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ference to the true God, our Saviour found the world. But the clear revelation he brought with him, dissipated this darkness; made the one invisible true God known to the world; and that with such evidence and energy, that polytheism and idolatry hath nowhere been able to withstand it. But wherever the preaching of the truth be delivered, and the light of the gospel hath come, those mists have been dispelled; and, in effect, we see that, since our Saviour's time, the belief of one God has prevailed and spread itself over the face of the earth. For even to the light that the Messiah brought into the world with him, we must ascribe the owning and profession of one God, which the Mahometan religion hath derived and borrowed from it. So that, in this sense, it is certainly and manifestly true of our Saviour, what St. John says of him, 1 John, iii. 8: For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.' This light the world needed, and this light it received from him—that there is but one God, and he eternal, invisible; not like to any visible objects, nor to be represented by them.

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169. If it be asked, whether the revelation to the patriarchs by Moses did not teach this, and why that was not enough? the answer is obvious; that however clearly the knowledge of one invisible God, maker of heaven and earth, was revealed to them, yet that revelation was shut up in a little corner of the world, amongst a people, by that very law which they received with it, excluded from a commerce and communication with the rest of mankind. The Gentile world, in our Saviour's time, and several ages before, could have no attestation

of the miracles on which the Hebrews built their faith, but from the Jews themselves; a people not known to the greatest part of mankind, contemned and thought vilely of by those nations that did know them; and therefore very unfit and unable to propagate the doctrine of one God in the world, and diffuse it through the nations of the earth, by the strength and force of that ancient revelation, upon which they had received it. But our Saviour, when he came, threw down this wall of partition, and did not confine his miracles or message to the land of Canaan, or the worshippers at Jerusalem; but he himself preached at Samaria, and did miracles in the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and before multitudes of people gathered from all quarters. And after his resurrection sent his apostles amongst the nations, accompanied with miracles, which were done in all parts so frequently, and before so many witnesses of all sorts, in broad daylight, that, as I have before observed, the enemies of Christianity have never dared to deny them; no, not Julian himself, who neither wanted skill nor power to inquire into the truth, nor would have failed to have proclaimed and exposed it, if he could have detected any falsehood in the history of the gospel, or found the least ground to question the matter of fact published of Christ and his apostles. The number and evidence of the miracles done by our Saviour and his followers, by the power and force of truth, bore down this mighty and accomplished emperor, and all his parts, in his own dominions. He durst not deny so plain matter of fact; which being granted, the truth of our Saviour's doctrine and mission unavoidably follows, notwithstanding whatsoever artful suggestions his

wit could invent, or malice should offer to the contrary.

170. 2. Next to the knowledge of one God, maker of all things, a clear knowledge of their duty was wanting to mankind. This part of knowledge, though cultivated with some care, by some of the heathen philosophers, yet got little footing among the people. All men indeed, under pain of displeasing the gods, were to frequent the temples; every one went to their sacrifices and services; but the priests made it not their business to teach them virtue. If they were diligent in their observations and ceremonies, punctual in their feasts and solemnities, and the tricks of religion, the holy tribe assured them, the gods were pleased; and they looked no further. Few went to the schools of the philosophers, to be instructed in their duties, and to know what was good and evil in their actions. The priests sold the better pennyworths, and therefore had all their custom. Lustrations and processions were much easier than a clean conscience, and a steady course of virtue; and an expiatory sacrifice, that atoned for the want of it, was much more convenient than a strict and holy life. No wonder, then, that religion was everywhere distinguished from, and preferred to virtue, and that it was dangerous heresy and profaneness to think the contrary. So much virtue as was necessary to hold societies together, and to contribute to the quiet of governments, the civil laws of commonwealths taught, and forced upon men that lived under magistrates: but these laws, being for the most part made by such who had no other aims but their own power, reached no further than

those things that would serve to tie men together in subjection; or, at most, were directly to conduce to the prosperity and temporal happiness of any people. But natural religion, in its full extent, was nowhere, that I know, taken care of by the force of natural reason. It should seem, by the little that has hitherto been done in it, that it is too hard a task for unassisted reason, to establish morality, in all its parts, upon its true foundations, with a clear and convincing light. And it is at least a surer and shorter way, to the apprehensions of the vulgar, and mass of mankind, that one manifestly sent from God, and coming with visible authority from him, should, as a king and law-maker, tell them their duties, and require their obedience, than leave it to the long, and sometimes intricate deductions of reason, to be made out to them: such strains of reasonings the greatest part of mankind have neither leisure to weigh, nor, for want of education and use, skill to judge of. We see how unsuccessful in this, the attempts of philosophers were, before our Saviour's time. How short their several systems came of the perfection of a true and complete morality, is very visible. And if, since that, the Christian philosophers have much outdone them, yet we may observe, that the first knowledge of the truths they have added, are owing to revelation; though, as soon as they are beard and considered, they are found to be agreeable to reason, and such as can by no means be contradicted. Every one may observe a great many truths which he receives at first from others, and readily assents to as consonant to reason, which he would have found it hard, and perhaps, beyond his strength to have discovered himself.

Native and original truth is not so easily wrought out of the mine, as we, who have it delivered ready dug and fashioned into our hands, are apt to imagine. And how often at fifty or threescore years old, are thinking men told what they wonder how they could miss thinking of? which yet their own contemplations did not, and possibly never would have helped them to. Experience shows that the knowledge of morality, by mere natural light, (how agreeable soever it be to it,) makes but a slow progress, and little advance in the world: and the reason of it is not hard to be found in men's necessities, passions, vices, and mistaken interests, which turn their thoughts another way :— and the designing leaders, as well as the following herd, find it not to their purpose to employ much of their meditations this way :—or whatever else was the cause, it is plain, in fact, that human reason unassisted, failed men in its great and proper business of morality. It never, from unquestionable principles, by clear deductions, made out an entire body of the law of nature. And he that

shall collect all the moral rules of the philosophers, and compare them with those contained in the New Testament, will find them to come short of the morality delivered by our Saviour, and taught by his apostles: a college made up, for the most part, of ignorant but inspired fishermen.

171. Though yet, if any one should think that, out of the sayings of the wise heathens, before our Saviour's time, there might be a collection made of all those rules of morality, which are to be found in the Christian religion; yet this would not at all hinder, but that the world nevertheless stood as

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