Now, as it is unreasonable to expect virtue where there is no religion, so it is, humanly speaking, impossible that a society should not thrive apace, where religion has planted the virtues of industry and frugality among the lower kind of people, and temperance and justice among the higher; and those of honesty, humanity, and universal trust, among all. Each member of such a society must, in his private. capacity, effectually promote the public welfare, because he pursues his own particular benefit by such a life as tends directly to the profit of the public. He only is to be suffered in any society, whose good coincides with that of his country now this is never to be expected, but where religion and honesty are to be found. Whosoever is void of these, will be apt to set up a separate and inconsistent interest of his own. The religiously honest, therefore, is the best friend to his country in the time of peace and prosperity.

Nor does he less distinguish himself in its service, when wars attack, or other public calamities afflict it. As he has no way of securing his own person or fortune, but by protecting his country; so he is always ready to share the one with it, and hazard the other for it. He looks upon it as the storehouse of all his temporal peace, and wealth, and happiness. He, therefore, loves it; he, therefore, fights with resolution round it; and, like a wise as well as honest man, does all he can to defend it. It is not so with the irreligious and dishonest. He hath interests that may be secured, .without securing his country; nay, his notions of interest will suffer him to sell his country, he having no religion to tie his conscience to the prospect of a higher and more lasting interest, than such as may be made here by direct or indirect means, as either shall serve his turn.

That country or society must undoubtedly be in the fairest way to be powerful and happy, whose members consider themselves as qualifying their souls for an infinitely more glorious society, by serving, promoting, and protecting, the present; and whose religion and virtue have assigned them, for their own private interests, a share of the public good.

If experience had not proved it to us, reason itself might shew us, that this must be the case. But, if it be otherwise,

all history must be false, and all observation wrong. It is certain, any constitution that provides sufficiently for the cultivation of religion, must, in so doing, make the best provision for its own security and welfare every way; and must accordingly flourish secure and happy, if it be not very deficient in other respects. So, on the other hand, when once faith, and religious principles, begin to be generally disregarded by the people of any nation, that nation must decline apace. And if the legislative part of it shall make laws prejudicial to its credit and efficacy, or take no care about it, as a matter unworthy their regard, that nation must rush headlong to its own destruction; no wealth, no power, no policy, being sufficient to stay it.

In a constitution like ours, liberty is only to be preserved by an exact balance of power among the several constituent parts. But how shall such a balance be preserved without religion? What is there else to hinder the ambition of one part from swelling and encroaching upon the other, or the avarice and servility of the other from selling that share of power it is trusted with? And when ambition hath actually raised a competition, for instance, between prerogative and privilege, what is there to moderate that ambition, or so to decide the difference, that liberty and the constitution may be preserved? Are we to call in a foreign power? Or are we to make the sword our umpire? From neither of these can we safely hope for a just decision. The influence of conscience and religion only over the great, and over the bulk of the people, can keep the balance even.

Nor is there any safety for property, where there is no religion. Locks and bolts, and human laws, are no sufficient defence against fraud, which can evade the laws; and force,, that can easily break through the slight security of a bolt or door; when there is no conscience to manacle the one, nor fear of Divine justice to restrain the other. Nay, there can be no fear of even human laws; because truth can never be known, nor facts proved, without oaths; nor can oaths, without a sense of religion, prove any thing.

Peace, too, is as little to be expected in an infidel constitution. Wrath and resentment, and false notions of honour, must prevail, and fill the minds of those, who ought to live in harmony and good neighbourhood, with fury and revenge,

unless they think that vengeance belongeth unto the Lord, and that he will repay;' unless religion have taught them to expect a temporal blessing as a reward for meek-spiritedness, as well as forgiveness of their own sins, upon a generous forgiveness of their neighbours.

And if, where there is no religion nor faith in a future state, malice and revenge are at full liberty, how shall life be safe? The proud, the wrathful, and the envious, may, when they please, without fear of punishment in this life (for perjury can screen them), drive the souls of their weaker brethren from their bodies and this world, if they do not expect to meet them in another before the great Author and Guardian of human life.

