as younger Brothers The Egyptians and the Ethiopians claimed that honour and declared that they came immediately from the womb of the earth And the Athenians took the proud title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But the Chaldaeans and Egyptians carried their Dispute to the very height The first as refer Diodorus and Tully who laugh at both said that when Alexander the Great over-run Asia they had already applied themselves to the study of the Stars just four hundred seventy thousand years And not reckoning their years by the reign of their Kings but divers periods some of six thousand others of six hundred the least of sixty years they made up their account The Egyptians wanted no number to outvie them They found in their Archives that since they had the name of Egyptians the Stars had already compleated four times their great revolution that is returned to the same state where they were when they began to move which includes an incredible number of years Being as proud of Astrology as the Caldaeans they boasted to have kept the Ephemerides of an infinite number of years and the lives of their Kings all that time An Author of theirs relates three branches of them One of Gods the other of Heroes the third of men who reigned an infinite number of ages Nay they were so thirsty of antiquity as to say that Vulcan their first King reigned innumerable ages But the Annals of his reign were lost The Sun succeeded to him as being his Son and reigned six hundred thousand six hundred seventy four years May it not be askt whether the brain of them that made such reckoning or of them that believed them was well settled and yet this is the ground of the belief of the Irreligious Those Dreams are all the shelter they can find if they go to prove the authority of the world by way of authority They agree therefore with Christians in that they believe incomprehensible things But with this difference that we believe only upon the authority of God who has revealed them We are perswaded that his power goes farther than our apprehension And that he includes within and works without himself greater wonders than we are able to conceive And as it is alwaies rational to trust him who is infinitely wise so reason it self forces us to believe things beyond reason This impotency of conceiving the works of God is the only thing can make us happy What sort of God is this that can be included in the narrow minds of men Certainly an object of this nature is a slender ground of felicity And our hopes being inseparable from our faith his incomprehensibility is the greatest comfort of our souls This Irreligious will admit of nothing but what his senses or his experience make plain to him When therefore they believe any thing they neither see nor apprehend their belief is not grounded upon the certainty or evidence but the interest they have in things It is not the object that determines and fixes their belief but their heart and inclinarions They believe that such a thing is after such a manner because they know it and are satisfied but because they would have it so Nay they carry so far that abuse of their reason that when they cannot avoid to believe things morally incredible they had rather believe them incredible by their gross absurdity than any divine grandure that lies in them These are the miserable shifts of the Irreligious But if they could stay there and feed themselves with the imaginations of their hearts without any danger we had nothing to say to them All wise men would only think them out of their wits and so far 't is well 't is no worse But to believe impertinencies and Chimera's with that danger that if they mistake they shall fall into an eternal state of misery 't is a fury a passion an extravagancy that wants a name and can scarce be imagined CHAP. V. Abuse the Irreligious makes against the Immortality of the soul of the conformity between man and beast IT is not intended here to prove the immortality of the soul but only to shew how false and inconsistent are the principles of Irreligion There is a vast conformity between man and beast in their senses in the multiplication of their kinds their self-preservation their passions their distempers their death c. From the mortality of the souls of beasts the Irreligious concludes that of the soul of man and thinks in that to judge according to the natural impression that form in his mind so many qualities which being common to both make a sort of prejuge against man To evince how false is that ratiocination it may suffice to prove that it is no less against than for him He concludes from that conformity that as these of beasts so our souls die Why not that theirs are immortal as well as ours The conformity being equal to both sides it must not be more partial to one than to the other According to all appearances saies the Irreligious Man Beast are altogether alike in the necessity of dying and in all the consequences of death But the whole beast dies body and soul therefore the whole man dies so also But the very self same argument may be thus as probably inverted Beasts and man are are alike in their death But man dies in his body and not in his soul therefore Beasts do so too and their souls are immortal Either of these conclusions must be equal to the Irreligious since professing to believe but what he knowes he knowes and can know the mortality of the souls of Beasts no better than their immortality But Christians saies he acknowledge the whole Beast dies Which answer is the more absurd because he must not argue from what we believe but only from what falls under his senses and experience and what he must thence rationally conclude But he sees only in a Beast the death of the body His eyes can go no further and concludes from that internal equality any thing for their soul Or leaving the answer in its full latitude 't is in vain he makes use of our authority concerning the destruction of the souls of beasts since we do it by reasons which establish the immortality of ours But supposing with them and all the world besides the mortality of the souls of Beasts all that can be concluded from their conformity with man can only fall upon that wherein they are alike There is in man that which is rational and that which is animal Man is born preserves himself by nourishment and his kind by generation He is subject to the distempers of his body the passions of his heart the disorders of the Elements and the necessity of dying All this is common to him and the smallest Beasts Nay many of them out-do him in the perfection of his senses Their light is more piercing their hearing quicker their smelling more refined But all this is still animal All
