1. Either, first, of an absolute removal of the divine being and existence; that there is no such spiritual, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent nature, as we call God: but that the world is of itself; and that there is nothing else distinct from it. This is the highest degree of asserting that there is no God.

2. It may be understood of a removal of God's providence, by which he governs and takes account of all the particular affairs of the world; and more especially of the lives and actions of men, so as to reward or punish them, according as they are good or evil. This is a lower degree of atheism; but has altogether as masculine an influence upon the manners and practices of men as the former; and perhaps, upon a due improvement of consequences, will be found to end in it. Epicurus was of this opinion. He confessed that there was a God: but as for his interposing or concerning himself in our affairs here below, this he utterly denied; and that for a reason as absurd as his assertion was impious; namely, that it would disturb his ease, and consequently interrupt his felicity, to superintend over our many little and perplexed businesses.

Now, I suppose, the text may be understood equally of both these senses: and accordingly I shall so take it in the ensuing discourse.

2dly, The next thing is the manner of the assertion, The fool hath said in his heart. It wears the badge of guilt, privacy, and darkness; and, as if it were sensible of the treason it carries in its bowels, it hides its head, and dares not own itself in the face of the sun and of the world. Atheism is too conscious to be venturous and open: that is the property of truth, the daughter of the light and of the day.

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It is not the nature of this ill thing to display itself in words, and to summon proselytes upon the marketplace. It will not hang up a flag of defiance against God, and cry out, Hear, O heaven, and hearken, O earth; there is no such thing as a maker and governor of the universe; it is all but a crafty invention of statesmen, priests, and politicians, to bring mankind to their lure, and to bind the bonds of government faster upon societies.

No; the atheist is too wise in his generation, to make remonstrances and declarations of what he thinks. His tongue shall keep the track of the common and received way of discoursing; and perhaps his interest may sometimes carry him so far, as to disguise his behaviour with zeal for the assertion of those things which his belief is a stranger to. It is his heart, and the little council that is held there, that is only privy to his monstrous opinions. There it is that he dethrones his Maker, and deposes conscience from its government and vicegerency. For here, he knows, he may think, and think freely and uncontrollably; since there is no casement in his bosom, no listening hole in his heart, from which the informer may catch and carry away a guilty thought.

He that would see the stage upon which human liberty acts entirely and to the utmost, must retreat into his heart, and there he shall see a principle absolute and unshackled, and not framed into any demureness and assumed postures of virtue and gravity, from the awe of men's eye and observation, which, instead of the man, exhibits only a dress to the spectator. He shall find his heart bold enough to question the laws he bows to; to examine the first

principles, that in his profession lie sacred and untouched; to ransack and look into foundations; and, in a word, to think as he pleases, while he speaks and does as he is commanded.

It will now concern us to inquire a little, what is meant and implied by the fool's saying in his heart that there is no God.

I conceive it may imply these following things.

1st, An inward wishing, that there was no God. There is nothing more properly the language of the heart, than a wish. It is the thirst and egress of it, after some wanted, but desired object. The atheist first pleases his contemplation, with the supposition of that free range that he might take in all the gardens of pleasure, if there were no superior eye to supervise and judge him. And how brave a thing it were to have the entertainments of a feast every day, and no reckoning brought up in the rear of them! To be voluptuous, and yet unaccountable! To be lord and master, and supreme in his choice, and to obey nothing but his own appetites!

These reflections fill his fancy with glistering imaginations: and the man cannot hold, but wish that troublesome thing, the Deity, that so sours and thwarts his contents, removed and wholly took out of the way; than which there cannot be a thought of an higher malignity, and a more daring venom. For he that wishes a thing, would certainly effect it, if it were in his power. He that would have no God, is full of indignation that there is one; and, according to the poet's fable of the giants attempting to scale heaven, and to fight with the gods; so would he ascend, and ravish the sceptre from the hands of Omnipotence, nestle himself in the govern

ment of the world, and, like Lucifer, place himself higher than the Most High.

Now it is probable that God punishes the wish, as much as he does the actual performance: for what is performance, but a wish, perfected with a power and what is a wish, but a desire, wanting opportunity of action; a desire sticking in the birth, and miscarrying for lack of strength and favourable circumstances to bring it into the world. Certain it is, that wishes discover the most genuine and natural temper of the soul; for no man is more heartily himself, than he is in these.

They are indeed the chief weapons with which atheism can strike at the Deity: for the wickedness and malice of man cannot make any change in God. It cannot shake any of these solid felicities that the divine nature is possessed of. The atheist can only wish, and would, and desire; that is, with the snake he can hiss, and shew his poison; but it is not in his power to be mischievous any further.

2dly, The fool's saying in his heart that there is no God, implies his seeking out arguments to persuade himself that there is none. Where the heart is concerned, it will quickly employ the head; and reason shall be put to the drudgery of humouring a depraved mind, by providing it with a suitable hypothesis. The invention must be set awork to hammer out something that may sit easy upon an atheistical disposition.

Hereupon the mind begins to boggle at immaterial substances, as things paradoxical and incomprehensible. It brings itself, by degrees, to measure all by sense; and to admit of nothing, but as it is conveyed and vouched by the judgment of the eye,

the ear, and the touch. A being purely spiritual shall be flouted at, as a chimera, and a subtile nothing.

Besides, men see all things still continue in the same posture, and proceed in the same course; which makes them question, whether there be any overruling, governing being, distinct from that visible frame of things that is always in their view. As those scoffers in St. Peter questioned the future judgment, upon the sight of the constant, unchanged tenor of things, 2 Peter iii. 4; Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

They will declaim against a Deity also from this, that they think all human affairs proceed by chance and accident, and great disorder; and consequently are not under the disposal or management of any superior understanding, that may be presumed to regulate and take cognizance of them. They see pious men afflicted, and the wicked exalted; the oppressor triumphing and clothing himself with the spoils of oppressed innocence and humility. They observe, that virtue is no step to wealth or honour; and that conscience is but an hinderance, and a stop to greatness. And perhaps also they find by experience in themselves, that they never thrived so well, as when they acted freely and boldly, and without the control of rules; when they unshackled themselves from the niceties and punctilios of that fruitless, unprofitable thing, called sincerity.

And these considerations may well be thought so much the more prevalent working in a corrupt breast, since we read, that they have made no small