Almighty and his works to perfection, we might have expected, before this, to have had one perfect uniform scheme of philofophy and divinity, which the wifemen of all ages had agreed to, and received as truth. In fact, we find no fuch fyftem; each being destructive of, and built upon the ruins of the other. How this should come to pass, if these are matters discoverable by reason and the light of nature, has not been duly confidered, nor fatisfactorily folved, by thofe, who, with so much confidence, affert the affirmative.

FOR a particular genius to rife up, and give the world the light it has wanted, in points of fuch univerfal import, more than these five thousand years, for any thing appears to the contrary; fuppofing, at the fame time, reafon and the light of nature fufficient for the discoveries; is an hypothefis which looks more like infpiration, or a certain revelation made to a particular favourite of Heaven, than a natural faculty implanted in the minds of all men, improveable by study; and when fo improved, ca

pable

pable of the highest discoveries, both of things in this and in another state.

REASON, and the light of nature, as they are common to all men, though not in the fame degree, if they are to be the guide of our actions, the teft of our faith in all matters here, and the rule whereby we are to be tried or judged hereafter, should shine so strong and clear in each individual, as to be able, if not to discover, at least to fee and approve the truth when so discovered; otherwise they would not be of any benefit to mankind, nor anfwer, to man, the defign and end for which they were given. If the perfect knowledge of nature and its author was never difcovered till thefe our present happy times, how came this common light of reafon to fhoot fo faint and glimmering a ray, as never before to make the discovery? If these points were known before, when, and by what means, was this knowledge loft, and by what fate happened it, that the fame means could never, before now, make the fame difcoveries? For it

feems to be an event the most surprising,

and

and the least to be accounted for from the nature of things, that reason, the only and all-fufficient means to attain to these difcoveries, given to man for this very end, should, for fo many ages, be in vain racked and tortured in the inquifition of these truths; and yet, after fo long a time as five thousand years, reafon fhould stumble upon them, as it were, by chance: fince the enquirers of all ages had the fame powers and faculties of reasoning, the fame light of nature to direct and affift them; and and many of them fpared no time or pains to complete and perfect their enquiries. Reafon has had a long infancy, if it be but now arrived at its manhood; and the world, in general, has reaped but little benefit from its light, if, like an ignis fatuus, it has thus fhone in holes and corners, by fits and starts. The objection urged by reafoners against the Chriftian difpenfation, will here recur in its full force; for the world, upon their fuppofition, must have lain long buried in darknefs. The reason of former ages was dim and obfcure, and their knowledge confined, and hidden in mysteries, and their religion

of

of nature comes too late delineated, and, I think I may fay, attended with too flender evidence, to be received for the catholic faith. Befides, it is confined to an handful of men,' in a small corner of the world; the far greater part of mankind, if they have this light within, being no better for it, its rays not shining strong enough to difpel and diffipate the thick gloom of fuperftition and ignorance which hangs over them; fo can' never, as the reasoners would pretend, be the true light which lighteth every man which cometh into the world. For my own part, I can have no great veneration for the fufficiency of reafon, which in so many thousand could not find out what now every fmatterer in philofophy and divinity pretends to know, and to demonstrate to a mathematic certainty.

years

I come next to enquire what grounds we have to believe a revelation was made in these points. I prefume it will readily be granted me, that no writings extant carry any marks of, or have any just pretences to a divine revelation, except thofe of the Old

and

and New Testament; and if we find it not there, it is in vain to seek for it any where befide. It will, I hope, alfo be allowed me, that these writings come handed down to us with fufficient authority to inforce the belief of what they contain; fince the objections generally raised are not upon the fuppofition of the books being forged, but are fixed on the seeming mistakes and contradictions in things natural and divine, which the objectors cannot reconcile to what they have fet up as the standard of truth and right reafon. We find it revealed, Gen. i. 1. that God created the heavens and the earth; and a formal account of the creation is there particularly related. But, according to the opinion of our learned men, God is an infignificant word, and the account of the creation there given is false; fo that every one is still left at his liberty to frame what notions he pleases of the divine effence, and to lay down his own laws for the laws of nature; to define, from his own imaginations, the attributes of God; and give, I know not what, properties to matter. We are as much in the