out of fashion. Seldom in public, and never in private, do we hear a single bar of their compositions, nor any thing that hath the resemblance of them. No, all is tweedledum, tweedledee, jingle, jangle.

As

9. Much the same is the case of religion, which, like man, to whom it was sent, came forth at once in simplicity and perfection, and hath ever since been subtilized and corrupted by priestcraft, and inventions of men; still more prone through vanity and their other vices to accommodate religion to themselves, than themselves to religion, excepting when God was pleased to interpose, and revive among mankind a due sense of its original simplicity and spirit. And now what have we for it? Nothing but a subject of pretended dispute, for which we care not a straw, any farther than to make a shew of our own ingenuity in striking out new whims, and defending them with a fancied superiority of refinement. Just because we have espoused it, we quarrel about it with any one who sets up for a familiarity with it, though perhaps he cares as little for our old wife, as we do ourselves. the cross of Christ was a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks, so his humility, and all his other virtues, are so many stumbling blocks to our detestable passions, and downright foolishness to our philoshphical imaginations. Its mysteries serve us for so many bones of contention, about which we snarl and dispute, just because we do not understand them, but only as so many objections to the religion, of which they appear to make a part, although we know, or ought to know, that our faith is by no means concerned with any doctrine of religion, but so far forth only as we are able easily to understand it. As to the foreknowledge of God, one of the mysteries of natural religion, as it is called, and as to the peculiarly Christian mysteries of the Trinity, the incarnation, and the resurrection, we perfectly understand the propositions wherein they are delivered, and have more than sufficient reason to believe them on God's word, though we can no more account for them, than for the rolling of our eyes, but should believe them as there is not so much as a shadow of inutility, inconsistency, or contradiction in any of them. It is a great doubt with me, whether, on all other subjects half so much nonsense hath been spoken and written, as on that of religion; but sure I am, that in this instance, it is more impious than any other. Perhaps the grossest proofs of this are those, so often repeated from one infidel to another, wherein they confidently

assert it as their primary and fundamental axiom, that the unin structed, unassisted light of natural reason is a sufficient guide to man in all matters of religion and morality, to all men, the low and illiterate, as well as the learned. O ye philosophical infidels, how much do you make yourselves accountable for? Is man as God made him? Is he able, of himself, and by the light of nature alone, to find out the true religion, that is, on all occasions, instantly and on the spot to know what he ought to think, speak and do, to promote the glory of his Maker, and insure his own real happiness? For himself, and all other men, ideots and madmen excepted, he boldly answers, Yes; and by this answer obliges himself to justify all the opinions of his predecessors in philosophy, howsoever contrary to one another, howsoever destructive of morality and common honesty, they have been, particularly those of the Sceptics, to whom truth and certainty in every thing were but dreams; and those of the Epicureaus, who threw a dye for the creation, and gave the universe to blind chance; to justify all the religions of Jews, Mahometans, Pagans, and why not of Christians too? To justify the adoration of sticks, stones, devils; to justify the rites of Venus in Cyprus, of Adonis on Mount Aphac, of Flora at Rome, whose priestesses were naked strumpets; in all which the most enormous lewdness was practised as solemn acts of devotion; to justify human sacrifices, particularly of children, burnt alive by their own parents, an horrible species of worship, which obtained every where, among the Assyrians, Persians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, &c. All these things, we know, were done, not only by here and there a single fool, but by whole nations, the most civilized and polished, who could boast the light of nature in an higher degree of perfection, than our present Deists, as is evident by their works, still extant in history, poetry, architecture, sculpture, &c. The advocates of the uninstructed light of nature must also patronise their brethren the canibals, those undebauched children of nature, in their goodly practice of fattening, killing, and eating the flesh of other men. This horrible piece of barbarity is as natural, as their sacrificing their children to their gods. Here I cannot help thinking of Laban, a man who ought to have known somewhat better, pursuing his daughters for stealing his gods! stolen gods! cunning Laban, wert thou in earnest? These were little household divinities, about the size of a man's thumb, which Rachel concealed under her breech for the sake of so much

metal, possibly to re-cast them into a utensil for the same situation, Miserable! that any man should trouble himself about such trifling trumpery! Had they been like the strapping gods of Nebuchadnezzar, or the Rhodian Apollo, their quantity of gold or brass might have given them a proportionable consequence, Now, you advocate for the unaided light of nature, either prove that all this, and ten thousand times more of the same kind, was perfectly rational and right; or give up the boasted sufficiency of that light for the important purposes of religion, virtue, and human happiness; and look out for some other light, more adequate to those purposes. Here, however you cry out, Hath not revelation been attended with as great a number of extravagancies, equally derogatory to God, and destructive of human happiness? I answer, By no means; yet confess, with so many and so great, that could they be at all charged to the account of revelation, and not wholly and justly retorted on yourself, I should throw away my pen, sit down in scepticism, and let the vessel drive. Far from patronizing the heretics, I insist, and all men must second me therein, that their opinions, at worst, were rational, and their practices innocent, in comparison of those I charge on your light of nature, which you insist, was all the light that mankind ever had, and you must vindicate, or give it up. But really and truly, not a single heresy among us all can be, with any colour of justice traced up to revelation, but to the obliquity and debauchery of that natural light, so idolized by yourself. You must own, that all men, calling themselves Christians, had that light, as well as you. How then, on your own axiom, could they possibly have deviated into so many differences and absurdities in regard to Christianity, every one of which you are obliged to defend, and indeed are ever ready to do it, but on occasions like the present, wherein you are distressed for an evasion, and vainly endeavour to turn the attack made on you into an objection to revelation. Take what course you will, the utter insufficiency of your natural light must for ever recoil upon you, as well from our heresies, as your own idolatries, with redoubled force. Talk no more about your light, which suffers us all to stray into every species of folly and wickedness, and so poorly defends its own aberrations. The light in a quaker lantern, though with singed windows, the dimmest light that ever presumed to call itself Christian, and indeed somewhat of kin to your own, is worth a thousand of it. It is to me most astonishing, how your natural knowledge of religion, so

