good wishes and good deeds. It chargeth us to be quiet and orderly in our stations, diligent in our callings, veracious in our words, upright in our dealings, observant of our relations, obedient and respectful toward our superiors, meek and gentle to our inferiors, modest and lowly, candid and benign in our censures, courteous and obliging in all our behaviour toward all persons.1 It enjoineth us to have sober and moderate thoughts concerning ourselves, suitable to our total dependence upon God, to our own natural meanness and weakness; that we be content in every condition, and entertain patiently, at all events, yea, ac+ cept joyfully from God's hand whatever he reacheth us. It commandeth us to restrain our appetites, to be temperate in all our enjoyments, and finally to fix our thoughts, our desires, our endeavours, upon objects high and heavenly, pure and spiritual, stable and durable; "not to love the world and the things therein;" to be careful for nothing, but to cast all our care upon God's providence; not to trust in uncertain riches, but to have our treasure, our heart, our hope, our conversation, above in heaven.2 Practical Christianity may be comprised in three words: devotion, self-government, and benevolence. The love of God in the heart is the fountain from which these three streams of virtue flow.3 The light of revelation, which sets us right in 1 See Barrow, Serm. xvi. vol. 2. fol. 2 Ibid. many things, the manner whereof our poor reason can by no means make out to us.' It is impossible to say who would have been able to have reasoned out the whole system which we call natural religion; there is certainly no ground to affirm that the generality could; if they could, there is no sort of probability that they would. Admitting there were, they would highly want a standing admonition to remind them of it and inculcate it upon them; so that to say revelation is a thing superfluous, what there was no need of, and what can be of no service, is, I think, to talk quite wildly and at random.2 No revelation would have been given, had the light of nature been sufficient. No man, in seriousness and simplicity of mind, can possibly think it so, who considers the state of religion in the heathen world before revelation, and its present state in those places which have borrowed no light from it.3 God, in the New Testament, our best guide, is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent; and, in my poor mind, 't is best for us so to consider him, without indulging too bold conceptions of his nature. Before the Christian religion had, as it were, humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought it somewhat nearer to us, there was nothing said of the love of God.4 2 Butler, Anal. 196. 4 Burke, Works, i. 176. 1 Locke. 3 Ibid. 195. What proved Jesus Christ the Son of God hardly less than his miracles? His moral precepts.1 I will affirm that, from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregate wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though, to appearance, he himself was the obscurest and most illiterate of our species, therefore, Jesus Christ was from God.2 If they who promote innovations would show us, either in themselves or in their disciples, that morality and virtue increase as the Christian religion loses ground, they would have something to say in their own excuse; but, on the contrary, the direct reverse is the case. Christians are, at all events, on the safest side of the question, and have greater hopes, and nothing to fear as to another life, if they are mistaken; and is it not plainly most reasonable, if each of the opposite reasons were doubtful and uncertain, yet, by all means, to embrace and entertain that which brings some hope with it, rather than that which brings none?3 I shall not offend your rational piety by saying that modes and opinions appear to me matters of secondary importance; but I can sincerely declare that Christianity, in its genuine purity and spirit, appears to me the most amiable and venerable of all the forms in which the homage of man has ever been offered to the Author of his being.* 1 Byron, Letter to Bowles. 2 Burns. 3 Wightwick (Remarks on Chubb, 135.); and see Arnob. adv. Gentes, lib. 2. 4 Mackintosh, Life, i. 97. I would, if called upon, die a martyr for the Christian religion, so completely is (in my poor opinion) its divine origin proved by its beneficial effects on the state of society.' As to the Christian religion, Sir, besides the strong evidence which we have for it, there is a balance in its favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very firm believer.2 The great difficulty of proving miracles should make us very cautious in believing them. But let us consider,—although God has made nature to operate by certain fixed laws, yet it is not unreasonable to think that he may suspend those laws, in order to establish a system highly advantageous to mankind. Now the Christian religion is a most beneficial system, as it gives us light and certainty, where we were, before, in darkness and doubt. The miracles which prove it are attested by men who had no interest in deceiving us; but who, on the contrary, were told that they should suffer persecution, and did actually lay down their lives in confirmation of the truth of the facts which they 1 W. Scott, Life, vii. 107. 2 Johnson (Boswell), i. 466. (Croker's ed.) asserted. Indeed, for some centuries the heathens did not pretend to deny the miracles, but said they were performed by the aid of evil spirits. This is a circumstance of great weight. Then, Sir, when we take the proofs derived from prophecies which have been so exactly fulfilled, we have most satisfactory evidence.1 In fine, the credibility of the Christian religion, arising from experience and facts, is fully sufficient, in reason, to engage men to live in the general practice of all virtue and piety, under the serious apprehension, though it should be mixed with some doubt, of a righteous administration established in nature, and a future judgment in consequence of it: especially when we consider how very questionable it is whether any thing at all can be gained by vice; how unquestionably little, as well as precarious, the pleasures and profits of it are, at the best; and how soon they must be parted with at the longest: for, in the deliberations of reason concerning what we are to pursue and what to avoid, as temptations to any thing from mere passion are supposed out of the case, so inducements to vice from cool expectations of pleasure and interest, so small and uncertain and short, are really so insignificant as, in the view of reason, to be almost nothing in themselves, and, in comparison with the importance of religion, they quite disappear and are lost.2 1 Johnson (Boswell), i. 458. (Croker's ed.). 2 Butler, Anal. 193. |