By whose mysteries, as Tully observes, men from a savage life became formed and cultivated, as it were to humanity.

"Such an universal consent must needs be owing to an universal conviction and experience of the insufficiency of reason, and seems to be the voice of nature disclaiming it as a guide in the case of religion: And thus our author's scheme, by the confession of all antiquity, and even by his own, must appear foolish and irrational, in attempting to set up that for a perfect rule of life, which from the nature of things never was or could be received as such in any age or country whatsoever. Should he then gain his end, and actually demolish christianity, what would be the consequence, what the fruit of his labours, but confusion and disorder; till some other traditional religion could be settled in its place; till we had agreed to recall either the gods of the old world, Jupiter, Minerva, Venus, &c. or with the idolaters of the new, to worship sun, moon, and stars, or instead of Jesus take Mahomet or Confucius for the author of our faith? And hence may be demonstrated, the immorality also of his scheme, even upon his own principles." Now though I cannot think this writer has argued so effectually against Doctor Waterland, in his Remarks upon him, as to leave no just room for a defence of the scripture history of the fall and circumcision, &c. yet his sketch or plan of an answer to the author of "Christianity as Old as the Creation," has some valuable thoughts in it, and worthy of the reader's best notice.

LOG. Well, gentlemen, I will pursue this manner of debate no longer: I see my cause cannot be supported by it. I will immediately therefore betake myself to my last and strongest argument, to prove, that the natural and rational powers of man must have a greater sufficiency than this which you allow, to lead all mankind to religion and happiness; for I think the contrary doctrine bears very hard upon the wisdom, the justice, and the goodness of the great and blessed God. I am at a loss to find how it is consistent with his justice and his benevolence to his creatures, to leave such millions of mankind, from age to age, under so poor a capacity to find out or to prastise the way of pleasing their Maker in this world, and yet to judge and condemn them in the other world for displeasing him.

PITH. I grant, Logisto, this is a point of argument which has great difficulties attending it, and therefore I propose that we adjourn the debate for one half hour, and if you please to give us your company, and lead us through the several walks and divisions of your beautiful garden we will there relax our thoughts for a season, and I hope we shall each of us resume the debate again with fresh spirits, and to our mutual satisfaction.

LOG. With all my heart, gentlemen, I attend you with the greatest readiness and delight.

THE FOURTH CONFERENCE.

While Logisto was attending his two friends through the pleasures of his garden, he conveyed them to a very agreeeble piece of elevated ground, whence they could survey the neighbouring fields and meadows covered with cattle of divers kinds. Some were grazing upon the natural bounties of providence ; some rested at their ease; and others were sporting variously, with life and vigour, and joy, in the provisions that were made for the happiness suited to their natures. The birds sung their chearful airs upon the bushes, being replenished with their proper food, or they exulted upon the wing with wanton pleasure, transporting themselves from bough to bough; and their little, souls took in all the satisfaction of their natures, and their harmless life. Even the very creeping insects, as well as those that were made for flight, appeared joyful in their narrow dimensions : The worm, the emmet, aad the butterfly were pleased with their atoms or inches of being, and in their low rank of existence seemed to bear their witness to the beneficent hand that gave them every thing necessary to their support and delight, Logisto took notice of it, while they were taking their rounds, and at their return to the summer-house, he thus renewed the conference.

LOG. And can you think, Pithander, that every worthless creature in the universe, not only the beast and the birds, but even the butterflies and the worms, have powers given them by their wise and bountiful Creator sufficient for their happiness, during their little extent of existence; and shall not man the lord of the lower world, man, the favourite of his Maker, shall not man have sufficient powers conferred upon him, to lead and conduct him to his final happiness? Is it not inconsistent with the justice and equity of a God, and much more inconsistent with the goodness of so magnificent and so bountiful a being, to make creatures of an immortal duration, capable of intense happiness, and intense misery, through all that immortal existence, and not provide them with sufficient capacities in themselves to make that long state of existence happy? And yet what multitudes of them, according to your account, are brought into being, almost under a necessity of being miserable? Did these intellectual and wretched creatures ever once desire to exist? Was not their existence the mere effect of their Maker's sovereign pleasure? And would the sovereign pleasure of a wise, a righteous, and merciful God, ever bring creatures into such an immortal existence, without sufficient powers to guide and conduct them to that felicity which is suited to their natures?

Nor is the mere remote, natural, and speculative sufficiency, which Sophronius has taught you, any sufficient answer to this

difficulty. Could so wise, so righteous, and merciful a God bring millions of creatures into being with such a provision for their happiness, as not one in ten thousand should be likely to obtain it? This is so near a-kin to an absolute insufficiency, that this doctrine of yours seems to bear too hard upon the perfections of God. What! has the blessed God dealt harder with his creature man than with any of the meaner works of his hands?

PITH. No, Sir, by no means: And if you could have known man in his original state of powers and blessings, furnished with a clear and sagacious mind, with reason bright and strong, and superior to all his lower appetites and passions, you would, doubtless, have acknowledged the transcendent advantages for elevated happiness, and the rich sufficiencies given to the creature man. You would have confessed, they were such as became a magnificent, a wise, and a bountiful Creator to bestow upon his noblest piece of workmanship on this earthly globe. God hath not dealt worse with his creature man than with the rest; but man has dealt worse with his Maker than any of them. He has not followed the laws of his nature, but broke his allegiance to his God, by chusing evil instead of good: He has ruined his original happy state, and according to the constitution of things, his whole nature and race is tainted, so that he is become viler than the brutes that perish: He has forfeited his native blessings, and he, with his race, are become rebels, and obnoxious to their Maker's displeasure. This, as Sophronius hinted in the first of our conferences, has been the sense of the more thinking heathens, as well as Jews and christians; and without an eye to some such sort of original degeneracy, it is hard, if not impossible to give a satisfactory account for the poor, dark, stupid, and wretched circumstances in which so great a part of mankind, are brought into this world, wherein they live and grow up, age after age, in gross ignorance and vice, thoughtless of their duty to the God that created them, or their true happiness in the enjoyment of his favour.

