the faculties which God has given them, and cultivate their reason, they are capable of themselves of knowing God, of loving him, of loving his works, and of pleafing him, and that there was no neceffity for his revealing his will to a certain number of perfons in one corner of the world; or, supposing that fuch a thing was neceffary in that part of the world, the pretended obligation, that all the rest of mankind fhould be thoroughly informed therein, according to the Christian doc trines, is incompatible with the juftice and good nefs of God; and, very far from removing the difficulties which we meet with in the road to happiness and glory, tends rather to increase them, and to make this road unpaffable to the greatest part of mankind.

This is the force of their reafoning upon this head: And, as there is at least fome degree of plaufibility therein, I fhall endeavour, with great deference, to give a fhort but particular anfwer thereto.

And, first, I must beg leave to obferve, that there is no part of ancient history which bears fo clearly upon its face the marks of its authenticity, and where the facts are fo well attefted, as the New Teftament: This book was wrote by a number of perfons, whofe goodness and piety were acknowledged by their enemies, who had no intereft in what they wrote and taught, but the general good of mankind, and who fealed their testimony with their blood: Moreover the facts, which

Z 2

which are recorded in this book, are avowed by the enemies of Christianity, and all those ancient authors who have wrote against it; who never attempted to deny that Jefus Chrift, and others in his name, did the great miracles which are recorded of them, but deny only the cause, or the power, whereby they were performed: and I muft regard the testimony of fuch enemies, who were well acquainted with the facts, as incontrovertible:-The attributing those miracles to the power of magic, and I know not what other causes, is an argument fo abfurd in itself, that no fenfible Deist will take it up at prefent; and I have already fhewn my readers how well Celfus fucceeded therein...

We discover in the New Teftament, it is true, many things refpecting the revealed will of the Deity, which are above human comprehenfion : But is it not the greatest degree of folly and prefumption in us, to attempt to account for all the myfteries of the Deity, and to say that thefe things are not true, because we cannot comprehend them ?—It was the opinion of Socrates, and of fome others of the greatest philofophers of antiquity, as well as of the infpired writers, that revelation was neceffary for the general good of mankind: And when we confult the history of the world, and even to this day regard those parts of this globe, where the Chriftian Religion has been rejected, or where it has never been preached, it will be feen that, although their civil govern

ment

ment is, in many refpects, worthy of imitation. by the most enlightened nations, they are in a state of the groffeft idolatry: that they have ftifled the dictates of confcience, and made even their reafon fubfervient to their paffions. The Brachmans, the Magi, Pythagoras, Thales, Socrates, Plato, Zeno, and others, who were, strictly speaking, enquirers after truth, made but very little progrefs in difcovering the attributes of the Divinity, and owned the infufficiency of their faculties for that purpose. And if those luminaries of antiquity, and those founders of moral principles in the heathen world, found themselves unequal to the task; what are we to expect from the common race of mankind?

Some of our modern Deists, who, through the lights of the Evangelical doctrine, have attained a degree of knowledge refpeting thofe matters, that the ancients could never have acquired, pretend to approve fuch parts of this doctrine as come within their comprehenfion, and to reject the others. Approve the whole, or reject the whole; because, when we have the clearest and moft pofitive proofs, that one part of a difcourfe is true, we have a strong prefumptive proof that the other is fo likewise, except we have fome good evidence to prove the contrary.

There is no obligation, according to the doctrine of Jefus Chrift and his Apoftles, that all mankind fhould be thoroughly inftructed in this doctrine, on pain of eternal punishment, St. Paul, in feve

ral parts of his epiftles, exprefsly teaches us the contrary and that, if thofe people who have not had the opportunity of being inftructed in the Chriftian doctrines, obey in all things the pure dictates of their confcience, they will be equally happy, through the merits of Jefus Chrift, with those who have been instructed in, and obeyed his doctrine; these being their gofpel, and the laws whereby they will be tried. "For," fays the great Apostle, "when the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the

''

66

law, thefe having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which fhew the work of the law "written in their hearts; their confcience alfo bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean "while accufing, or else excufing one another. By these they will be juftified, in the day when "God fhall judge the fecrets of men, by Jefus "Chrift, according to my gofpel."-Hence, therefore, it was wrong in our Deists to have faid, that this was an abfolute obligation, that it was incompatible with the juftice of God, and that it rendered the obstacles to falvation infurmountable to the greatest part of mankind.

A moderate Deift +, whofe arguments are worthy our attention, expreffes himfelf in the following manner." I must confefs to you, that the "majefty of the fcriptures aftonishes me; and the "holinefs of the Evangelifts fpeaks unto my heart, " and has such strong and striking characters of "truth, and is moreover fo perfectly inimitable, Rom. ii. 14,15,16. + J.J. Rouffeau Emile. vol. iii. p. 117. that

66 that if it had been the invention of men, the "inventors would be greater than the greatest he

roes. But after all, this evangelical doctrine is. "full of things which cannot be believed, of "things which are repugnant to reafon, and which "it is impoffible for any fenfible man to con"ceive, or to admit."-This is alfo the language of the principal part of the moderate Deifts of our days, who regard the Chriftian religion merely as a civil inftitution, which is neceffary, in every country, to regulate uniformly the public worship of the Deity; and which may be altered according to the nature of the climate, the genius of the people, and the form of their civil government.A doctrine of this kind, apparently so moderate, and so reasonable, tends more to destroy the principles of the Christian religion, and to corrupt the manners of the mafs of the people, who have not penetration enough to discover its bad tendency, than the writings of all the philofophers, from the enlightened Plato to the vulgar Materialist, A person who has no great talents may difcover, by common obfervation, that the latter, with all their pretended reafoning, tend to precipitate, as it were, mankind into a chaos of errors and confufion; but the plaufibility and moderation of the former lead us infenfibly into a kind of neutral state from whence our paffions, now without any controul, plunge us into all kinds of exceffes.

When we examine thefe deistical arguments with attention, we fhall find that there is a manifeft contradiction

Z 4