Spirit, could ever have been reached by the strongest efforts of human reason. Nevertheless, let us examine whether this overthrows our former supposition, that all dispensations of heaven are grounded upon the condition of human nature, and their efficacy dependent thereon: for nature is not what it was when the law of reason was first written upon the understanding, therefore may require fresh additions which were needless before.

I suppose it will be allowed that if man had not rendered himself obnoxious to punishment by his fall, he would have needed no redemption, and consequently no knowledge of the mysteries whereby it might be effected: had his understanding not been darkened, he would have wanted no enlightening from above: had his will retained its native vigor, a divine assistance to second his endeavors had been superfluous. So that these additions, though never discoverable by the best exerted industry, yet the expedience of them was founded upon the nature of man: not indeed that wherein he was created, but his present corrupted nature. Wherefore the study of This conduces to the more perfect understanding of Them, or at least enables us to make the better application of them to our uses: as a physician ought to know the nature of the disorder and present habit of his patient, before he can administer the remedies he has in store.

Then for that part which is barely a republication, why should we expect mischief from the exercise of reason? so far as this part extends, we may say without offence, that Christianity is as old as the creation: the perfection of morality is still the same it ever was, the book of nature wherein were written the essences of right and wrong, lies open before us without erasement, or variation in the pages, since their first impression: but our faculties are altered, our vision contracted, and our language divided into a Babel of tongues, so that we cannot take in the whole winding periods containing a long series of causes and effects, nor pursue remote and intermediate relations to one conclusion; and when we do read the substance we sometimes express it in terms contradictory to those employed by one another.

Wherefore a republication might be expedient to new model the ancient text into a conciser form, suitable to our comprehension, which wanted particular rules and precepts that might put us upon measures we did not discern the prudence of: and to fix a certain standard of language, which might render our intercourse among one another more commodious and profitable. Nevertheless, it will scarce be doubted that these rules and precepts have a real foundation in right reason and nature, therefore all fair examination of them upon these bottoms, ought with more justice to ex

cite our hopes than our alarms: and since we know how variously men turn their thoughts, how diversly they connect their ideas, and express themselves upon the same sentiments, it can as little be doubted that there may be a mixture of conformity in opinions seemingly the most opposite; and that every discovery of this is a step towards union, and towards promoting the cause of truth. I remember to have heard the same good Bishop declare from the pulpit, that we must not judge of the strength of human reason by the works we see now performed by it, because the truths of the Gospel have insensibly infused a degree of their own lustre, and soundness into the present moral philosophy: and if I may be permitted to add anything from my own experience to so great an authority, I think I have found on conversing with unbelievers, that they have more of the Christian in them than they know of themselves. Therefore we have less reason to be afraid of them than our forefathers had: for by endeavoring to enter for a while into their conceptions, and following their trains of thinking, if we find nothing to learn by them, we have a chance of attracting them, without their perceiving it, a little nearer to ourselves than they are willing to come.

3. Nor do the divine oracles show themselves averse to the exercise of reason: we are exhorted to try all things, and told that we may know of the doctrines whether they be from God: but how can we make trial of anything without the use of our judgment? or how can we know the internal marks of divinity in a doctrine, unless by comparing it with those ideas of God we have learned before from natural Religion? And if the truth were known, I am apt to believe the internal evidence is what determines most men who do not take up their opinions upon trust: for the external of all kinds has been so perplexed by subtile disputations pro and con, that it requires a compass of reading, few have opportunity to go through, to be masters of the argument; but according as they think well or ill of the doctrine, they admit the slightest, or reject the strongest evidence that can be produced to support it.

We may gather further from the style and manner of the Scriptures that they were not intended to supersede the use of human reason, but rather as helps encouraging us to employ it with more alacrity. They are delivered in detached precepts which require judgment to methodize, and form them, together with our natural notices, to strike out a regular system of conduct. They give contradictory rules, enjoining us to brotherly love, to diligence and industry; yet commanding us to hate father and mother, wife and children, and to take no thought for the morrow: for sufficient

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unto the day is the evil thereof: things not to be reconciled, nor indeed understood, without sober thought and rational construction. Others unnatural and impracticable. If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the left; if he would take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also: until opened by the key of reflection upon human frailty, they appear to contain within, not directions for our ordinary conduct, but admonitions to beware that our natural appetites do not get the mastery over us, teaching us not so much what we are to do, as what we ought to render ourselves capable of doing. Others delivered in Riddles and Parables, so that seeing we shall not see, and hearing we shall not understand, unless by using our best wits to dig out their latent meaning.

In short, the figurative style running throughout the sacred. words, evidently supposes a fund of knowledge previously laid in from other sources: for figures touch neither the imagination nor the understanding, otherwise than by their allusion to things we have been familiarly acquainted with before. Therefore we are told the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive: now what spirit more likely to be meant here as having this vivifying quality than that of sobriety and discretion, nourished up to maturity by due exercise of the several means allotted us for strengthening our faculties? For the Spirit of God will not do all our work for us upon any occasion; it only co-operates with our endeavors, nor will afford us any lights we might have stricken out for ourselves: therefore it behoves us to avail ourselves of our natural lights and powers so far as we can, having no warrant to expect assistance from above, until we have tried our strength upon the materials found below.

