nor did ever any man press after that which he had not first an Idea of in his own breast The world could never stamp any character upon its off-spring but it self nor propagate a genius above its own nor can it further those noble Salleys the soul makes beyond it The tendency we are made with to a supreme and perfect Being plainly tells us such a Being does exist Whenever we deny those transparent effects of a Deity in our selves and would cancel that innate Idea God has lest of himself within us and make a nullity of those hopes and fears we find relating to somewhat above us we may with equal reason oppose the truth of our own affections and passions and cease to be sure of whatever our souls inform us And while we contend against the real existence of a supreme Being we deny the truth of our own faculties For whatever can ascertain us there is no God may go far to assure us that we are in our own Beings nothing but a great cheat to our selves My Lord I have now taken my leave of the Atheist What the success of our encounter has been rests with you to determine I know there is an Excise and Custom to be payed to the Criticks of this age before any thing can freely pass of which I am no way careful I mean hereafter to be as little concerned about the Atheist as he can be about Religion and to create no more trouble to my self where I have arrived at a perfect satisfaction If nothing will serve his turn but a negative upon that which himself and every thing besides is an affirmation of let him feed upon his own distemper and feast himself with his own disease 'T is not to be denyed but that a rational conquest is there least to be hoped for where the understanding is but a second to the will and the rectitude of the judgement truckles to the violence of inclination No Map can be drawn wherein we can have a clearer prospect that a man is sunk beneath himself and struggles under a defection from a primitive Oeconomy than that his will sometimes gives the Law and playes the Tyrant over the rest of his faculties 'T was at this back door of the will that Atheism first entered 'T was the desire men had there should be no God that first cheated the understanding or at least bribed it to dispute against him No mans reason would ever have attempted to derive the world from any thing but God had not the will been in open hostility with him and declared war against that interest that stood up for God in the soul However the Atheist may indulge himself in his own absurdities yet having weighed him in the balance of right reason and finding his principles light empty full of falshoods and contradictions and in the complex of them a meer nothing I have taken him as one legally condemned and do think my self reasonably justified to hang him up in Effigie And therefore as the most pertinent Appendix to this discourse I have presented your Lordship with an Atheists Catechism wherein you shall see him epitomized and an endeavour to represent an image of him as much to the life as so small a figure will afford My Lord I have by this performed but a part of my duty to you my first intention did much exceed what I have been yet able to accomplish Two further attempts were designed to accompany these Papers First A rational proof that the Scriptures are undoubtedly and truly the word of God and that we have reason abundantly sufficient to acquiesce in them as such Where I would have imployed that little strength I have to have rescued them from some violent hands that are lately laid upon them and justified their divine Authority against the perverse discourse of absurd and illogical men And Secondly have adventured in a Scripture-glass to have represented to you the excellency of that admirable contrivement Of saving men by JESVS CHRIST to which right reason as well as the Scripture is an entire witness Wherein we shall find all things concurring that might become the designs of infinite wisdom in magnifying in self and reach the whole of mens concerns in the utmost of their exaltation and happiness How far opportunity will ever encourage the execution of the first intentions whether I shall be able to advance another step beyond this ground I have been now endeavouring to make good is a question lies unresolved in the womb of Futurity What has already adventured your Lordships view this small Essay towards the publick service of Religion I am sure you will at the same time pardon and accept As you are too just to blame a mean crop when you consider it comes from an hungry soil so you are too wise to waste expectation where you must needs be denyed a return or to cast away the least hope of any thing valuable from one that has attained no further amongst mankind than that inconsiderable Roman who had nothing to boast of but a jus trium liberorum 'T is enough to my self I have obeyed your Lordship who by the choice of this subject did at once both command and oblige me It will be ever a pleasure to me any way to avow those manifold obligations I have to you nor will I ever cease to do it Resolving never to forfeit my own truth to my self nor to become a sufferer under that uneaste reproach of ingratitude An Atheists CATECHISM Quest DO you believe there is a God A. No I believe there is none Q. What is the true ground of your belief A. Because I have no mind there should be one Q. What other reason do you give for it A. Because I never saw him Q. If there be a God must he not be infinite and so invisible A. Yes if there be one he must Q. Why then do you demand to see him A. Because I know I cannot see him and so may have a sure ground to deny him Q. If there be no God how came this world to be A. It made it self by meer chance Q. After what manner was it first pieced together A. By a casual hit of Atoms one against another Q. How came those Atoms so to hit one against another A. As they were eternally dancing about in an infinite space Q. Whence came the reason of mankind and all that order and regularity we find in the world A. From the meer accidental conjunction of those Atoms Q. What is that men call Religion A. A politick cheat put upon the world Q. Who were the first contrivers of this cheat A. Some cunning men that designed to keep the world in subjection and awe Q. What was the first ground of it A. Men were frighted with Tales that were told them about invisible nothings Q. When did this fright first seize men A. 