light enough to see that his life and the hopes of another could never agree and that if what Christianity teaches of the severe justice of God of the immortality of our souls and of the last judgement was true he was the most miserable of men amidst his false delights There was therefore a choice to be made between a life so disordered and a Religion so pure both being irreconcileable But how could he break off the fetters of lust armed and backed with a possession of many years The only thoughts of it made the whole heart rebel against the mind Perhaps he did strive to free himself from that oppression but fell lower than he was before He thought it therefore easier to extinguish what faith and Religion was left him He turned Almighty God out of the world Or if he left him his being 't was upon condition that he should have nothing to do with him in this life or in the next He disannulled the act of the last Judgement extinguished the flames of Hell called them tales and stories to fright Children and to hinder misery from ever falling upon him annihilated himself after his death He put a vail on his eyes only to peep on things Then he said confidently he saw nothing clearly and there was no more ground to believe than to disbelieve or believe the contrary In a word he had rather run to those excesses than refrain his passions Yet if Irreligious men will give glory to truth they must acknowledge that this was the way which led them to the pit And what other arguments can they expect to be condemned by Is that licentious life of theirs an argument against God and his Religion Is the Gospel less true because they are become slaves of their passions Certainly they might degenerate into the very state of beasts truth would not be less unchangeable Before they had engaged so deeply in sin when they lived an honest Christian life there was a God maker of Heaven and Earth a Jesus Christ who had redeemed us with his blood their soul was immortal and had they persevered in those commendable beginnings Faith and Religion would never have decayed But since they live disorderly all the world is altered There is no God no Christ no Angels no Devils no souls There is no Heaven to hope no Hell to fear All that has been annihilated in a moment or become so obscure as not to be apprehended But oh wonder they begun to open their eyes only since they gave themselves to the love of Creatures whose natural effect is to blind Now are they not sensible of the insufferable absurdity of these pretences And if they will answer sincerely what other proofs they need to be convinced that they are out of the way But as their sinful inclinations darkned their understanding they must never hope to see clear in the things of God till they are free from their slavery Our heart being prepossest with a violent passion for any object is not calm and unconcerned enough to judge whether the Law which condemns its excesses is just He declares before hand against a Religion which bars him from his most tender desires as an enemy to his quiet And the mind covered with the mist passion casts over it cannot weigh impartially the most solid reasons CHAP. II. Three Obstacles the Irreligious must remove by three contrary dispositions IF then the Irreligious seeks the truth with sincerity which the doctrine of Christ alone can lead us to let him remove all the obstacles that hinder him from being perswaded They may be reduced to three two of which are in him and the last in God himself The first is his sensual pleasures and passions the ordinary causes of his sins The least passion naturally obstructs the mind and unfits it to pierce the cloud that lies over the truth But sensual pleasures are directly opposite to the Gospel of Christ and 't were a miracle if a soul charmed and possest with them could understand Religion And so a sober innocent life free from passions and sins is the first disposition required of an Irreligious man He must begin before-hand to live in a manner answerable to the dignity of the law he examines The King of Heaven as jealous of his authority as the Kings of the Earth exacts from those rebels that they should put down their arms before he enters into any conditions of peace This obedience of theirs will be a preparation to faith as faith is a necessary condition to apprehend our mysteries The Irreligious would apprehend before he should believe and obey but he must do both before he can apprehend Nisicredideris non intelligetis We cannot know it better than from the author of our faith The practice of his doctrine is the only way to know whether it comes from Heaven He will will make an happy experiment of the truth of the words of the Prophet The Law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul The testimony of the Lord is pure making wise the simple The statutes of the Lord are right rejoycing the heart The commandment of the Lord is pure enlightning the eyes The fear of the Lord is clean enduring for ever The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether Thus the Irreligious must begin to examine the true Religion otherwise he flatters himself in vain to have done his indeavours in that search As long as his heart is stained by the love of creatures he has not gone the first step But seeking Religion without forsaking his vices he united things that are irreconcileable The second obstacle the Irreligious meets in his waies is a disturbed busie life which tying him to present things leaves him no time to think upon his true concerns He is never at home External objects carry him from himself And care study and application being the only means that can help him in his search