But it is said human reason is a dangerous thing, having bewildered many in mazes and fatal errors who have trusted to it: this we do not deny, but is not Scripture too a dangerous thing, having driven multitudes into wild extravagances and pernicious notions who have trusted to their own hasty interpretations of it? Therefore, if the abuse of a good thing were an argument for the total disuse of it, we had best do as the Papists would have us, that is, wrap up our Bibles as well as our talent of reason in a napkin, and content ourselves with such scraps of either as they shall please to deal out among us, cooked up after their own fashion. Let us reflect that nature is the work of God as well as Revelation; why then should we despise his gift, and not rather consider it as another Bible dictated from the same mouth?

So far as we perceive them to agree, we may rest assured of having the true sense of the author: wherever they seem at va

riance, it is certain we must have misunderstood one, and a shrewd suspicion we may have mistaken both. What then can we do better than carefully to study both, and pursue the comparison between them, in order to apprize us of our mistake, or remove the cause of it, by employing them to explain one another? It is too notorious from frequent and fatal experience to be denied, that the moment a man throws aside his reason, he has little further benefit to expect from revelation: for though the necessary duties be written there in such legible characters as that he who runs may read, yet he must have learned to read before, or he may stand poring over them by the hour without being a whit the wiser for all he sees.

Without disparagement to the holy writings I may question whether, strictly speaking, they contain a perfect rule of doctrine and conduct; yet they may do it in a looser sense, as containing all that was wanting to supply the defects of that other rule God had given us before for many of our uses: so the perfect rule is made up by the aggregate of both, but we may be said to find perfection in the former with the same propriety as we are said to find health in the prescriptions of a consummate physician; not that we are to live altogether upon physic, nor expect to support our health without our common food, but because the medicines restore our blood to its purity, and our solids to their original tone, thereby bringing our victuals to agree with us and nourish us.

4. We are told the Gospel was preached to the poor, that is the vulgar and illiterate, whose opinions, sentiments, and apprehensions fluctuate from time to time: so that what was a proper regimen for the Jews and Gentiles just fallen under the Roman yoke, may not suit the occasions of the poor in those European countries. And it is admitted by divines, that some precepts are not universally binding, but only upon the persons to whom they were delivered: yet they are not distinguished in the text from the general by an introduction of, This is for the disciples, and This for all mankind. How then shall we distinguish them apart, unless by an attention to human nature, discovering to us what is suitable to it, and what is expedient only for particular occasions?

Nor do we scruple to alter the primitive institutions and practices without other warrant than the necessity and reasonableness of the alteration: Christ sent forth his preachers with nothing more than a staff in their hands, and commanded them, into whatsoever house they should enter, to be content with what was set before them, and after his departure, his Apostles maintained themselves by the work of their hands, or the voluntary contributions of the faithful whereas our Clergy have revenues, honors,

and power, established for them by law, which they would find much harder to defend by the written text, without wresting it violently, than by the expediency of those provisions for the encouragement of learning, and preservation of order and Religion among us. So that if they have a divine right to their possessions, they must derive it through the channels of human nature and good policy, flowing from springs of divine original: and this regulation ought rather to be esteemed a foreign scion engrafted from the law of reason, than a natural shoot from the given law.

Nor do the laity stand in a different case from the clergy, the landholder having no better gospel-right to his nine parts, than the parson has to his tithe: for what is more frequently and strongly inculcated by Christ himself than a community of goods? how often are we exhorted, as the first preliminary to entering the kingdom of heaven, to sell all we have and give to the poor? by whom must be meant the community, because if this precept were universally practised, we must all become poor, and all be benefitted by the produce arising from every sale. Nevertheless, this reiterated command obeyed for a little while, was quickly broken through, and has long since been totally disregarded: Christians now-a-days possess and defend, and if they can, increase their several properties without scruple, yet without pretending the authority of any text to exempt themselves, or to declare the precept temporary or local; without other warrant than from common sense and experience of human nature, which manifests to every apprehension the impracticability of such a scheme, and shows its certain tendency to introduce disorder, confusion, and scarcity to discourage industry, prudence, and commerce, and destroy that subordination necessary to good government. One may presume this impracticable injunction was laid on purpose to make us see the allowableness and necessity of consulting our own judgment, and even suffering it sometimes to carry us directly counter to the written word: yet without infringing its authority, or proving the command unnatural, wherever nature can be found in that perfection whereto the Gospel was designed to restore it.

For a community of goods is no such extravagant notion, but that we can find the convenience and pleasure of it in little friendly societies for a few hours or a few days continuance. When the company sit down to an entertainment, they have not their several messes in private property, but all lies in common before them; each man calls for what he likes, he carves the meat and helps the rest in the manner he thinks will be most agreeable. If a number of well-behaved and mutually well-disposed persons