'T is very long ago and for ought we can find 't is as old as the world it self Q. Has this fright upon men been general A. Yes The whole world in all ages of it have been possessed with a fear of nothing Q. What is the great end that every man is to live to A. To please himself Q. How prove you that A. Because there is nothing above him and so he is his own Law Q. Are men to make any distinction in their actions A. No further nor upon no other account but as they please or displease themselves Q. Is there any such thing as good and evil A. No 't is a distinction the world hath been conzened with Q. When was that distinction first brought into the world A. 'T is of the same date with those fables about a Deity and relates wholly to them Q. Is there any thing for a man to hope for or stand in fear of beyond this world A. No nothing at all Q. What becomes of a man when he dyes A. He returns into his first Atoms Q. What becomes of those Atoms A They still help to carry on the great round of the world FINIS
the Stars That say to the second they cannot find that excellency in the Doctrine of the Scriptures we speak of but rather find it interrupts and crosses them in all those things they take most delight and pleasure in That reject wholly the third and throw away all be1ief of things past and resolve to credit nothing but what they see That mock at the fourth the divine Power attending the Scripture and deny the Being of any such thing think it a vain imagination and tell you that many fabulous stories and false Religions have equally gained upon the world and found many that have religiously bowed down themselves to them and submitted to deluding impositions from them Those I say that will thus object and feed upon this kind of trash that find a way to convert into humour and disease all such notions of things as are the satisfying food of sober and reasonable men and resolve to believe nothing they do not like that will deny the truth of all divine and rational impressions upon mankind because some of them are deluded and mistaken and will admit no men to have attained a right knowledge in divine things suitable to the truest exercise of their rational faculties because part of the world either by weakness or corruption are under the dominion of vanity and lies Such men are most punished when they are left to themselves nor is it less vain to endeavour their satisfaction than to make a demonstration about colours to one that we know cannot or else is resolved that he will not look upon them or to convine him of the harmony of any sound that resolves before-hand to make no use of his ears or at least to call every thing discord that does not suit with some ill sound his ears are already possessed with Supernatural Religion is a thing proposed to men with reason abundantly sufficient to satisfie a man reasonably willing to be satisfied and to leave him without excuse if he be not satisfied And besides all other proofs of it the same humane evidence by which we rest satisfied in all other things that we do not see descends to all ages but not with answers to every froward dissenters objections that will dispute without end against the truth of it because he dislikes the matter of it and be so absurdly disingenuous to deny that to be a good proof to him of the truth of the Scriptures by which he himself rests satisfied in the truth of a thousand other things He that will give no credit to any divine revelation unless God will satisfie his curiosity in the manner of its conveyance to the world sayes in effect though God have given me other good reason and such as he thought sufficient for me to believe him and upon which he has made it my duty to believe him and such reason as I my self think sufficient for the belief of all other things of the like nature and such as I think abundant proof to make good any thing I have a mind to yet I will not believe him unless I please And though my reason tell me that some Being superiour to all Beings made the world Yet unless I had seen him do it I will not believe it Such men are monstrous Fanaticks men that live upon fancy that fancy to themselves how God should govern the world and how he should reveal himself to it and because he does not do it according to their fancy and descend to gratifie their fond imaginations they make it a Law to themselves that they will neither receive nor admit any of his Laws nor pay any acknowledgement to his Being What delight have men taken of late to upbraid the Scriptures with all kind of uncertainty in the delivery of them and all kind of contradictions and absurdities in the matter of them Mens wits and parts have encreased their value with very many as they could best enlarge upon on these heads and despise others as weak and to be pitied who make any stand for divine Truth By this men tempt themselves and others into a mean value of Religion and at last into the highest irreligion 'T is I confess a noble enquiry to search into the grounds of Religion that so we may be rationally ascertained of its truth and not take our greatest concern upon trust But to deal in those things with no other intention but to tie knots to invent vexing questions and peevish objections