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and repentance. For if we rest in these duties, and go no farther, thinking by such short payments to compound with God for all those debts we owe to the eternal laws of morality, we miserably cheat and befool our own souls, which, notwithstanding all this exactness about the positives of religion, are by their own immortal affection still enslaved to the Devil; to whom it is much one what our outward form of religion is, whether it be Christian, or heathen, or Mahometan, provided it doth not operate on our minds, or give any check to the current of our depraved natures. For whether we bow to God or to an idol is all one to the Devil, so long as our souls remain profane and indevout; whether we communicate in the holy sacrament of Christ's death or in the impure rites of Venus and Priapus, is indifferent to him, so long as our hearts continue putrid and corrupt, steaming with unchaste desires and affections; whether we celebrate the Christian festivals, or the bloody saturnals, or barbarous bacchanalia, is no great matter to him, provided our minds be but cankered with wrath and malice, and cruelty and revenge. These are the sinews of his government, and the bands of our allegiance to his throne; and whilst they are preserved, he knows his kingdom is safe, and so long he doth not much regard what our outward religion is. Nay, there is nothing can be a higher gratification to his ambition, than to behold himself served in Christ's own livery, and worshipped, in a form of godliness; by which he hath the pleasure of dividing empires with God, and ravishing the better share from him, of beholding his hated Creator mocked with the shell and outside of a worshipper, whilst himself is treated with the kernel and

inside. For whilst we continue wicked under an outward form of religion, we do in effect sacrifice our beast to God, and ourselves to the Devil; who above all things loves those unnatural commixtures of hearer and slanderer, worshipper and deceiver, communicant and drunkard, sacrificer and oppressor; by which we only exalt and sublimate impiety, which never looks so glorious as when it is gilded with fasts and long prayers. Wherefore, as you will answer it at your eternal peril, do not cheat and abuse yourselves with the name and shadow of religion; lest, when you have superstructed your hopes of happiness on a rotten foundation, it should finally miscarry, and sink underneath you into everlasting wretchedness and despair.

CHAP II.

Concerning religion; what it is, and what things are necessary for the founding and securing its obligations. HAVING in the foregoing chapter briefly discoursed concerning the nature of moral goodness, and shewn that it is the principal part of religion, it will be requisite, in the next place, to explain what religion is; that so from thence we may collect what things are necessary to the founding and securing its obligations: which will be the subject of the ensuing chapters.

Religion in the general respects God as the object and centre of all its acts and offices. For upon supposition that there is such a being as God, and that there are such beings as reasonable creatures, or ca

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pable subjects of religion, it will necessarily follow that there must be some religion or oblige these creatures to that God. mean a Being that hath all possible perfection in him, and is the supreme cause and fountain of all other being and perfection; and such a Being we must needs acknowledge doth not only deserve the worthiest acts of religion that reasonable creatures, who alone are capable of understanding his wrath3, can render to him, but hath also an unalienable right to exact and require them; and that not only upon the account of his own essential desert, (for whatever he deserves he hath a right to demand,) but also upon account of the right he hath to reasonable creatures, who owe their beings to him and all their capacities of serving him, and so cannot dispose of themselves without manifest injury to him contrary to his will and orders. By reasonable creatures we mean beings that are derived from God, and are endowed by him with a capacity of understanding him and themselves; and such creatures must necessarily stand obliged to render him such acts as are suitable to, and due acknowledgments of the perfections of his nature and their own dependence upon him; and this obligation is that which we call religion. Which word, according to Lactantius, lib. 4. Divin. Institut. cap. 28. is derived à religando, from binding or obliging us to God. So that true religion in the general is the obligation of reasonable creatures to render such acts of worship to God as are suitable to the excellency of his nature and their dependence upon him. Which definition includes both the doctrines and duties of religion. For the doctrines are the reasons by which it obliges us to the wrath.] So the editions. Perhaps it should be worth.

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duties and as there is no duty in religion but what derives its tie and obligation from some doctrine contained in it, so there is no doctrine in religion but what ties and obliges us to some duty that is enjoined in it. When therefore I call religion an obligation, I conclude in that term all those doctrines of it concerning God, his nature, and his transactions with his creatures, which are the reasons by which we stand obliged to render all acts of worship to him. But for the better understanding the nature of true religion, it is necessary we should distinguish it into natural and revealed. By natural religion, I mean the obligation which natural reason lays upon us to render to God all that worship and obedience, which, upon the consideration of his nature and our dependence upon him, it discovers to be due to him. For God having planted in us a rational faculty, by the due exercise of which we are naturally led into the belief of his being, the sense of his perfections, and the acknowledgment of his providence, he expects we should follow it as the guide and directory of our lives and actions; and whatsoever this faculty doth naturally and in its due exercise dictate to us, is as much the voice of God as any revelation. For whatever it naturally dictates, it must dictate by his direction who is the Author of its nature, and who having framed it to speak such a sense, and pronounce such a judgment of things, hath thereby put his word into its mouth, and doth himself speak through it as through a standing oracle which he hath erected in our breasts, on purpose to convey and deliver his own mind and will to us. So that whatsoever natural reason, rightly exercised, teaches us concerning God and our duty towards

him, that is true religion, and doth as effectually bind and oblige us to him, as if it had been immediately revealed by him. It teaches us that God is infinitely wise, and just, and powerful, and good; that he is the fountain of our beings, the disposer of our affairs, and the arbitrator of our fate, both here and hereafter; and by these doctrines it obliges us to admire and adore him, to fear and love him, to trust and obey him. And this is natural religion; which consists of such doctrines as natural reason teaches us concerning God, and his nature and providence, and of such duties as it infers from those doctrines, and enforces by them; and all the doctrines of this religion, upon which it founds its duties, being eternal verities, as they must necessarily be, being all deduced from the immutable nature of God and things, all the duties of it must be morally, that is eternally good and reasonable, because those doctrines are the eternal reasons upon which they are founded, and by which they oblige. So that whatsoever is a duty of natural religion must oblige for ever, because it obliges by an eternal reason, and so can never be dispensed with, or abrogated, till the natures of things are cancelled and reversed, and eternal truths are converted into lies.

In short therefore, natural religion hath only natural reason for its rule and measure, which from the nature of God and things deduces all those eternal reasons by which it distinguishes our actions into honest and dishonest, decorous and filthy, good and evil, necessary and sinful. For it doth not make them good or evil by judging them so; but if it judgeth truly, it judgeth of them as it finds them; and unless it finds them good or evil in themselves

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