nothing in him but what his own Reason perfectly approves no Inclination in his Will or Nature but what is exactly agreeable to the fairest Ideas of his own Mind And since it is for his own Goodness-sake that he loves himself as he doth we may be sure that there is nothing without him can be so dear to him as that in us which is the Image of his Goodness Every like we say loves its like and the righteous Lord saith the Psalmist loveth Righteousness Psal. 11.7 i. e. being righteous himself he loves Righteousness in others by an invincible sympathy of Nature His greatest Heaven and Delight is in his own most righteous Nature and next to that in righteous Souls that imitate and resemble him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God hath not a more grateful Habitation upon Earth than in a pure and vertuous Mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Apollo that Mimick of God by his Pythian Oracle i. e. I rejoyce as much in pious Souls as in my own Heaven Which is much what the same with that gracious Declaration that God himself makes by the Prophet Isaiah 57.15 thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity whose Name is Holy I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble Spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones Since therefore moral Duties are all but so many Copies and Exemplifications of Gods Nature this is a sufficient Reason why he should prefer them before all the Positives of Religion III. GOD principally requires moral Goodness because 't is by the Practice of this that we advance to our own natural Happiness For the natural Happiness of reasonable Creatures consists in being entirely governed by right Reason i. e. in having our Minds perfectly informed what it is that right Reason requires of us and our Wills and Affections reduced to an entire Conformity thereunto And this is the Perfection of moral Goodness which consists in behaving our selves towards God and our selves and all the World as right Reason advises or as it becomes rational Creatures placed in our Circumstances and Relations And when by practising all that true Piety and Vertue which moral Goodness implies we are perfectly accomplished in our Behaviour towards God our selves and all the World so as to render to each without any Reserve or Reluctancy what is fit and due in the Judgment of right Reason we are arrived to the most happy State that a reasonable Nature can aspire to 'T is true in this Life we cannot be perfectly happy and that not only because we live in wretched Bodies that are continually liable to Pain and Sickness but also because we are imperfect our selves and have none to converse with but imperfect Creatures But were we once stript of these natural and moral Imperfections wheresoever we lived we should necessarily be happy Were I to live all alone without this painful Body I should necessarily be in a great measure happy while I followed right Reason tho I lived in the darkest Nook of the Creation For there I should still contemplate God and while I did so my mind would be always ravish'd with his Beauty and Perfections there I should most ardently love him and while I did so I should sympathise and share with him in his Happiness there I should still adore and praise him and while I did so I should feel my self continually drawn up to him and wrapt into a real Injoyment of him there I should be imitating his Perfections and while I did so I should enjoy an unspeakable Self-satisfaction perceiving how every Moment I grew a more Divine and Godlike Creature there I should intirely resign up my self to his heavenly Will and Disposal and while I did so I should be perpetually exulting under a joyous Assurance of his Love and Favour in a word there I should firmly depend upon his Truth and Goodness and while I did so I should be always triumphing in a sure and certain Hope of a happy Being for ever Thus were I shut up all alone in an unbodied State and had none but God to converse with by behaving my self towards him as right Reason directs me I should always enjoy him and in that Injoyment should be always Happy And if while I thus behaved my self towards God I took care at the same time to demean my self towards my self with that exact Prudence and Temperance and Fortitude and Humility which right Reason requires I should hereby create another Heaven within me a Heaven of calm Thoughts quiet and uniform Desires serene and placid Affections which would be so many everflowing Springs of Pleasure Tranquillity and Contentment within me But if while I thus enjoyed God and my self by behaving my self as right Reason directs I might be admitted to live and converse among perfect Spirits and to demean my self towards them with that exact Charity and Justice and Peaceableness and Modesty which right Reason requires the Wit of man could not conceive a true Pleasure beyond what I should now enjoy For now I should be possest of every thing my utmost Wishes could propose of a good God a Godlike joyful and contented Soul a peaceable