and because the Scriptures cross mens boundless appetites to load them with all imaginable disgrace and contempt that so God may be more easily dismissed out of the world if we deal with the Scriptures I say upon no better or other account 't is no wonder if the success be accordingly and that men steering such a course not only turn their backs upon all supernatural Religion but at last arrive at the utmost confines of all prophaneness and contempt of Religion it self in down-right Atheism Fifthly 'T is no unusual thing to see many that if they may not enjoy the worship they are affected to and think the best will go to none at all And from such a habit once gotten 't is easie to foresee what a precipice of Atheism men are at the brink of All men are not so well catechized in Religion nor so well affected to it as to try all experiments before they forsake it There is in the generality of men something in the parties and persons they adhere to and in the mode of Worship they joyn in which pleaseth them and has some part in their affections as well as Religion it self purely and abstractly considered And although such collateral things are in themselves not the best and highest motives to divine Worship yet they are such as considerably prevail with not the least part of mankind And they are such as God in his providence over-rules to preserve men in their open owning a Deity and a visible subjection to him in some outward worship and to prevent a total apostacy to Atheism We may not unreasonably suppose that the restraint which in some times past was upon the use of the Liturgy and the present worship of the Church of England to which the generality of the Nation were earnestly inclined did much occasion that Atheism which hath too visibly infected many amongst us For not being able to enjoy the way of worship they most liked and wholly disgusting the way that was then used in publick 't is to be feared that in a short time many came by that means to throw off all thoughts of God and by a disuse of paying any homage or service to him came at last totally to deny him and positively to dispute against him The great concern of a Christian State is to justifie the common cause of God in the world and to dam out the flood of general Atheism Such who can have no tye from above and disown all superiour obligations are never to be ruled but by
reason imagine it not to have been that such things should not be told from one to another and run in a channel of universal tradition We cannot believe but that Adam and Eve told the story of the worlds original to their posterity And three men might carry it far Methuselah lived with Adam 243 years Sem lived with Methuselah 98 years before the flood and Isaac lived 50 years with Shem after the flood and died but 10 years before the people went into Egypt God has often made himself known to the world And not only the thing it self but the manner of it must needs be a thing of that remark that the story of it could never die in a whisper Sacrificing was a thing God revealed in a supernatural way to Adam and we see the whole world filled with the practice of it by the tradition of it from him for it was spread all the world over in such places where it could not be received from the practice and institution of it amongst the Jews afterwards Sacrifices in themselves must needs be supernatural because they are purely relating to Christ and so must needs be revealed from God and could not be such a thing as Adam at first should invent and find out by natural light and all the world should by the same afterwards agree in as a way of worship and a thing acceptable to God Though in after ages as usually it fares with tradition the manner and circumstances of things by their often relation might be varied and worn out yet that main thing that there was a God and that he had sometimes in an especial manner made it known to some part of the world that there was so was likely to be permanent in all generations And yet tradition was another thing in those times when as learned men observe three men Methuselah Shem and Isaac could carry on a tradition from the Creation of the world till within ten years of the people of Israels going into Egypt which was very many hundreds of years Two Objections the Atheist is usually fraught with against these things First saies he 'T is not true in fact that there hath been this general consent to the truth of a Deity My self and many otherâ— deny it and that spoils the universality of it Secondly This fear of a Deity which you say the world is so possessed withall is nothing but what some cunning men have foisted into the world upon politick grounds and the better to serve their own turns and keep the world in subjection and awe For the first How little does it weigh down the opposite scale to this weighty truth If there be some Ideots and some mad men in the world shall not mankind be denominated rational If there be some Torys and Moss-Troopers and such who will come under no government were it reasonable therefore to say that government is not such a thing as the world have agreed in and an institution universally founded in natural light Though some men are born blind yet eye-sight I hope is universal Were it any way reasonable to be endured that the plainest demonstrable Proposition in Mathematicks should be denied to be universally true all the world over because some men will deny it which if mens civil interests and worldly concerns were as much engaged about as they are about other things there is no doubt but they would and be as positive and vehement in their negation as they are in denying other things meerly because they would not have them to be If this objection were of any force 't were in the power of any men either sottishly ignorant or