without them his undertaking will prove unsuccessful God is not to be found but in true Religion The Church he has founded is his dwelling place There is from it but illusions and deceit True Religion is very often covered with obscurities which incline proud men to think it false God has hid himself as it were with a cloud that men might seek for him He needs therefore all the application care and industry he is capable of to see through it If he succeeds or mistakes he is happy or miserable for ever The last obstacle the Irreligious must overcome is the justice of God he has provok'd who to be revenged of him Spargit poenales caecitates super illicitas cupiditates The wrath of God is manifested in him by his indifference for any Religion his invincible hatred to any thing that can disturb the happy peace he enjoyes and the disposition he is in to live a pleasant easie delicious life From that deplorable state of his flowes naturally a third condition necessary to an Irreligious man who begins
can hinder you then to embrace the most probable party and specially when it secures your eternity reputation and all other advantages Must you be divided and racked by different passions and complain at the same time of the necessity and impossibility of believing And why will you deny your self in this occasion that which you do in all others that is to follow the most probable opinion Irreligion was no less uncertain to you at that very time you lookt upon it as more probable than Christianity Yet its uncertainty did not fright you from running into it The liberty and independency it promised made you resign up all your doubts Why then the one giving you so great hopes do you refuse to do for it what you do for the other Perhaps you deny it to be more probable Well let it be so The most you can do for Irreligion is to doubt Maintain as long as you please the eternity of the World and the mortality of the soul Put your sentiments in their most favourable light you can never demonstrate and free them from doubts After all your endeavours they will be still opinions and nothing but opinions But if you doubt of them in the least you ought to forsake them It being an horrid madness to venture your salvation upon an uncertain opinion Ipso facto that it is an opinion it may be false and if it be so you ruine your self for ever In a concern as important as eternity is you must rely upon dogms which cannot mislead you But till you conceive how far Christianity is from misleading you submit to it That stedfast disposition of mind to believe comes from the will and if this be determined the other will quickly be perswaded Faith must not depend upon the relation of senses or the evidence of reason but it s own determination You are not concerned to know but to believe Science may challenge demonstrations but the glory of faith is to submit to Gods authority Though its seat be in the mind yet it depends almost totally from the will which induced St. Austin to say that it depends from humane liberty to believe or not believe If some want penetration and light none wants a good will Nothing else is required to believe Almighty God so tempered our faith as to proportion it to all sorts of trains because being absolutely necessary to salvation and the penetration of men so different had it depended from their parts the unlearned would have been excluded from it But now the Ignorant are even with the greatest Doctors Thus it is easie to pass from uncertainty to certainty forcing our understanding to believe Notwithstanding all its reluctances and reducing uncertainty to inevidence which is the character of Faith CHAP. V. The Irreligious of education if there is any may be convinced of the truth of Christianity by Scripture and miracles The Irreligious of profession must supply his want of evidence by a sincere hearty will I Do not know what can be opposed to those principles except one should say that faith depends not immediately from the will because the will does not believe by it self but only determines the understanding to believe But that determination still presupposes a conviction the empire of the will being not so great as to sway the understanding without at least a seeming reason to satisfie it This Objection might be of some weight proposed by an Irreligious man of education altogether unacquainted with Christianity Then I would prove the existence of God by the testimonies he gave of himself in the Scripture and the Scripture by those infinite wonders he wrought by Moses Christ and his Apostles The Apostles converted the world with arguments of this nature Nations astonished at the sight of dead men rising from their graves could not doubt whether the power which exceeded so much that of nature did really exist Miracles made it visible to their eyes and this was the object to which their will applied their understanding to the end it might be subject to the obedience of faith Nor has that sort of Irreligious men less ground to believe them than all the Nations converted by the Apostles They must look upon those miracles as if they had been wrought before their own eyes They have in them the same power of conviction as they had before and prove no less against them than they did against the Heathens The differences of time take nothing from proofs which consists in matters of fact Miracles may pass but the truth of a fact is unchangeable It out-lasts them and as long as it is true that Christ and his Servants wrought miracles to prove his divinity they must seem to any rational man invincible arguments Supposing then that any man born Irreligious should desire light to fire his understanding