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dea of. If at any time some knowledge of the become necessary, what forbids you to receive that kno ledge from God, and to close with it as unquestionably true and right, on the authority of his word, if you are sure it is his word? Your reason, you say, is the only interpreter you have of his word. True; but then your reason is only to interpret, not to dictate, not to cavil, not even to demur, when there is no contradiction. You know what is true and false, right and wrong, in some things; in others you do not. God perfectly knows the distinction in all things. Will you not submit your own opinion to his knowledge in some things? May not that be right in some things, and on some occasions, which you think wrong? Nay, may not the giver of all laws, who himself is subject to none, sometimes dispense with laws of his own making? If he may not, what will become of you, who have so often violated his laws, and can have no hope, but in dispensing mercy, for in an atonement you will not trust?

Besides, consider pray, that the faculty of reason, in different men, is endued with different degrees of strength, is more or less enlightened, more or less exercised, more or less biassed by their prejudices or passions; yet here as high prerogative is given to the meanest and most fettered understanding, as to the best. The reasoning faculty in all men hath suffered as great a crush from the fall, as any other faculty of the mind. In most men, the purer powers of the mind, imagination, memory, and judgment, but more especially the last, appear but too plainly, to have received a great diminution of their force from the corruption of human

to believe that God should command mankind to mortify those passions which be himself hath given them. Another cannot conceive himself obliged to believe in that which so great an understanding as his cannot account for. One is too refined to be good on hopes and fears. Another is too knowing to need a teacher, though sent directly from heaven. Either therefore there were no miracles wrought to prove the truth of Christianity, nor is there any rectitude and force in its precepts; or else if this conclusion is refuted by the profits derived from a profession of Christianity, and not to be retained if that is renounced; then another course must be taken, and the reason of these cavillers must be vested with supreme authority to explain the Scriptures, and give such a convenient turn to every thing, that nothing shall be left to contradict their opinions, or bear too hard on their passions and pursuits.

Our reason, say they, is the directing and ruling power of our nature. By this, in matters of religion, as well as in all other things, God requires we should be both guided and governed; and therefore can never be supposed to offer any thing to us in his word, which we cannot perfectly understand, much less to require any thing of us, which our own judgment does not approve of. Nothing therefore in his word can be mysterious; and if any thing contained in it, appears however to be so, it is the business of our reason to fit it with a meaning more familiar to herself. Neither can any thing there make that right, which our reason tells us is wrong; nor that wrong, which our reason says is right. If any thing therefore in the Scriptures appears to do so, it is the office of our reason to prove this to be but an appearance, and to find out some sense for the words, more easily digested by the understandings which our Maker hath bestowed upon us. Thus is the reason of these men set up by themselves above the word of God.

Both sides of a flat contradiction may as easily be true, as this deistical, can be a right plan, to proceed on in relation to religion. Your passions and desires so often solicit you to that which you know to be wrong, that it is just matter of wonder, how you can object to that restraint and mortification, when imposed by revelation, which the natural effects of those passions force common sense to have re

course to. You know a thousand things to be true, which you can, by no means, account for; what then hinders you from believing a few more of a nature still more incomprehensible, on the authority of God's word? Why will you discipline your child or servant by hopes and fears, by rewards and punishments, and yet cavil at God for dealing in like manner by his, though you are sensible, that the sensations of hope and fear were as certainly made a part of your nature by him, as the rest of your passions and desires?

Reason is undoubtedly the ruling principle in man as to every thing that lies open to reason. But there are many things which do not; which reason, left to herself, can form no idea of. If at any time some knowledge of these should become necessary, what forbids you to receive that knowledge from God, and to close with it as unquestionably true and right, on the authority of his word, if you are sure it is his word? Your reason, you say, is the only interpreter you have of his word. True; but then your reason is only to interpret, not to dictate, not to cavil, not even to demur, when there is no contradiction. You know what is true and false, right and wrong, in some things; in others you do not. God perfectly knows the distinction in all things. Will you not submit your own opinion to his knowledge in some things? May not that be right in some things, and on some occasions, which you think wrong? Nay, may not the giver of all laws, who himself is subject to none, sometimes dispense with laws of his own making? If he may not, what will become of you, who have so often violated his laws, and can have no hope, but in dispensing mercy, for in an atonement you will not trust?