perversely peevish to deny the universality of any the plainest either moral or divine truth when either they cannot or will not understand it The universality of any thing does not lie in every individual persons reception of it it depends not upon individual assents but in that even and true proportion it bears to the universal reason of the world and so it incorporates it self into the universal principle that rules the world Whatever is in it self truly reasonable is universally reasonable because reason is universal Let never so many deny that three angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles or never so few understand it yet 't is an universal truth and must be so acknowledged No absurd thing could ever come into the world but that it has some Authors Aristotle in his Metaphysicks l. 4. c. 4. tells us there were some that affirmed A thing might be and might not be at the same time Did that any way overthrow the generality of that maxim in reason that nothing could be and could not be at the same time Cicero in his book de natura Deorum has long since told us that nothing could be so absurd that had not some Philosopher for its Patron That we call universal consent in mankind must not be built upon every individual consent for then 't were in the power of any one man never so foolish or corrupt to overthrow it and considering the various defects and interests of mankind there could never be any such thing Nor ought we with any good reason to denominate universal from every particular unless every particular man in the world were infallible in his judgement If ever there were such a thing in the world as universal consent to any thing wherein mens interests lay variously concern'd it has been in this case It was never any man interest to deny that two and two make four but it has been and is mens corrupt interest to deny there is a God that so they might live as they list But yet notwithstanding that the notion of God and Religion has curb'd men in their appetite and been directly opposite to their inclinations yet it has prevailed in the world with an universality superlative to what any one thing can pretend to How will the Atheist speed by trying his principles in the world if he denies universality Either he must go to the major part or the melior part If to the major part he has millions against an individual If to the melior part all the religious just righteous men that have ever been refer to an eternal rectitude in a deity and have been an united party since the world began against him For the second Objection that this fear of a Deity in men is a thing artificially infused into them upon politick grounds the better to keep them in subjection and is a lye imposed upon the world The Answer lies easie First This must be said to it 't is a thing begged and taken for granted without the least probation in any sort The Atheist is wholly precarious in it After what manner was this cheat put upon the world and at what time and where are the authors of it who ever gave any account of those things and no man could ever know them to be a cheat but he must be able
to give an account of them to himself and others Is it a thing likely or to be credited that a general cheat should bow down the backs of all mankind and induce so many doubts and fears and troubles amongst them and give an interruption to the whole course of their corrupt living and that there should be no account of it That they should never discover it Nor make enquiry into it But that it should be every where swallowed and taken as a thing granted Let me ask the Atheist this question Where is there to be found a man that does not carry this very fear about himself which he says was imposed as a cheat upon others when he can find me a man that has at no time and upon no occasion any fear about him arising from somewhat above him I will acknowledge that man was capable of attempting to put it as a cheat upon another But if he felt it himself and his own experience made it a truth to himself he could never intend it as a cheat to another Besides there must be a general concurrence in all parts of the world to set this cheat on foot and it must universally take and have the same success in every place and with all sorts of persons For we find this fear of a God in every place where we go And yet a vast number of places have been found out in the world that never conversed with any other people nor received any kind of manners or principles from them Religion is as Justinian and the Civilians say truly The general and universal Law of Nations The most barbarous people in the world have often made Laws to put such to death as denied all Religion 'T is boasted of Epicurus by that poetical Epicure Lucretius that he was the first that opposed Religion and affronted the Gods If he were so then it seems they had the universal and quiet possession of the world before The Atheist will needs have you believe that Religion came first into the world by some accidental FRIGHT and cuning men improved that to make men believe there was somewhat above them When men heard it thunder and were afraid then they were told that there was some body above that was angry and spake loud and so they were couzened into a belief of a Deity But I would the Atheist would consider that if the notion of a Deity had been built only upon such a foundation it would soon have fallen For when men came to discover the natural cause of thunder they would have abhorred such a cheat and detested and scorned the notion of a God ten times the more 'T was the true fear of a Deity upon which all other things have operated If men had not found it they could never have made it Men may mislead it but could never generally create it But that which ought to fix us in a satisfaction in this matter