kind and righteous Neighbourhood and so all above within and without me would be a pure and perfect Heaven And indeed when I have thrown off this Body and am stript into a naked Ghost the only or at least the greatest goods my Nature will be capable of enjoying are God my self and blessed Spirits and these are no otherwise injoyable but only by Acts of Piety and Vertue without which there is no good thing beyond the Grave that a Soul can tast or relish So that if when I go to seek my Fortune in the World of Spirits God should thus bespeak me O man now thou art leaving all these Injoyments of Sence consult with thy self what will do thee good and thou shalt have whatsoever thou wilt ask to carry with thee into that spiritual State I am sure the utmost I should crave would be this Lord give me a heart inflamed with Love and winged with Duty to thee that thereby I may but enjoy thee give me a sober and a temperate mind that thereby I may but enjoy my self give me a kind a peaceable and a righteous Temper that thereby I may but enjoy the sweet Society of blessed Spirits O give me but these blessed things and thou hast crowned all my wishes and to Eternity I will never crave any other Favour for my self but only this that I may continue a pious and a vertuous Soul for ever for while I continue so I am sure I shall enjoy all spiritual Good and be as happy as Heaven can make me So that the main Happiness you see of Humane Nature consists in the Perfection of moral Goodness and it being so it is no wonder that the good God who above all things desires the
is much more imputable to the perverseness of their Wills than to the Weakness of their Vnderstandings FOR in the first place What if you have discovered some Opinions ln Religion to be false and erroneous of the Truth of which you were once very confident doth it therefore follow that there is nothing certain in Religion If so you may as well conclude that there is nothing certain in the Mathematicks neither since some men have been as confident of the Truth of false Axioms in Geometry as ever you could be of false Propositions in Religion That you were once over-confident in a disputable Matter was your own Fault and Folly but must it therefore follow that Religion is a Cheat because you have been rash and inconsiderate and what tho you once laid the great stress of your Religion upon an Opinion which you now discern is erroneous must Religion needs suffer for your Mistake and be branded for an Imposture because you took that for Religion which was not For there are a thousand Propositions about Religion which have been Zealously disputed for and against which have torn men into Sects and been the Religion of the separate Communions they have formed and denominated that yet are very remote Superstructures on the true Foundations of Religion and may be true or false believed or disbelieved without any damage to Religion And therefore before you suspect the Truth of Religion it self upon your discovering the Falshood of any particular Opinion you ought in all Reason to consider whether that Opinion be so essential to Religion as that it cannot subsist without it for if it be not 't is the most unreasonable thing in the World to infer a suspicion of the Truth of Religion from the Falshood of Propositions that have little or no Dependence on it and to reject the Gold and the precious Stones for the sake of the Wood and Hay and Stubble that have been superstructed upon them And then 2. What can be more absurd than for Men to reject Religion because Mens Opinions about it have been so divided For if you survey the several Divisions of Christians you will find they generally concur in all the necessary and essential Doctrines of Religion and that the Opinions wherein they divide are for the most part such unnecessary Speculations as that it is almost indifferent to Religion whether they be true or false And with what Reason can we suspect the Truth of necessary Doctrines wherein all are agreed because there are Disagreements in unnecessary ones Because there are some Propositions in the Mathematicks about which the Opinions of the Mathematicians are divided shall we therefore suspect the Truth of all those wherein they are agreed For if their Disagreement be an Argument of the Falshood of the former why should not their Agreement be as good an Argument of the Truth of the later But how much soever Mens Opinions about Religion may be divided all that can be thence inferred is that some Men are mistaken and while some Men judge of Religion by their Passions and Interests and others by the Prejudices of their Education it is impossible it should be otherwise But for men in the midst of such apparent causes of Difference to resolve to be of no Religion till all are agreed in one is just as wise and as rational as if they should determine not to go to Dinner till all the Clocks in Town strike Eleven together IX And Lastly ANOTHER great cause of Atheism is the profane and careless Neglect of Gods Publick Worship For Men of Secular lives whose