to open his eyes and that is a violent grief If it be true that there is a God such as Christians adore can there be a creature more an enemy to him and consequently more miserable Can a greater injury be done to almighty God than to exclude him from the number of Beings contemn his Laws laugh at his threatnings reckon him a fancy which subsists only in a crackt brain and live in a total independence from him He cannot therefore be too much afflicted when he seeks for God the loss he makes of him being inseparable from his own These are the obstacles may deter him from Christian Religion Let his experience justifie the sanctitie and security of those means Let them try the truth of its maxims before they reject it there being so nearly concerned that their eternal happiness lies at the stake And what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his soul and what shall he give in exchange for his soul if ever he chance to lose it CHAP. III. The Irreligious cannot be neuter in matters of Religion THe other part of the comparison being that Irreligion leads to eternal torments is yet of nearer concern to Irreligious men They may be apt to say that they renounce all other if they can be secure of their present happiness That they have made choice of earth for their eternal mansion and that this eternity of joyes so much talkt of could not make amends for their loss This ridiculous and foolish answer is made by some with great earnestness Present things have charms so strong for them that they cannot be torn from them Their heart can love and their mind see nothing else Indeed their conduct would not be so strange and unpardonable if there were but eternal happiness to be won or lost They might renounce it nor think themselves more miserable for it But everlasting torments being into the bargain that is the most lamentable condition can be imagined is not only useful but of an indispensable obligation to them to change their belief There is no doubting and considering one single moment 'T is fury and Frensie rather to be exposed to eternal torments than to embrace a party where there is no risque at all 'T is true Irreligion only prefers annihilation to being and life a nothing free from sentiment and misery to a life infinitely happy And to give the best colour to their choice they imagine that if they lose it they are free from the smart of their loss since he can suffer nothing who is annihilated But they will not see that in the uncertainty the question was all along supposed to be their pretended annihilation has its dangers and horrors too If they chance not to be annihilated as it may or may not be they lose not only a blessed immortality but fall into an everlasting misery But if having performed all the duties of the Gospel they are cheated of their hopes they can be annihilated which was their first choice This seems clear beyond all expression Well saies the Irreligious I reject both immortality and annihilation I intend to be neither Christian nor Irreligious I will keep a perfect neutrality That cannot be Of two opposite parties you must fix upon one To suspend is to declare your choice Not to embrace the Doctrine of Christ is to oppose him Since 't is no matter which way we go to work whether by a direct and formal opposition of a contrary Sect or by a negative unbelief either of them spoiling him of his honour Since then there is no medium between these two extreams you must declare But of which side For that which is the surest You can do no less if you have not lost all sense and care of your self In either of them there is something to hope or fear The hope of Irreligion is annihilation its fears eternal torments The hopes of Religion are eternal happiness its fears annihilation So as it was proved before the greatest peril of Christianity if it proves false is the greatest advantage of impiety if it proves true Supposing then as we have already done both parties full of equal uncertainty you ought still to embrace Religion moved thereunto if not by the certainty of the object at least by the necessity you are in determining between two objects the one infinitely dreadful the other infinitely advantagious You must chuse a Religion You must avoid that which is attended by an unspeakable misery These two necessities are equal to any certainty I am obliged saies the Irreligious to be a Christian to the double necessity I am put to of choosing between Religion and Irreligion and to avoid that of the two wherein I may be lost for ever But I am nothing the better for it My will may submit but my understanding is not convinced I desire but cannot believe 'T is useful 't is necessary to believe but that is nothing to me since no man could pass from doubt to perswasion upon such ground as this That whatsoever is good and useful to believe is undoubtedly true Certainly what greater prejudice can there be for the truth of doctrine which frees us from eternal torments than the necessity of believing it That delivery of ours being a necessary real effective good all that can contribute efficaciously to it must have the same qualifications And there is no Chimera the belief whereof be necessary or good to avoid eternal misery It is therefore generally true that whatever is good or necessary to believe is true and certain since if it were not so there would be no use or necessity of believing it If telling lies be sometimes of any use sure believing of them is of none at all Much less is there an obligation of being perswaded of them And we may apply to falshood what Tertullian saies of Sin That they whose concern it is not to be mistaken in matters of Religion are far from making it necessary to be mistaken Nulla est necessitas peccandi iis quibus una est necessitas non peccandi But the Irreligious acknowledge it good and necessary to believe Christian Religion that he may avoid eternal damnation therefore he must conclude it true and embrace it CHAP. IV. The least degree of probability Religion has above Irreligion is enough to bring the Irreligious to a very probable opinion and from opinion to faith SUpposing Religion true and certain in it self it is not so to me saies the Irreligious who seeing nothing in it but uncertain or at most probable Faith implies an assent to what you believe as to a certain and not a probable thing How therefore can I believe any Religion as undoubted which is still uncertain to me This indeed cannot be as long as you have no greater light But till it increases and flames to a higher degree do now what lies in your power You confess Christianity is a little more probable than Irreligion That