and to prove thiâ— grand Objection of the Atheist to be mosâ— absurd and that Religion and the fear of a Deity could never be a cheat imposed upon the world is that it lies directly opposite to common reason to believe that such a thing as Religion should be introduced as the highest and most supreme concern of the world and to which all others were to yield and to which all mens inclinations though they lay directly contrary to it were to bow and conform that had neither any rational demonstrations externally to approve it self by to the reason of men nor at first found any principles within them that naturally inclined them to such a thing The Atheist falls in his objection under this unavoidable dilemma Either Religion had good reasons and some real grounds first to induce it or it had not if it had then 't was a real and true thing and the world was no way abused in it and the Atheist is gone in his objection If it had not which by the Atheists principles it had not for if there be no God it never could have any then you must believe that all mankind suffered a notion to reign over them most cross and opposite to their inclinations that had not the least truth in it nor the least thing belonging to it that could give it any reasonable probation nor had at the first any natural innate interest in mens minds but quite the contrary to give it any much less a total and general reception amongst men He that will believe this might possibly be must in consequence believe that mankind is not rational nor that the world has such a thing as reason that governs it for 't is to believe the world to swallow a thing as reasonable that has not the least evidence of reason to be given of it Whatsoever cheat mankind could attempt one upon another must be by the use of their reason and 't is not to be imagined that reason could invent a cheat that reason should not discover and that a thing false should be made by the help of reason so seemingly true that reason at one time or other should not be able to detect it For First there is the universal reason of all persons and all ages against some particular mens reason and then there is a lie to be proved and that to be made appear true and reasonable which is not in the least so by some private mens reason against the reason of the whole world that is some few men must be able to perswade the world there is a God which upon the Atheists principles they could not only never shew them but never be able to give them any rational account by any effects on operations of him that there was such a thing And gain an universal assent to it In short some men must tell the world for their own private advantage that there was a God and the whole world must straight be frighted with it and believe it and beget their children and their children beget others again and so on with the same fright and belief of what they never saw nor had the least ground reasonably to believe Where is the man that can shew that the world ever yet had a publick cheat attempted upon it but that in the same age it was contradicted and the cheat made manifest Take it in Mahumetanism or whatever you will If there be no God the ground of all Religion in fact is false and all the deductions from it mistakes and Non-sense He that will side with the Atheist and befriend him in this must imagine that some we know not who in ages past all records we know not when should upon the account of their own private ends be able to befool the whole world and introduce a thing as the supreamest part of the world that had no reality in it and so could not have the least reasonable account given of it and yet that the whole world should receive it and submit to it He that can embrace this
above there could never have been any such thing as fear and conscience below There could never have been an universal fear of an invisible nothing in all rational creatures God and conscience are perfect relatives How is it possible to believe a distinction of good and evil and a conscience about them in order to reward and punishment from a supreme power should be naturally inherent in every man as we find it is unless some superiour Power had made us and fixed such principles in us by our first constitution How comes it to pass that good is preferred before evil when there is more visible in the world of the one than of the other and mens inclinations lie more to evil than to good But that God in our very make hath determined those things and left an indelible testimony in our own souls about them No man can if he would think evil to be better than good and put one in the place of the other which shews plainly that the soul of man relates to a supreme Being that made him and is above him Can we believe that all the exercise of mens consciences in the hopes and fears we find fixed in them about a condition after this life to be meer delusions which they be if there be no God The Atheist himself with all his skill cannot disband his own fears nor run away from his own conscience no more than he can run away from himself he finds seasons wherein he smarts under the lashes of it Conscience is such a thing as is not in the principle of it dicoursed into men but born with them Nor can you ever discousre men out of it nor can a man at his pleasure argue it from himself The soul of man is constituted with a distinction of good and evil in reference to a superiour being that has a supremacy over it Every mans own breast is the proof of this A mans own soul subscribes to it Men are full of exercises of conscience about things not punishable in this world nor any way discernable here A man may as well deny that love and hatred are inherent in men as that conscience is inherent in them and a reference to somewhat above them A man by counterwork may sooner get