Minds are always engaged in this eternal hurry of worldly Affairs are too prone to forget God and all their Concerns in Religion and another World and even their conversing so much with these sensitive things which are always before them and are continually crouding in upon their Thoughts doth naturally indispose them to exercise their Faculties about divine and spiritual Objects and render their Minds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unfit and unable to ascend to the Contemplation of God And therefore God hath appointed the stated Times of Publick Worship on purpose to withdraw Men from their secular Pursuits that so they be at leisure to retire into themselves to recollect their scattered Thoughts and awake their Minds to a sense of Piety and Religion which can by no way so effectually be performed as by the Solemnities of Publick Worship wherein our remembrance of God is not only refreshed and our Piety to him excited and directed by the publick Instructions but our natural Sense of Religion is also actuated and intended by the mutual Concurrence and Example of each others Devotion Thus after our Religion hath been slackned by our worldly Cares and Delights it is duely wound up again by the Returns of our Publick Worship and so the sense of God is still kept alive in our Minds When Men therefore turn their Backs upon the Publick Worship and devote the holy Seasons of it to their secular Business or Pleasures it is not to be wondered at that their sense of a divine Power which they seldom or never think of should by degrees decay and wear off and that that being extinguished they should sink into Irreligion and Atheism For when once Men have worn out their Sense of a Deity and as the Consequence of that are broke loose from all the Ties and Obligations of Conscience they can have no other Principle but Atheism to warrant their Actions and when once they have abandoned all Sense and Remembrance of God so that he is not in all their Thoughts they are in a fair forwardness to Infidelity For tho as yet they do not actually disbelieve his Existence so neither do they actually believe it for how should they actually believe that which they have no Sense or Thought of so that in this insensible State their Faith is concerned neither one way nor t' other nor are they at all solicitous whether there be a God or no. Thus from their profane Neglect of Gods Worship Men naturally slide into an habitual Senslessness and Incogitancy of him and from thence to not believing and from thence to disbelieving him is an easie and almost necessary Transition OF the Truth of which the Age we live in will furnish us with too many sorrowful Instances For as this Nation which hath been always remarqued for a grave serious and religious Genius was never so generally tainted with Atheism as now so neither was it ever chargeable with such a general Neglect of the Publick Worship of God which for several Ages after the Reformation was duly frequented and devoutly celebrated till by the Prevalence of our restless Sects and Factions the Discipline of the Church was gradually weakned and at last totally destroyed in the happy Days before which the Families of each Parish went hand in hand together to the House of God and with one Heart and Voice celebrated his Praise and Worship
and to absent ones self ordinarily from the Publick Assemblies was hardly consistent with the Reputation of being a Christian. By which means their natural Sense and Dread of the divine Powers being continually awakened and revived they were not only secured by it from all Atheistical Impressions but also animated and excited to a pious and sober Conversation But the spirit of Schism prevailing against the Power and Discipline of the Church till it had uttterly disabled it from restraining the Wantonness of that crooked and perverse Generation some incorporated themselves into separate Communions and others under Pretence of so doing withdrew from the Publick Assemblies to the common Resorts of Idleness Drunkenness and Debauchery and whilst the Masters took the Liberty of Conscience to go to Conventicles the Servants pretending to be of a different Perswasion assumed the Liberty of Will to go to Taverns and Ale-houses insomuch that it grew a common Observation that there have been more young People debauched on the Lords Day than all the Week after whilst under pretence of joyning with a different Communion they have taken occasion to withdraw themselves from the Inspection of their Parents and Masters And till once our Schisms and Divisions are cured it will be impossible to prevent this ill Practice unless we will be so unjust as to deny that Liberty of Conscience to our Servants which with so much Clamour and Confidence we demand of our Governors And thus by degrees Profaneness hath insinuated it self under the Covert of Schism and Liberty of Conscience became a common Sanctuary for the licentious Neglect and Contempt of Gods Worship till at last it grew so common and fashionable that it almost ceast to be