upon that he might believe he should seek no where for it but in the authority of God who has spoken in the Scriptures and authorised the Scriptures by miracles When God speaks to us his words are infallible his authority soveraign our submission bears no limitations and the dispute being reduced to matter of fact any ingenuous souls would be easily satisfied But there is no such Irreligious of education all men being brought up in some Religion or other The Irreligious of our times are so of profession decaied Christians concealed Apostates who having been brought up in the principles of Christianity were carried to Irreligion either by corrupted companies bad books and above all a prodigious inclination to riot and excesses They want no light to believe the symbol of the Apostles They need but remember what they had been taught before their depravation and refresh those Ideas sin has so entirely defaced in them They pretend they cannot believe because they do not see things with their own eyes But there is a vast difference between not believing a thing because we have proofs of its falshood and not believing it because we want sufficient arguments of its truth The understanding may be more easily subdued in the second sense than in the first and the will swaied by the authority of the speaker may supply the want of Reason This insufficiency or rather inevidence of proofs is the only foundation of their incredulity But alas how groundless and irrational How wonderful is the confidence of men who complain of the insufficiency of proofs to believe Christianity whereas they have the same insufficiency in the principles of Irreligion How many times did passion or the authority of their Teachers supply their want of reason Did they not produce so many acts of faith as there are incomprehensible consequences in the worlds eternity Why do they refuse to do the same now and rely upon an authority considerable by an infinite number of miracles They grant no more in that but what is required of them either in sciences or in the commerce of humane life They are concerning the secrets of God as an apprentice totally unacquainted with the principles and terms of the art he learns But there is no principle apprentice as the Philosopher and experience teach us but must believe what he cannot apprehend The blind belief he gives to his Masters directions is the foundation of all the perfection he can come to in his Art The first elements of every Science cannot be proved and supposing they could an apprentice is not able to understand them His best is to receive them with an entire acquiescence of mind Why then do not the Irreligious in matters so dark as Religion is imitate Apprentices in the first rudiments which are given them or remember what they did themselves when they first learned any thing Are they more knowing in the deep mysteries of Christianity than they were in Geometry and Musick They assented blindsold to him who taught them to play upon the Lute and they will not be ashamed to exact from God demonstrations for every Article of his Doctrine Certainly Irreligion carries men to strange extremities Is it possible they should not see that their reason must the more submit to Gods Authority because those mysteries he reveals unto us are infinitely more disproportion'd to our senses than all Arts and Sciences in the world THE END Books to be sold by Henry Bonwicke at the Red-Lion in St. Pauls Church-yard AGeographical description of the four parts of the World taken from the Notes and Works of the famous Monsieur Sanson by Richard Blome fol. Britania or a Geographical Description of the Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland By Richard Blome fol. Scapuli Lexicon 10 FE 60 fol. Curcellaei Opera fol. Clarks Martyrology fol. Bocharti Geographia sacra quart Glassii Philogia sacra quart Dallaeus de usu Patrum quart Cluverii Geographia quart Pharmacopoea Augustina quart Diemerbroeck Anatomia quart Bartholini Anatomia oct Schulteti Chyrurgia oct Graaf Opera Medica oct Polidor Virgil Hist Angliae oct Sermons Preach'd upon several occasions by John Tillotson D.D. Dean of Canterbury Preacher to the honourable society of Lincolns-Inn and one of his Majesties Chaplains in Ordinary in two vol. oct The new Politick Lights of Modern Romes Church government or the new Gospel according to Cardinal Palavicini revealed by him in his History of the Council of Trent Rapini Opera duodec Flosculi Historici duodec Fromman de Haemorr hoidibus duod
humiliations are so far from taking away the belief of his Divinity that they enforce and support it Let them be proposed to any man of sense and he will conclude 1st That his humiliations can bring no alteration to his Divinity God being wholly immutable and incapable of decay to what state soever he is pleased to descend Periculum status sui Deo nullum est Tertul. de carn Christ 2ly That if he took upon him the vile and despicable form of a man 't was because he would have it so He could have come invested with all the majesty expected from the Son of God His resurrection his ascension his fitting at the right hand of his Father are mysteries as full of Glory as the others are of shame He is instated by them in that splendid appearance the Irreligious and Jews would have him in at the beginning So that his humiliations cannot be attributed to any want of power Nor dares the Irreligious deny these glorious Mysteries unless he resolves to yield up those he looks upon as so shameful Knowing nothing of either of those but from the relation of the Evangelists he must equally receive or reject the whole matter of fact 3ly That he did it because