a conquest over any part of himself than over that we call Conscience because in every step he takes that way whether he will or no he is his own executioner Whither will the Atheist flee from himself to find shelter against the force of this undeniable argument Two things he usually recurrs to and 't is much the same defence he made against that universal acknowledgement there hath been of a Deity in the world First sayes the Atheist This you call conscience in men is nothing but fear habituated in them by tales that were at the first told them and so transferred from one to another about invisible things And secondly That it is not true in fact that all men are troubled with this we call conscience for many have no such thing nor find any workings of it at all in themselves To the first I answer Conscience in men could never be begotten in them by any humane contrivance because 't is a thing can never be confined within any humane bounds Other men are so far from having the power over a mans conscience that a man cannot govern it himself Conscience gives its evidence whether we like it or nor The work of conscience is often to oppose a man himself in the violent emanations of his own will If it had been at the first created by invented fictions and fables those would have contained the boundaries of it and by the same way men were at the first possessed with it they might more reasonably be supposed to be capable at any time of being delivered from it because upon the Atheists grounds if there be no God it was begotten by a lye and 't is surely possible to be nulled by confessing the lye and revealing the truth And yet we find let men say as long as they will there is no God conscience will still abide Secondly If conscience had its first rise from mens being possessed with notions of feigned and pretended Deities and Non-entities of that kind how can it with any good reason be conceived that any man should ever arrive at such an exercise of conscience as to oppose all the men in the world and his own inclinations besides upon the single account of conscience And yet this often falls out to be the case conscience in a man carries it against himself and all others opposing it Now if there be no real God to make impression upon his conscience nor to which by a natural instinct his conscience can refer and all men agree to tell him things contrary to what he calls his conscience and his own inclinations strongly oppose too whence should such a conscience and such a principle come The Atheist must of necessity make a sally out of this world to somewhat that is really and truly above it and beyond it and that made it or else the ground of such a circumstanced conscience can never be found out Thirdly Conscience in men could never be so basely descended nor come from so mean an original as the Atheist pretends and yet have so noble and real effects upon mankind and so much to their general and particular good and advantage as it really has It layes an arrest upon men and restrains them from open and secret evil and injustice and provokes them to do and gives them satisfaction in doing whatever is just and righteous Nothing is more certain and real than the effects of conscience both in the trouble it gives men and also in the satisfaction it affords them 'T is impossible such general and real effects should arise from a very lie a meer nothing He that will suppose that debaseth mankind so far that there can be no certainty in the word of any thing men have or of any thing they are For though some particular persons may be by some accidental means singly possest with foolish and vain conceits yet 't is ridiculous to conceive that mankind should all be possest with one fancy without the least ground for it and that fancy should universally operate in the same way He that aims to make all the world uncertain in what they generally agree in I wonder where he intends to lay a foundation of any certainty amongst mankind Whatever wants a natural innate evidence to reason can never be supposed to be received by the universal reason of the world unless you will suppose reason not to be reason and make it a meer nullity Men every where find the workings of conscience so real that they produce troubles the whole world cannot remove and such peace and satisfaction in men that neither the whole world nor themselves by any other workings of their own souls could lead themselves into Which must needs
insure us that there is an intercourse between God and that we call conscience and that it has a peculiar derivation from and relation to him and is not begotten by a slavish subjected credulity to vain imposed fantasms and empty nothings Had there not been truth in the notion of God and so real a ground for conscience and had not the principle of conscience been naturally inherent in mankind men would never have been capable of being deceived in a safe object of worship The truth is Religion let it be never so heterodox and erroneous confirms the principle of Religion it self and the tendency that is in men toward God and the true Religion For take Mahumetanism or what false Religion you will the ground of mens subjection to it was an in-bred devotion that is to God above them their ignorance of whom made them liable to pay that devotion where they were deluded and mistaken I doubt not but that every person that has performed any worship since the world began though never so false had an implicite tendency through that innate principle that was in him to the true God We will suppose the most the Atheist can desire us to suppose for his advantage in this case that men under a false worship may have the same exercise of conscience in trouble and satisfaction that others have in that we call the true and right knowledge of God Suppose a Mahumetan