that he is a compound being; that by his capacity for religion and his virtuous affections he is allied to the angels, by his animal propensities to the brutes, by the vices of the spirit-pride, ambition, envy, malice and revenge, to something which men have generally agreed to term diabolical: that from this wonderful composition result great dangers and prodigions hopes; that though bad habits have often a fatal, and good ones a transforming efficacy, yet neither of That the Deity hath "gifts even for them have a necessitating influence: the rebellious," and much more for those who love and serve him, to whom he will shew the secrets of that though true re his covenant:" Whichcote. |