scandalous Yea so far at length hath this impious Humour prevailed that to go to Church and be devout is among too many Men grown a Note of Disgrace and the Character of a Priest-ridden fool and a Man is hardly lookt upon as fit for genteel Conversation that knows any other use of a Holy-day but only to be at leisure to lie abed or to Game or Drink and Debauch by which Neglect and Contempt of the Worship of God that natural Sense of him which should have been quickned and cherished by it hath been gradually worn out of Mens Minds the Consequence of which is all that Atheism and Infidelity that overspreads this present Age. For when once Men have renounced the Worship of God and in Consequence are abandoned of their natural Sense of his Majesty they are upon the brink of Atheism into which their own vile Lusts whose Interest it is that there should be no God will easily precipitate them But alas how ridiculous as well as impious is it for Men to take occasion from their own Neglect of Gods Worship to renounce the Belief of his Being what is this but to tail one folly to another and to second Extravagance with Madness It would make one amazed to think that ever reasonable Beings should be so besotted as to live in a World over which an Almighty Being presides who sees all their Actions and in whose Hands all events are which concen them and even the everlasting Fate of their Souls and yet take no more notice of him pay no more Respect or Veneration to him than if he were the merest trifle or most insignificant Cypher in the whole Creation But sure when Men have been guilty of such a black and horrid Impiety one would think their wisest Course for the time to come should be to repent of it and to endeavour to compensate for their past Profaneness by the strictness and Sincerity of their future Devotion but for Men to proceed from neglecting Gods Worship to denying his Being is to do worse because they have done ill and thereby to inflame the Provocation as if they were resolved to render their Condition desperate because they have been so fool-hardy as to render it dangerous AND thus I have given a short Account of the common Causes of Atheism which you see are all derived from Mens Wills and not from their Reason For this I do most firmly believe that the Arguments of Gods Existence are so plain and convincing that no Man ever was or can be an Atheist without some inexcusable fault in his Will SECT II. Of the inexcusable Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism THE next thing I proposed was to endeavour to confirm and establish this great Principle of Religion viz. the Belief of a God by representing the great folly and unreasonableness of Atheism In discoursing which I shall meddle no more than needs must with the Proofs and Arguments of a Deity because as I have shewed before 't is not for want of Arguments that Men turn Atheists but for want of Consideration and an honest Will and that the Byass that carries them towards Infidelity is not in their Vnderstandings but in their Wills and Affections that 't is only their Partiality to their Lusts that inclines them to Atheism and that the Reason why they are so ready to believe that there is no God is because they wish in their Hearts that there were none To establish the Belief of a God therefore I shall endeavour to represent the folly and unreasonableness of Mens being partial on the side of Atheism supposing it were disputable whether there be a God or no and this will evidently appear in the following Particulars 1. The Atheist concludes against the Dignity of Humane Nature and renders it not only mean but ridiculous 2. He concludes against the very Being and Well-being of Humane Society 3. He concludes against that which is the main Support and Comfort of Humane Life 4. He concludes for that side of the Question which is infinitely the most unsafe and hazardous 5. He concludes for the unsafest side of the Question upon the highest uncertainties 6. He plainly contradicts himself in his Conclusion I. THE Atheist concludes against the Dignity of Humane Nature and thereby renders it not only mean but ridiculous For the chief Worth and Dignity of Humane Nature consists in its Relation to God without whom its noblest and most excellent Faculties are in a great measure useless and insignificant for if there be no God the objects of our Five Senses are the sole Entertainment of our Understanding and Will and we have no other use of these mighty Faculties which if there were any such thing as an infinite Truth and Goodness are naturally capable of enjoying them but only to consult and choose the Gratifications of our Sense and the Pleasures of this perishing Body For excepting God there is no such thing in Nature as a spiritual enjoyment no Good to be found but what is prepared to entertain the boundless Liquorishness of our carnal Appetites and had we none but such as these to consult for our Reason which is the Crown and Glory of our Natures would have nothing else to do but to Cater for our Flesh and we should