far as religion is good for any thing, your natural knowledge of moral rectitude and obliquity in you and every other mortal, so clear and so well backed by the truth of actions; "the eternal fitness of things, and of actions to things; the sense of beauty in virtue, which sufficiently rewards itself, and of deformity in vice which sufficiently punishes itself, in the instant of either performance or committal; together with the strong moral sympathy," that natural instinct, whereby you feel through one another, as if you all had but one and the same heart; it is, I say, astonishing, that all these should have tolerated among you (for I speak, as you do, of all men) so many rapes, robberies, murders, wars, &c. in all ages of the world. Priestcraft, you say, accounts for it all. For a great deal, I confess, but not the thousandth part of it. But now (as to so much of it, or the whole, if you please), as you charge it to the account of priestcraft, I beg to know, how the artifice of priests could possibly have stolen in upon a world, so enlightened, so animated for virtue, and against vice such a mass of detested enormities, and so generally practised? How could it have carried with it a single individual, not to say, almost the whole human race, into the general practice of the most venial transgressions? On your way of talking, it might be as easy to kidnap nine tenths of our congress, and our parliament, the chief governor among the rest, at noonday, in the sight of all our army and volunteers, to ship them for America, and to sell them there for a shilling a-piece of paper money. Should any thing like justice be ever done to this state of our argument, it would certainly induce a wish, that revelation were resumed, were it not that revelation is considered as a satire on mankind, drawn forth from the bad hearts of those who have handed it to us; whereas the advocates of natural light, as if they had sat to themselves, give us so flattering a picture of mankind, so overrun with benevolence, and all the other virtues, so philosophical, so wise, so very good, that for our own credit, we cannot help admiring it as perfectly just and extremely like ourselves. To find fault with it is too humiliating; or to allow, that the ugly picture, done for us by revelation, carries a greater resemblance, is to own ourselves a very sad sort of creatures; to renounce our vanity and pleasures, and to sneak off into an abject state of fear and penitence. And now, sir, how hath virtue thriven under the moral tweedledum of your ethic writers and its present echo from our pulpits? You perceive, I believe, that though our fine folks like that tune much better, than one of

Corellis Solemn Strains, performed to a hymn, they are not much disposed to take the floor and dance to it; and that the few who are, trouble themselves but little about either your favourite tune, or their own steps.

10. For my own part, I with grief and shame confess, that I rather know what wisdom is than am wise. Knowledge and wisdom are very different things. Although I perfectly know the way to a distant town, and all the by-paths that branch from that way, yet, in travelling thither, if my limbs are weak, I may stumble; or if my eyes are bad, or my attention dissipated, I may strike off into some of those paths. A man absolutely blind, by taking a great deal of care, and feeling after that way, might haply find it better than I. The true wisdom of man undoubtedly is this, first, to know what is that real happiness, in comparison of which all other enjoyments are but misery; secondly, to know how that happiness may be safely and surely obtained; and thirdly, in an uniform obedience of the heart and will to these two primary articles of wisdom, steadily to pursue the ways and means, pointed out by the second article, in order to the happy end. Nothing in mathematics admits of a clearer demonstration than this little chain of three links; and every thing in that, and other branches of knowledge, is infinitely trifling compared with this. The perpetual motion, the quadrature of the circle, and the longitude itself! what are they to this? Now, this wisdom is not to be derived but from the Father of lights;' and is no where to be found but in the true religion. To enjoy God to all eternity is true happiness. Christ, with the piety and virtue which he inculcates, is the only way to that happiness. The heart, the will, the whole soul, having received this doctrine from the understanding, with all their warmth, as coming immediately from Christ and his Holy Spirit, bear the man so high above this world, that he looks down at it as a very little thing, and on all the cares laid out upon it, and all the philosophy employed about it, as despicably trifling in themselves, and as fatally pernicious in their consequences. Yet this age of refinement in pride, vanity, and pleasure, must add philosophy to its other luxuries. Every blockhead must be a little Aristotle or Newton, just as every shopkeeper must affect the figure of a lord. But what would their philosophy avail them, if they could not erect it into a battery against religion? if it could not help them to stifle conscience, that troublesome inmate, so apt to clamour at knavery