As a constitution, then, that is irreligious can give no security to liberty, property, peace, or life, it is infinitely worse than no constitution at all; for when laws, I mean operative laws, do no good, they must do harm. Every prudent and honest man will endeavour to remove himself as fast as he can from under such a ruinous and tottering heap of iniquity and oppression; and, when such are once removed, the degenerate mass that is left behind must soon be destroyed. A society, made up of none but dishonest members, can never subsist. Their own injustice and wickedness will save Divine vengeance a blow, and pull confusion and judgment on themselves, by an unavoidable and inseparable connexion between wickedness and ruin, which, sooner or later, will always be found naturally necessary in human affairs.

Some of our modern refiners of philosophy would needs persuade us, that revealed religion is not necessary to the well ordering and government of human affairs; and that our natural sentiments of honesty, with the native beauty of virtue, would be sufficient to keep us within such bounds as are necessary to the well-being of society.

But as crimes of all shapes and sizes, though ever so differently circumstanced, have broke through the feeble cobweb of natural morality, with almost as much ease as if there had been nothing to oppose them; so common experience and observation can sufficiently refute the thin and subtle reasonings of these notional libertines, who would persuade us, that human nature, left to itself, would cultivate virtue,

and be happy, when it cannot even do it with the help of human laws: no; nor, say they, with the help of Christianity. But it is certain, that as honesty and virtue do still prevail among some, it is as certain, that, if Christianity were entirely laid aside, and no religious alternative substituted in its place, virtue must be effectually banished with it, even from the breasts of those who are now honest; for, in a state of pure infidelity, a temporal self-interest, in which there is no virtue, would always predominate, though ever so much in prejudice of right, though ever so much against those sentiments of morality which we now reverence as natural.

Now if, with the little religion that is left, the little honesty too were once banished, our country, like Sodom, after the departure of Lot, must perish, even though there were no Providence to pour down fire and brimstone on it from heaven.

Since then, society cannot subsist without virtue, nor virtue be expected without religion; and since every constitution, as well as every particular man, hath a principle of self-preservation; it is its chief business and interest to secure to itself so necessary a preservative. And as it is its interest to be religious, so it has the same right, with an individual, to choose its religion; for, if it is absolutely necessary that it should be religious, considered as a society, it must be as necessary that it should have some particular religion. Now this is impossible, unless it have a right to choose; for civil constitutions, or societies, no more than single persons, since they are made up of such, can believe without due conviction, or embrace without choice.

It may be asked here, How can a society choose one religion to be publicly adhered to, without taking away from its several members their individual right of choice? I answer, That, by society, I only mean such a combination of men as approve one form of government, and one religion; and who are therefore determined, by their own particular choice, to profess the one, and enter into the other. If, in any country, there is a mixture of such as do dissent from the constitution, either on a civil or spiritual account, they are only members in part, and not properly; and, if they dissent on both accounts, they are no members at all.

Every man hath a right to choose a religion for himself, which no power on earth can take from him; but, if it be his choice to join himself to a religion different from, or contrary to, that of the society of which in civil matters he is a member, the society has as undoubted a right to preserve itself, and its religion, from the inconsistent or opposite effects of his, by laying him under such constitutional disabilities as may answer that end, without bearing on his conscience, in what regards himself only.

A constitution without religion in it, or a God above it, must be such as none but devils could desire to enter into, and none but devils could live in. An infidel society, or an atheistical nation, if it could be supposed, must be shocking to reason and humanity, and a monster infinitely more fierce and mishapen than even the Leviathan of Hobbes. Our nature turns from it with terror and abhorrence, as a thing hideous to the imagination and heart of man.

Some religion therefore the constitution must choose. But there are certain difficulties in relation to the extent of this right to choose a religion, which have given society no small disturbance, and which are not yet adjusted.

There is certainly a wide difference as to the merits of various religions; I mean such merits, more especially, as come under the political consideration of a civil community; for while some systems of religion tend more or less to promote honesty, and preserve the public peace; others, for instance Popery, by I know not what species of superstition, priestcraft, and dispensing powers, tend as directly to frustrate the good intention of the laws, to pervert or nullify the power of the magistrates, and, in the end, to dissolve society. It therefore seems a thing evident to common sense, that as one sort of religion may greatly hurt, and another as considerably serve society, society ought to lend its countenance and encouragement to such principles of religion, and such only as are most likely to promote social virtue, and civil obedience. But to what degree of encouragement, on the one side, or discountenance; on the other, society may or ought to proceed, is a point which concerns us all thoroughly to consider; and on which, therefore, I beg leave to enter a little, promising to avoid prolixity as much as the nature of the subject will permit.