as much concerned in matter of conscience as a Christian and the Atheist thence inferring that conscience universally may be a cheat upon men every where because it is so there in that particular case Yet this will no way help him for in this case the principle of conscience it self is no cheat put upon them the cheat lies in the wrong exercise and application of conscience of which we are not speaking but of conscience it self This supposeth conscience in them 'T is not here whether conscience or no conscience a God or no God But whether a true God or a false God the being of a supreme Power is admitted the deceit lies in the application 'T is not all one to say Because I am deceived in the exercise of conscience therefore I may be as well deceived in the principle of conscience it self And that 't is as easie to make conscience in men by deceit as to mislead it when 't is existing Because in the one case when men are deceived and deluded in their understandings and so in their consciences about the object and manner of worship there is a visible ground for such a deceit and a rational account to be given of it Because there is a real God existing and a certain principle of conscience in men towards him upon which through their weakness and ignorance a cheat may operate But in the other case to beget such a principle as conscience it self by a cheat in men and then apply it as we please is most absurd to imagine because here is no ground at all for such a cheat to be built upon For if there be no God as the Atheist sayes there is not I am sure there is no real ground then for imposing the cheat of conscience upon the world In the one case I perswade a man to worship a false God where there is really a true God and his conscience tells him he must worship some God and in the other case I perswade him to believe he must worship some God when he had no sense of any God and that there is really no God The truth is all the false Copies of a Deity in the world declare plainly there is some true original Men would never have gone about to counterfeit silver if there had been no such metal Men have been still so prone to worship something that they have layen the more open and liable to mistakes and cheats in the objects and manner of worship The trouble and satisfaction men have in their conscience when 't is erroneous highly confirms and no way destroyes this principle of conscience it self The greater the cheat is upon men in the manner of worship the more evident is the principle of worship within them He that is deceived in the object of his love in loving trifles and bables and things not worth love gives the stronger evidence of such a principle as love being in him All false worship is granted upon that innate subjection men are born withall to the true God If there had been no true God Mahomet would never have been worshipped nor would there ever have been any Idols or false Gods Though men fall into the thickest darkness about the objects and manner of worship yet the principle of conscience and worship still remains and is thereby justified and asserted For the Atheists second Objection which is against the universality of this principle in men that we call conscience That 't is not general and that many find no such thing in themselves The answer is 't is not necessary upon his own supposition granted that every universal should be made up of each individual particular that I have proved before Suppose a man has debauched himself into so great a sottishness that he has no use of reason suppose a man has lived so long that he dotes and is childish will you say therefore reason is not an universal principle If the Atheist say these things happen upon particular accidents so say I does the other if any such thing ever fall out to be Where will you find a man without a particular and extraordinary remark upon him without some conscience But suppose a man by Gods particular permission have for a time extinguished the exercise of that principle and has taken much pains to sear it up does that argue that there never was in him any such principle as conscience or does it not rather establish the truth of it The Atheist will often tell you that what men call conscience is nothing but melancholy and morose thoughts of men when they are in ill humour But 't is to be strongly presumed he finds some image of it in himself that makes him able so to nick-name it in others Let any the highest Atheist tell me whether ever he got for any time rid of his conscience without being at some trouble to oppose it And let him dress it up as he will and give it what name he will and oppose it under what notion he will yet 't is evident he landed in this world with such a principle and let me tell him he can never murder it so sure but that for ought he knows it may revive upon him again Let any man intoxicate himself and be never so drunk yet his reason will probably have a resurrection He cannot be sure to immerge that principle unless he drown his own Being When he awakes he will find he is a man though he did what he could to make himself a beast Those Monsters of men amongst the Roman
