handles for the tempter to lay hold of, but with a gracious design to use them as springs and engines to work his own will in our hearts. Fear therefore, and desire, and love, have a natural relation to God and religion, as well as reason. If it is by this that our understandings receive conviction, it is by those that our hearts are either deterred from evil, or animated to the pursuit of good. Where is the use of passion or affection, if there is no rational principle to bound and direct them? And where is the use of reason, if there is nothing to prompt us to action, when reason represents it as fit and good? Our Maker, taking us as he made us, accommodates his religion to our whole nature, setting evidence before the understanding, and somewhat infinitely to be desired, or feared, before our affections. Were either omitted, the world, bad as it is, would be so much worse, that nothing but hell could be set in competition with it.

Libertines, who know nothing of reformation, because they never felt it, and, if we believe themselves, never needed it, may talk on about the beauty of virtue, of which they know and feel as little; but experience tells us, all this is nonsensical cant, and silly spite at religion, the only mother of real virtue, which, if we may judge by their actions, they hate, notwithstanding all they say of its beauty, as cordially as they do the wrinkles and hoary hairs of its antiquated parent. If they were not, on the contrary, deeply smitten with the beauty of vice, why is hell to be converted into a purgatory, for the purification of virtue's admirers? Or why is annihilation, that horror of the soul, next to hell, called in to the relief of those goodly philosophers, of whom, to the disgrace of common sense, and common honesty, not a few call themselves Christians, and would needs father their infernal notions about a universal purgatory, or annihilation, on the word of God, just as others do theirs about a plurality of gods? Pardon me; I should not say others, when I am really speaking of the same people. There is hardly a single man to be found, who is an Arian in regard to the Trinity, that is not either a Platonist, or an Atheist, in regard to a future state. These men have no objections to the eternity of rewards. Those they will vouchsafe to receive; because they please. But the eternity of punishments is not to be digested; because it is just as irksome, as all their vices are

sweet and soothing. I know they pretend other reasons; but they are so purely deistical, that we shall defer our answer, till these gentlemen find it convenient to throw off the mask of Christianity, and cease to talk with respect of the Scriptures.

One thing more, however, I will observe concerning these men, and then have done. It is their constant practice to declaim against the creeds so long used in the church; not, say they, because we dislike the principles contained in those creeds, but because none but God ought to give a creed. Their conversations, however, and writings, sufficiently shew, they have other reasons, not so fit to own; and that they actually disbelieve the doctrines of the Trinity, the satisfaction, &c. as set forth in our creeds. To lessen the stress laid on these doctrines, as articles of faith necessary to salvation, they speak very slightly of faith itself, and nonsensically confound it with works; as if the principle on which our actions are done, and those actions were the same thing. They also cry up morality, and good works, as the only fundamental required by the word of God; and make it a matter of little consequence whether those works are performed on scriptural principles, or not. Nay, for the most part, they actually discard the whole system of Christian morality, as founded on rewards and punishments; and adopt the morality of the Deists, which consists in what they call disinterested virtue. Thus those men, who will allow of no creed but the Bible, nor of any religious essential, but morality, treat the morality of the Bible with the utmost contempt, as altogether mercenary and slavish. Notwithstanding this, they take it very ill to be called Deists, or to have it said, they are not good Christians; although they are perpetually plying us on this head with those arguments, wherewith the Deists attack Christianity in their writings.

Having said enough to prove the doctrines of the Trinity, of the satisfaction made by the death of Christ for our sins, and of the eternity of future sanctions, fundamentals of the Christian faith, give me leave now to conclude this Discourse with a supposition, by way of recapitulation, that all the doctrines I have been labouring to establish in these Discourses, are false and erroneous, in order to see what 2 H

VOL. I.

would follow from the contrary, which in that case must be true.

In the first place, On this supposition, there may be any number whatsoever of new gods appointed, provided they do not carry the names of Jupiter, Baal, Osiris, Fo, &c. which would make heathens of us all again. It is likewise to be observed, that the very same Being, in respect to the selfsame nature, may be both a creature and a God; so that we may rank him both with the true God, and ourselves; and that we may give him every name, and every attribute, of the true God, but supremacy; which is as much as to say, that all God's attributes, but that one, are applicable to creatures, as well as to him; and that he hath no proper name, by which he may be distinguished from the works of creation. In consequence of this, we may worship and pray to creatures, whenever we take it into our heads to think, he hath set them over us for gods. Of this sort are Christ and the Holy Ghost, of whom it is not material to our faith, whether they came earlier or later into being, since they are but creatures; yet, creatures as they are, they must be worshipped and honoured as the Creator; for they act by his authority, which whosoever does, ought to have divine worship paid him, according to the station he is placed in. Although some think there are, at present, but three gods; yet it is safer to say, there are a great many more; because angels, kings, and other great men, are called gods in the same sense, but in a lower degree of divinity, with Christ and the Holy Ghost. To conclude, we must understand the first commandment in this sense, Thou shalt have some other gods beside me;' and the expression in Isaiah, 'There is no other God beside me; I know not any;' in this sense, There are other gods beside me; I know many;' and so in all cases of the like nature. Every one may see how much more natural this way of interpretation is, than the other too literal method. And so much for the unity of the Trinity.

