I

N° CXIV.

F the deift, who contends for the all-fuf

ficiency of natural religion, fhall think that in thefe paffages, which I have quoted in the preceding number, he has difcovered fresh refources on the part of human reafon as opposed to divine revelation, he will find himself involved in a very false conclufion. Though it were in my power to have collected every moral and religious fentence, which has fallen from the pens of the heathen writers antecedent to Christianity, and although it fhould thereby ap pear that the morality of the gospel had been the morality of right reafon in all ages of the world, he would still remain as much unfurnished as ever for establishing his favorite pofition, that the fcriptures reveal nothing more than man's underftanding had difcovered without their aid. We may therefore confole ourselves without fcruple in discovering that the heathen world was not immerfed in total darkness, and the candid mind, however interested for Chriftianity, may be gratified with the reflection that the human understanding was not fo wholly enflaved,

but

but that in certain inftances it could furmount the prejudices of fyftem, and, cafting off the fhackles of idolatry, argue up to that fupreme of all things, which the hiftorian Tacitus emphatically defines, fummum illud et æternum neque mu→ tabile neque interiturum.

Now when the mind is fettled in the proof of One Supreme Being, there are two several modes of reasoning, by which natural religion may deduce the probability of a future ftate: one of these results from an examination of the human foul, the other from reflecting on the unequal distribution of happiness in the present life.

Every man, who is capable of examining his own faculties, muft difcern a certain power within him, which is neither coæval with, nor dependant upon his body and it's members; I mean that power of reflection, which we univerfally agree to feat in the foul: It is not coæval with the body, because we were not in the use and exercise of it, when we were infants; it is not dependant on it, because it is not subject to the changes, which the body undergoes in it's paffage from the womb to the grave; for instance, it is not deftroyed, or even impaired, by amputation of the limbs or members, it does not evaporate by the continual flux and ex

halation

halation of the corporeal humours, is not difturbed by motion of the limbs, nor deprived of it's powers by their inaction; it is not neceffarily involved in the fickness and infirmity of the body, for whilst that is decaying and diffolving away by an incurable difeafe, the intellectual faculties fhall in many cafes remain perfect and unimpaired: Why then fhould it be fuppofed the foul of a man is to die with his body, and accompany it into the oblivious grave, when it did not make it's entrance with it into life, nor partook of it's decay, it's fluctuations, changes and cafualties?

If these obvious reflections upon the nature and properties of the foul lead to the perfuafion of a future ftate, the fame train of reasoning will naturally discover that the condition of the foul in that future ftate must be determined by the merits or demerits of it's antecedent life. It has never been the notion of heathen or of deift, that both the good and the evil shall enter upon equal and undiftinguished felicity or punishment; no reasoning man could ever conceive that the foul of Nero and the foul of Antoninus in a future ftate partook of the fame common lot; and thus it follows upon the evidence of reafon, that the foul of man fhall be rewarded or punished hereafter according to his good or evil conduct

conduct here; and this confequence is the more obvious, because it does not appear in the moral government of the world, that any fuch juft and regular diftribution of rewards and punishments obtains on this fide the grave; a circumftance no otherwise to be reconciled to our fuitable conceptions of divine justice, than by referring things to the final decifion of a judgment to

come.

Though all these discoveries are open to reafon, let no man conclude that what the reafon of a few discovered were either communicated to, or acknowledged by all: No; the world was dark and grofsly ignorant; fome indeed have argued well and clearly; others confufedly, and the bulk of mankind not at all; the being of a God, and the unity of that Supreme Being struck conviction to the hearts of thofe, who employed their reafon coolly and difpaffionately in fuch fublime enquiries; but where was the multitude meanwhile? Bewildered with a mob of deities, whom their own fables had endowed with human attributes, paffions and infirmities; whom their own superstition had deified and enrolled amongst the immortals, till the facred hiftory of Olympus became no lefs impure than the journals of a brothel Many there were no doubt, who faw the monftrous absurdity of such a system, yet not

every one, who difcerned error, could discover truth; the immortality of the foul, a doctrine fo harmonious to man's nature, was decried by fyftem and opposed by subtilty; the question of a future ftate was hung up in doubt, or bandied between conflicting difputants through all the quirks and evafions of fophiftry and logic: Philofophy, fo called, was fplit into a variety of fects, and the hypothefis of each enthusiastic founder became the ftanding creed of his school, from which it was an inviolable point of honour never to defert: In this confufion of fyftems men chofe for themselves not according to conviction, but by the impulfe of paffion, or from motives of convenience; the voluptuary was interested to dismiss the gods to their repose, that his might not be interrupted by them; and all, who wished to have their range of sensuality in this world without fear or controul, readily enlifted under the banners of Epicurus, till his followers outnumbered all, the reft; this was the court-creed under the worst of the Roman emperors, and the whole body of the nation, with few exceptions, adopted it; for what could be more natural, than for the desperate to bury confcience in the grave of atheism, or rush into annihilation by the point of the poniard, when they were weary of exiftence and difcarded by fortune?