Besides, consider pray, that the faculty of reason, in different men, is endued with different degrees of strength, is more or less enlightened, more or less exercised, more or less biassed by their prejudices or passions; yet here as high prerogative is given to the meanest and most fettered understanding, as to the best. The reasoning faculty in all men hath suffered as great a crush from the fall, as any other faculty of the mind. In most men, the purer powers of the mind, imagination, memory, and judgment, but more especially the last, appear but too plainly, to have received a great diminution of their force from the corruption of human

nature; while the passions and affections have acquired, from the same cause, as great an addition of strength. Men so circumstanced are generally first moved by something which they love or hate, and then judge as they are affected. Hence they unavoidably will, and experience shews us, they actually do, explain the Scriptures in quite opposite senses, especially when they read under the influence of opposite principles, previously espoused; nay, and read with no other view, than either to rivet themselves in those principles, or to accommodate the Scriptures to them in their own imaginations. Thus two men shall have two creeds, contradictory from beginning to end; and each shall have a right to call his own the true creed, and father it on the word of God, which tells us, there is but one faith.'

God, no doubt, intended we should make a free use of our reason in reading his word; which, did we make, we could never materially differ about the articles of our faith, which is there set forth as one, and that with sufficient plainness. But let not every man, call that his reason, which is nothing else but his imagination, or at best his understanding, working under the guidance of his own favourite opinions and prejudices, perhaps even his unruly passions and affections.

Neither let him dare, even supposing his reason wholly unprejudiced and unbiassed, to say, this doctrine of Scripture I will not receive, because it appears unaccountable; nor that, because it seems unreasonable, for that is the same as to say, the God of truth is not to be believed on his word, unless the poor short-sigthed wretch he speaks to, can demonstrate the consistency of what his Maker utters; or that the Almighty is not to be obeyed, but when his creature and servant can see sufficient rectitude in his command to make the matter of it obligatory, though it had never been enjoined. Nay, it is the same as to say, I do believe the Scriptures to be the word of God, but I will only believe such parts of that word, as square with my own judgment. That is, you believe what God says in general, but deliberate on what he says in particular, and sometimes doubt of it or deny it. But know you not, that your reason, as well as your will, is to obey when God speaks? Does not God command you to believe? And what can the obedience of reason consist in,

but in its submission to the infinitely higher wisdom of God? Or how can this obedience be ever proved or shewn, if you will believe nothing he declares to you, but so far only as you can account for its consistency, or demonstrate its truth? Know, vain man, that faith is obedience, and that, as Christ tells you, this is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he hath sent.' You profess yourself a Christian, but argue here as a Deist. You cannot be both. However, as a Deist, tell us, is there nothing too high for your reason in that natural religion, which you plainly prefer to revelation? Can you tell us, why infinitely communicative goodness suffered one half of eternity (for every moment equally divides it into two) to pass ere any creature was brought into being? Can you, without revelation, shew how infinite justice consists in the Divine mind with infinite mercy? Are you able to shew, how God certainly foresaw what every man freely does? The Scriptures apart, are you able to tell us, how it came to pass, that all mankind are corrupt, wicked, and mortal, although so universally and violently attached to happiness and life? Are you able to prove yourself, either a free, or a necessary agent? Till the difficulties of natural religion are cleared up by your reason, do not too hastily bring it for a test of the revealed.

Is it not enough for faith, that God asserts? Is it not enough for duty, that God commands? Is not this enough for the faith of a creature, utterly incapable of accounting for any thing? Is it not enough for the duty of a creature, altogether incapable of subsisting a single moment in a state of independence? What God says, is sufficiently accounted for by his saying it, and whatsoever he commands, is sufficiently authorized by his commanding it. He does not speak to puzzle, nor command merely to shew his power; and therefore all that the understanding and will of the most enlightened man on earth hath to do, when God either asserts or commands, is to believe and obey.

Thus thought the patriarch Abraham. He was a hundred years old, and his wife ninety, when God told him, she should bear him a son. On this most amazing declaration, he did not desire God to account either for the possibility, or the means, of performing the promise, which, in those respects, was perfectly mysterious and unintelligible to him.