ability in mine understanding to reason all the world up to him and derive all things from him Secondly When I consider that this supreme Being does necessarily exist he must then be infinite for God and infinite are inseparate And if he be infinite he must also be then invisible to a finite Being If he were visible to any thing finite he could not himself be infinite and then he could not be God How absurd therefore to our reason is it to desire to see such a Being as we ascribe to God! I cannot grasp infinite in my mind much less then can I make it the object of my sight Infinite could not be infinite were it any way comprehendsible Mine eye cannot view the whole world at once which yet is finite and circumscribed much less what is boundless and infinite 'T is a mean and narrow design to confine the notion of God and his Being to our eye-sight when we have so much a nobler capacity to give us a view of him Especially when we consider we cannot see the noblest part of our selves which is our own souls nor are we able to converse by our sight with such things as are proper objects for it but we are soon at a loss We cannot look upon the heavenly bodies so as to incompass their dimensions in our eye-fight What small things are the Sun Moon and Stars to him that is no otherwise informed than by his eyes The least distance out-does our sight and deceives us And yet nothing will serve the Atheist but an ocular view of an infinite Being 'T were much more practicable and reasonable to say he would not believe there was such a thing as the Sea unless he could take it up in the palm of his hand Nor will not be satisfied that the Sun is a body of light by the beams of it unless he can put it into a Lanthorn This discovers to us the grounds of that natural Religion that directly opposeth an Atheist in the whole of his undertaking The fundamentals of this natural Religion are fixed and secured First In that original impression God left of himself upon us at our first make And Secondly In the true exercise of that faculty we call reason 'T is this natural universal Religion by which God intended to uphold the frame and being of the world and without which it cannot subsist Here ought uniformity to be expected and strictly required Things supernatural have not had that universality but have been the peculiar happiness and advantage of some times and some places and are not essentially necessary to the frame and being of the world Nor will the Atheist in the least invalidate the truth of this natural Religion by saying There are very few that have such an exercise of reason as to arrive at such principles For when we say any thing is reasonable we need say no more of it than that it is attainable by reason We speak of what is vertually in that principle what it may do not what every individual man does in the exercise of it What is in it self intrinsically reasonable and will appear so to men when they make use of their reason we may well call reasonable though there be never so few that attain to an understanding of it How many conclusions are there in Geometry and Mathematicks that are in themselves perfectly reasonable and true and will appear so to every mans reason when he will make a right use of it And yet there are perhaps at the present very few in the world that understand them And were he not a very vain man that would therefore deny the reason of them and so consequently admit nothing to be reasonable or true but what every individual person actually comprehends and assents to Thus my Lord I have led you through a wilderness a discourse unpolished without the common high waies of method and such artificial ornaments as we have to please us in those places where we chuse to live beyond what we find where we are sometimes forced to travel When you reflect upon the Journey you have had through these papers I can provide nothing to make you admit it tolerably pleasant but to tell you that you have all the way seen a pillar of fire and pillar of cloud you have seen a dark side and a light side the Atheists dark side the cloud of absurdity and folly that hangs over him how weak that man is that fights against God his own reason disarms him and he becomes a captive to himself You have seen a light side also those clear perspicuous evidences we have of God and that he walks not in the dark but has lighted us to himself by the bright beams of our understandings and has commissioned the meanest creature we converse with and made it his Ambassadour to treat with us about him and written his credential characters upon the whole world and given it in charge to declare his Being This we have made Canonical by two good Authors David tells us The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth his handy work And St. Paul delivers it as a great Oracle of Divine Truth that the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal Power and Godhead In man above all the rest he has fixed a perpetual memorial of himself and obliged him to a peculiar adherence to his Creator in that he has honoured him with his Image that so he should never deny his God but he should fall below himself nor blaspheme that supreme Being without defiling his own He has stamped his image and superscription upon man that so he might know whose he is and to whom as a due tribute he ought still to render himself That divine spark that heavenly image that rational soul is that noblest part of the world wherein God chiefly inthrones himself and by which he puts in his claim to the whole that he has made Nor can man that is so qualified that finds a tincture of divinity in his composition that carries about him such internal rayes of rational light and moves under that conduct when he is truly himself ever make this visible world his ultimate center The more vigorous and enlarged the soul is the sooner it surfeits with the whole of the world and when it has tryed the utmost of it denies it self satisfied and claims a relation to somewhat above it and beyond it Had the whole of the world been for ever nothing but a continued circle of it self were mankind at the top of their Pedigree in things visible could they derive themselves no higher than bare matter and motion the mind could never travel beyond those confines Were this world the highest original of man it must needs contain his ultimate satisfaction and be the perfect boundary of his soul No cause ever produced an effect with a principle beyond it self