to the other Because all things impartially weighed the greatness of the good you hope is a greater advantage than the certainty of the small good you possess You hope indeed with uncertainty but that uncertainty is the foundation of your hope and sufficiently rewarded by the greatness of what you expect 'T is upon that account that Merchants venture a little for a considerable gain though very doubtful A Souldier and a Seaman expose their lives to the end that they may pass the rest of their daies more comfortably though they cannot be secure of the length of their life nor of a gain which a thousand perils upon Sea and Land seem to obstruct They sacrifice the present time to that which is to come things that are certain to those that are doubtful and look upon that comfortable living they promise themselves one day as a greater happiness than the quiet possession of their life with all the troubles and pains that attend it Should the happiness of the next life exceed this only of some Ages or Degrees there were ground enough to a wiseman to prefer the first to the second Nor is there any man of sense but would resign up an age of ordinary happiness and such as the world conceives it upon hopes of a reign of a thousand years and a life infinitely happy But is there no proportion between these two sorts of Goods if that maxim be false that the certain is to be preferred to the uncertain when the advantages are not equal how much more when the one is finite and the other infinite the uncertain you expect infinitely more durable and perfect than the certain you venture And this is the just idea we must form our selves of this and of the next life What proportion is there between the pleasures of this world and the happiness of Heaven What comparison between joyes so limited in their Nature in their Duration in their Extent and those unspeakable ones the eye has never seen because they are not Colours nor the Ear heard because they are not Sounds August Ep. 118. nor have entred into the heart of man because it is too narrow for them What equality can there be found between the possession of the whole earth it self and that of all the riches of God Between the dark heavy passible state of our bodys and the blessed state of immortality and spirituality wherein the resurrection of Christ shall instate them Certainly the Distance is greater than that of Atom to the Universe And must the Irreligious be afraid of venturing that finite good that Atom that Nothing against an infinite Being Must he not be ashamed of claiming here the right of preferring things that are certain to them that are not he who in the way a hunting on his travels at play and in his commerce disclaims it so openly He ventures in all these things with this difference that there is still some proportion in his risque and gain both of them being finite whereas there is none between this life and eternity CHAP. VIII Conclusion of this Discourse LEt the Impious then extend so far as he pleases the greatness of his sinful joyes Let him live to the age of Mathuselem without the least cloud or mixture of infelicity yet he cannot deny that this long contexture of years and happiness is still finite He must needs consess that an uncertain good is to be preferred to any other when it is infinite The uncertainty of it not debarring us from our hopes and the last degree of hope of an infinite happiness far surpassing the enjoyment of a transitory one All the venture is to lose those transitory Goods which loss being already inevitable cannot be parallel'd with an happiness incapable of diminution I see no answer to this except that eternal happiness and misery are Ideas subsisting no where but in the fancies of Christians which is the more irrational because as long as they cannot convince their Religion of falshood and impossbility but still doubts and still reasons all the foregoing ratiocination remains in its entire force against him This only may be added that this is the conformity between a Christian and an Irreligious man that the first believes and acts contrary to his belief and the second doubts and acts contrary to his doubts Of the one it is too too manifest The other talks as if he were certain and thinks and droops without ever being able to fix himself When he speaks of Religion he is confident that it is altogether false and impossible and when he reasons he finds himself exposed to a bottomless Sea of doubts and uncertainties THE Second Discourse The removal of some Objections against Christian Religion IT is not intended here to prove the truth of Christian Religion this having been already done by great men with a success answerable to their expectation but only to remove some of the most substantial Objections of the Irreligious whereby Christian Religion is evinced to be at least most probable They may be reduc'd to these three heads The seeming lowness of the mysteries Christian Religion obliges us to believe The incomprehensibility of our Doctrine The impossibility of those Miracles we look upon as the foundation of our Faith CHAP. I. The Lowness and Despicableness of our Mysteries answered THis reproach is not peculiar to the Irreligious The Jews before them had lookt upon the death of Christ as a stumbling block and the Heathens as a foolishness Marcio and Valentinus as Tertullian relates it did teach that Christ had assumed an imaginary body and his Birth and Death were only illusions put upon the eyes of the Spectators Apelles would have him covered with a real flesh but borrowed from the Stars and not from the Blessed Virgin Thus man would have ordered the grand mysterie of Incarnation had he been Master of it He would have left the bare disposition to God as if he could or should do nothing else but what man is able to think The occasion of those Dreams of the Hereticks was that they believed Christ's humiliations unworthy of him and the ground of the Irreligious men is that they believe they are unworthy of themselves Both are as different in their consequences as in their principles The first concluded that he had no real body nor had really suffered The second from the birth and death of Christ inferred that he was no God The aim of both is to separate sufferings from God as things altogether irreconcilable The Irreligious destroy the Divinity of Christ and receive his humiliations The Hereticks deny his humiliations to preserve his Divinity Christians unite them both in the person of Christ acknowledging that though God as his Father yet he is become lower than the Angels taking upon him our nature and lower than men suffering for them a most cruel and shameful death Supposing then as a Principle that Christ is God it is no hard task to prove that his