In the second place, Either the nature of Adam was, from the beginning, as corrupt as ours is now, or ours is as perfect as his was at first; for we are as able to keep the whole law of God as he was; from whence it necessarily follows, that God made man just as he is, and that the entail of corrup

tion and guilt are wholly chimerical. We need no grace, no Spirit of God, to help our infirmities, being able of ourselves to help ourselves; and able to merit all the glories of heaven by our own righteousness; at least, if we cannot do altogether so much, we need no one to do it for us, nor any sacrifice or atonement to satisfy for our sins. No man can answer, or suffer, for another: justice will not punish the innocent for the guilty, nor give peace to the guilty for the sake of the innocent. We do not believe that the Father hath made peace for us through the blood of his Son's cross, nor thereby reconciled all things to himself. What occasion for this, since we were not born in sin, nor the children of wrath; and since, if we were alienated, and enemies, it is only by our own actual wicked works, which we may reform whenever we please, without the aid either of preventing or assisting grace? Wherefore, we renounce all claims on the death and merits of Christ; and as we work, so we desire, that the reward may be reckoned, not of grace, but of debt; for nothing can be more contrary to reason than this, that because a man believes there is one who justifies the ungodly, that man therefore shall have his belief counted to him for virtue and goodness, although he works not himself. So much for redemption and grace.

In the third place, We believe there is a heaven, and we believe there may be a hell, but that the wicked shall be tormented in the latter to all eternity, we utterly deny. We also deny the locality of this punishment; insisting that it is in no particular place, nor inflicted by real fire. We interpret metaphorically all the expressions relating to it in Scripture; particularly, we believe, the word 'everlasting,' when applied to it, should be interpreted by the word 'tedious,' or 'of long continuance;' for notwithstanding that shocking epithet, we are firmly persuaded, the future punishment will be only temporary. But, be these rewards and punishments what they will, we do not admit them as sanctions of our morality, lest they should destroy the very essence of virtue, and render us, in all we do, slavish and mercenary. Wherefore we think of them as seldom, and as slightly, as we can; and never make the one an hinderance to any thing we have a mind to do, nor the other a motive to any thing we think fit to be done. The reasons of our

actions are drawn only from the fitnesses of things; and the motives, from the beauty of virtue, and the deformity of vice. So much for the sanctions.

In the last place, We look on the subject-matter of these doctrines as of too little importance to make either them, or their contraries, fundamental articles of faith. We think it of no great consequence to the salvation of any man, which way he thinks on these points, provided he is sincere; that is, provided he is really of his own opinion; for we do not believe the arbitrary governors of churches have any right to know his real sentiments, by his answers, his subscriptions, his declarations, with whatsoever farcical solemnities they may endeavour to pump out the secrets of his heart. We have two creeds, a short and a long one. The short one is this; Christ is the Messiah. This we believe to be fundamental; but will not be held to any consequences, excepting such as we draw ourselves. And the long one is the Bible whereof we will admit of no interpretations of other mens devising, having a peculiar method of our own, which we find answers better than any other hitherto found out. But although we differ widely with the generality of Christians about the object of worship, the unity of God, the Trinity, the necessary means of salvation, and the like speculative points; yet we love all men, we anathematize none, we endeavour to lead moral lives; and are ready, as often as we think it may be turned to good account, either to ourselves or others, to hold communion with Christians of all denominations.

Such is the system set up against that I have been labouring to defend, when openly expressed, without the shuffle of ambiguous words, and double meanings. And such is the effect, in perverse, and overweening men, of holding the Scriptures, to be the word of God, and yet denying the doctrines, that are most plainly, and most copiously, insisted on, in those Scriptures. Whether ever there hath appeared, in any age of the world, a system of any kind so big with blasphemy and absurdity, is hard to say. This is the body of divinity preferred to the Athanasian creed, as more intelligible, more consistent, and more scriptural. This is the scheme of ethics preferred to that of Christianity, which terminates in the judgment of the great day.