he would do it and that he would do it because he loved us He loved man in his miseries and infirmities and who can turn into a crime so stupendious so miraculous a charity Tert ull ib. 4ly That nothing is really low or shameful but what bears the character of sin The Greatness of God shines in the number order and motion of the Heavens Nor does he fall from his Majesty when he applies his power to the formation of the vilest insects His providence maintains them His immensity renders him present in the horridest places Nor did yet any man think all these things a shame and a reproach to him Yet almighty God is as really in them after his manner as Christ in his mysteries of Humiliation CHAP. II. Christian Religion obliges us to believe impossibilities and things beyond the reach of nature Answer THat nothing is to be believed but what is seen is ridiculous in the very doctrine of Irreligion whose abetters believe many things they never saw Who of them denies Antipodes though they never were there Who of them refuses the testimony of facts related by prophane Historians because they never saw the like Who of them disbelieves many things he has been told because some of them proved false and makes his private opinion the rule of what is credible and possible But it is demonstrable the Irreligious can deny none of those miracles which are obvious in the Scripture There are but two wayes of disproving miracles First shewing their impossibility Secondly Their want of Authority It is altogether out of their power to prove the first A miracle is either impossible as being beyond the force of nature If he thinks them impossible in that sense so far we agree Or it is impossible to God and this he cannot assert according to his own principles Or impossible in it self and this cannot be made out but by demonstrating a real certain evident contradiction in them And if we consider things in themselves what impossibility is there that a soul and body which were united a little before should join again and be in the same state they were before their separation if there is a power capable of uniting them What contradiction is there that a blind man should receive his sight a dumb man his speech a Paralytick his limbs Nature doing it often with time and remedies why cannot a superiour power do it in a moment For the second viz. Want of authority no Irreligious sure will charge them with Besides the integrity of them that transmitted them to us Besides their principle that no lye was lawful but that a lye in matter of Religion was detestable they say nothing but what they have been eye-witnesses of Some of those miracles have been believed for three thousand years and preserved by a people that has built their Religion upon them The rest have been believed sixteen hundred years since and contributed to the conversion of all the nations of the Earth Their Preachers sealed them with their blood wrought the same if not greater and induced by them an infinite number of people of all Ages and Conditions to dye for the truth of the Gospel 'T is matter of fact that before Christian Religion was brought into the world all Nations the Jews excepted were Idolaters It is another matter of fact that those Idolaters changed Religion and from Infidels became Christians And what greater proof than this can be required for the authority of miracles how could such a sudden alteration be seen in the world without an infinite number of wonders which backt and supported the Gospel Were so many millions of men meer children whose mind was altered at first sight Were they so stupid and simple as to receive any new Doctrine without discernment and upon trust Is not the History full of the strange excesses Nations ran to to defend those errors the Disciples of Christ would remove from them Could they be overcome after so long so stout a resistance by any other force than that of miracles Do not the violent and lasting persecutions of the Primitive Church evince that they were of a Religion contrary to ours How could twelve Fishermen agree upon so strange a resolution as that of delivering lyes to all the world and be so obstinate as no torments could perswade them to desist from their foolish undertaking How could so many Nations assent to lies which procured nothing to their defenders but death and sufferings How could they venture their lives to maintain and transmit them to us by a constant and uninterrupted tradition Certainly one should convince us first that all those Nations were naturally mad and apt to prefer a severe law which extends its empire to the very desires of the heart and has for its Promulgators men unknown and persecuted every where to their first Religion which put no limits to their cupidity And before any body should embrace Irreligion the Irreligious is concerned to prove by solid arguments that those changes are naturally possible and the more because they are so particular to Christianity as to be found no-where else CHAP. III. The incomprehensibility of things Christian Religion obliges us to believe answered The injustice and absurdity of that reproach THe Irreligious complains many points are proposed to his belief which it is impossible for him to understand as if nothing was to be believed but what falls under his senses Which reproach may be reduced to these two Propositions That nothing is to be believed but what may be comprehended and that things are not when they are incomprehensible Then which two propositions nothing can be imagined more impertinent Besides that thereby a weak frail blind man makes his private understanding the
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