Loc. But since I am not yet so far convinced, nor so complaisant as to confess this original degeneracy, and since it would lead us, perhaps, too far from our present point of debate, pray, my friend, try if you cannot say something else to clear the justice and the goodness of God from the imputation of dealing so hardly with his creature man.

PITH. I cannot wave this matter of some original degeneracy; for I think it is so necessary to the solution of the difficulties which attend this point, that it is not to be done without it: Yet it is not the only answer to them neither; I will see what may be said from other topics also; but I cannot promise you to avoid this.

LOG. Well then, let us suppose mankind to come into the world in any circumstances of degeneracy, yet still it is agreed, that each of them has an immortal soul, each of them is accountable to God for his own actions, each of them is rewardable for his services to God, and punishable for his neglects of duty, and for the indulgences of vice; therefore, surely, all mankind hath a right, by the common laws of equity, to be furnished with the knowledge of those things for which they are accountable, the difference of vice and virtue, and the duties they owe to God and to man: They have a right to be endued with a sufficient power to find out, and to practise them: And if this sufficiency of light and power be not planted in the reason and nature of men, they have a right to have it by divine revelation: Otherwise they would be excusable in their foulest vices, in their neglect of duties, and their practice of all ungodliness, because they seem to be left under almost an unavoidable necessity of neglecting their duty, and of sinning against their Maker.

PITH. In such a degenerate and sinful world of creatures as we are, who have so shamefully rebelled against him that made us, perhaps it is sufficient to vindicate the equity of God, if he has left in mankind such a natural and remote power of sufficiency to find out and practise their duty as Sophronius has allowed in his distinction; as for the ruder and wilder nations, this is certainly and evidently the case : By their brutal thoughtlessness, their obstinate prejudices from age to age, their vicious propensities, and their long contracted habits of wilful ignorance and impiety, these natural powers of reason are so disused and unpractised in matters of piety and virtue, that they will scarce ever be rightly exercised, or lead them into the path of religion and happiness They have forfeited the proximate and practical sufficiency of their reason, and without the superior light of revelation, they can hardly be ever supposed to recover it.

LOG. Dear Sir, I intreat you to consider, that however the great and righteous God might punish the first man by such a forfeiture, however such mere reliques of a natural and remote sufficiency be all that was afforded to the supposed first parent of our race himself, who sinned against God, yet can his children and posterity, for a hundred generations, be involved in this forfeiture? Though the equity of God may justify itself in confining Adam himself to such a limited and contracted capacity of attaining happiness after his sin, yet can the equity or goodness of God be justified in leaving his offspring in such hopeless and calamitous circumstances, with such a narrow pittance of reason and powers to find out their duty, to secure their own welfare, and obtain the felicity of their beings? What was the crime of these poor ignorant wretched infants, that could forfeit any part of the powers due to their natures? What have these millions of

African and American souls done, that they should be born under so dark and dismala climate, in the midst of such impious customs, such universal oblivion or neglect of God, such insuperable prejudices, and with such strong vicious propensities, that it is ten thousand to one, as you confess, if ever any of them come to the knowledge and favour of God, to the practice of true religion, and to the enjoyment of future felicity? Has the equity, or wisdom, or will of God acted fairly with all these miserable millions? Has divine and infinite goodness expressed itself toward them as becomes a Creator, a Father of his creatures, and a God of unbounded love? Or can his justice ever pronounce a sentence of condemnation, as a Judge upon them for sinning against such laws as they never knew nor had a practical and proximate capacity to find out?

PITH. Pray, good Logisto, calm your spirit, 'and rebate your fire Be not so vehement and pathetic in your oratory for the sinful race of sinful man: Take heed that while you act the zealous advocate for rebel creatures, you do not repeat the crime, and the dauger of which I took the freedom to warn you before: Have a care of running furiously upon an accusation of the allwise and righteous Creator. If you give me leave, Sir, I will endeavour to soften and relieve the terror of this objection, by laying before you several weighty considerations But before I

begin them, I must remind you, that while you argue from the justice and goodness of God, that there ought to be such a proximate and practical sufficiency in all mankind, to obtain the favour of God in a way of religion, you argue against plain matter of fact again, and which you yourself have allowed, and that more than once, in this afternoon's conference.

Forgive me therefore, dear Sir, if I am constrained to repeat again to you, that plain fact is an unchangeable and obstinate thing, and will not bend to any of our arguments, though derived from the divinest topic. All our notions of the immense goodness and eternal equity and justice of God, and our strongest inferences from them, can never prove any thing contrary to plain fact, nor demonstrate that not to be the case, which really and actually is the case. And I am sure the argument is much stronger and more convincing when turned into this form, viz. This is the sad case of the African and American savages, and yet God is just and good; therefore it is certainly consistent with divine equity and goodness: This argument, I say, is much stronger than for you to tell me, it is not agreeable to your notions of divine equity and goodness, that this should be their case, and therefore, in opposition to plain fact, you infer, this is not their case.

Are you so sure that your scanty notions and your fallible reasonings on the equity and goodness of a God are exactly true, VOL. III. I 1.