so, and therefore, all these systems of religions and laws, being nothing more than human expedients, there is no room to wonder, that they have not been more effectual to good purposes, nor that the state of mankind is such as we feel, and as we are apt to complain that it is.

XXIII.

WE may assure, from fact, that this has been the divine œconomy, and leave those men to assume from imagination what this economy has or should have been, who have so much theological presumption. But while we leave them to imagine without fact, we must not suffer them to imagine against it. Nothing can be, I think, more true than what has been advanced concerning the unnatural religions, laws, and customs established in the several societies of men, and yet it is not less true, that the tables of natural religion and law are hung up in the sight of all All may read them, and though errour has prevailed, and will ever prevail in the bulk of mankind against knowledge, more or less, and' to some degree, because it is agreeable to the private interests of those who lead, and to the prejudices of those who are led, that it should, I do not believe that there ever was a time, when it could be said with truth, that the law of nature was imperfectly known, or that it was an incomplete system of morality before the Christian reve

men.

lation;

lation, both of which propositions are roundly advanced by divines, though manifestly false.

But Clarke says, in his Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, which are often dim, and often weak, that the heathen philosophers were never able to prove and explain clearly and distinctly enough, to persons of all capacities, those things which they were the most fully certain of, and did in good measure understand, such as the obligations of virtue, and the will of God, in matters of morality. Now if it could be reconciled to common sense, that they understood not fully, but in good measure only, such doctrines as they are said in the same sentence to have been fully certain of, there would be no occasion to wonder, that they were unable to prove and explain them. But to pass this over, the reasons alleged to show their inability in this respect, or that they understood these things in good measure only, are such as give, indeed, great occasion to wonder, when they fall from the pen of so able a writer. Their discourses, he says, were rather speculative and learned, nice and subtile disputes, than practical and useful instructions; the bulk of mankind could not profit by the sublime doctrine of Plato, for instance. Agreed. The difficulty then of discovering, and explaining the will of God, in matters of morality, and the whole system of natural religion arose merely from the method they took of discovering it to themselves, and of explaining it to others. That is, they did by this system the very thing which divines have done by that of christianity. VOL. VIII.

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Philo

Philosophers departed from the simplicity of nature, divines from that of the Gospel. Had the former been content to collect the will of God, as far as it concerns the duty of man, from what they knew of themselves, of their fellow-creatures, and of the constitution, physical and moral, of the world, they had neither bewildered themselves, nor grown unintelligible to others. But they could not be so content. Many of these ancient, like their mimicks, the modern reasoners, "à priori," undertook to deduce the religion of human nature and of human reason, from principles that exist infinitely beyond them. They knew human nature, and from thence they might, by the help of human reason, have taught very clearly what they understood very fully. They did both when they kept within these bounds, but when they went beyond them, they did neither. When they pretended to contemplate the nature and moral attributes of the Supreme Being, they were, indeed, as unqualified for it, as bats are to behold the light of the sun. They puzzled the clearest, and confounded the most distinct ideas, sometimes by metaphysical enthusiasm, and sometimes by political design; for when such mists are conjured up in the most serene parts of our intellectual system, it cannot be intended by men who are in their senses, one would think, to make us see better, and, therefore, I could never read the proposition, that we may easily know God, if we be not ignorant of ourselves, so absolutely advanced; nor that strange parallel between God and the soul of man,

wherein

wherein Dr. Barrow confesses that he indulged his thoughts somewhat freely*, without being sorry to find them in the works of so respectable an author.

Another reason, brought by Clarke, to show how unable these philosophers were to prove and explain the obligations of natural religion, is this. They were never able to frame to themselves any complete, and regular, and consistent system or scheme of things. If by these words be meaned, as it must be in this place, such a system or scheme of morality, the fact asserted is untrue, how excellent soever the eloquent Lactantius may have set this matter forth, or the judicious Justin may have supported our modern doctor. In contradiction to all three, we may affirm boldly, because truly, that there is no one moral virtue, which has not been taught, explained, and proved, by the heathen philosophers, both occasionally and purposely. It is, therefore, particularly absurd, in Christian writers, to say, as the author of the Evidences says, after his two guides, that these philosophers did, indeed, discover all the particular doctrines of true religion, but that no one of them made a scheme true in all it's parts, nor did any one collect the several truths scattered up and down in their writings. For, I ask, are all the. truths of natural and revealed religion collected into one regular and complete system in any of the Gospels, or even of the Epistles? did any one

* Vol. II, Serm. vii.

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of

of the fathers of the church make an entire scheme of religion or morality, true in all it's parts'? will any man have the front to deny, that they all mingled some truth and some errour? did not this. very Lactantius, did not Justin do so? did any one of the fathers collect the truths that concern all our moral obligations, separate them from the errours, and make a regular complete system of the whole? will it be said that St. Ambrose did? but St. Ambrose was a poor imitator of Tully. In short, all the heathen philosophers agreed, that the practice of virtue was of necessary and indispensable obligation, and that the happiness of mankind depended on it in general and particular. They all agreed likewise what was virtue, and what was vice; and if they had any disputes about the great principles of natural, Christians had the same about the great principles of revealed eligion. They had such in the days of Justin and of Lactantius, and that they continued to have them in our days, Clarke himself has been a signal example.

It was neither natural theology, nor ethicks, that perplexed natural religion. It was metaphysical theology. Ancient, like modern, heathen, like christian philosophers, had indeed many trifling disputes about words, the Stoicks particularly, or about things so very plain, that nothing less than Grecian acuteness could make them appear at all intricate. Such were those about the summum bonum," in which it is said, there

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Varro, St. Austiu.

were