insure us that there is an intercourse between God and that we call conscience and that it has a peculiar derivation from and relation to him and is not begotten by a slavish subjected credulity to vain imposed fantasms and empty nothings Had there not been truth in the notion of God and so real a ground for conscience and had not the principle of conscience been naturally inherent in mankind men would never have been capable of being deceived in a safe object of worship The truth is Religion let it be never so heterodox and erroneous confirms the principle of Religion it self and the tendency that is in men toward God and the true Religion For take Mahumetanism or what false Religion you will the ground of mens subjection to it was an in-bred devotion that is to God above them their ignorance of whom made them liable to pay that devotion where they were deluded and mistaken I doubt not but that every person that has performed any worship since the world began though never so false had an implicite tendency through that innate principle that was in him to the true God We will suppose the most the Atheist can desire us to suppose for his advantage in this case that men under a false worship may have the same exercise of conscience in trouble and satisfaction that others have in that we call the true and right knowledge of God Suppose a Mahumetan as much concerned in matter of conscience as a Christian and the Atheist thence inferring that conscience universally may be a cheat upon men every where because it is so there in that particular case Yet this will no way help him for in this case the principle of conscience it self is no cheat put upon them the cheat lies in the wrong exercise and application of conscience of which we are not speaking but of conscience it self This supposeth conscience in them 'T is not here whether conscience or no conscience a God or no God But whether a true God or a false God the being of a supreme Power is admitted the deceit lies in the application 'T is not all one to say Because I am deceived in the exercise of conscience therefore I may be as well deceived in the principle of conscience it self And that 't is as easie to make conscience in men by deceit as to mislead it when 't is existing Because in the one case when men are deceived and deluded in their understandings and so in their consciences about the object and manner of worship there is a visible ground for such a deceit and a rational account to be given of it Because there is a real God existing and a certain principle of conscience in men towards him upon which through their weakness and ignorance a cheat may operate But in the other case to beget such a principle as conscience it self by a cheat in men and then apply it as we please is most absurd to imagine because here is no ground at all for such a cheat to be built upon For if there be no God as the Atheist sayes there is not I am sure there is no real ground then for imposing the cheat of conscience upon the world In the one case I perswade a man to worship a false God where there is really a true God and his conscience tells him he must worship some God and in the other case I perswade him to believe he must worship some God when he had no sense of any God and that there is really no God The truth is all the false Copies of a Deity in the world declare plainly there is some true original Men would never have gone about to counterfeit silver if there had been no such metal Men have been still so prone to worship something that they have layen the more open and liable to mistakes and cheats in the objects and manner of worship The trouble and satisfaction men have in their conscience when 't is erroneous highly confirms and no way destroyes this principle of conscience it self The greater the cheat is upon men in the manner of worship the more evident is the principle of worship within them He that is deceived in the object of his love in loving trifles and bables and things not worth love gives the stronger evidence of such a principle as love being in him All false worship is granted upon that innate subjection men are born withall to the true God If there had been no true God Mahomet would never have been worshipped nor would there ever have been any Idols or false Gods Though men fall into the thickest darkness about the objects and manner of worship yet the principle of conscience and worship still remains and is thereby justified and asserted For the Atheists second Objection which is against the universality of this principle in men that we call conscience That 't is not general and that many find no such thing in themselves The answer is 't is not necessary upon his own supposition granted that every universal should be made up of each individual particular that I have proved before Suppose a man has debauched himself into so great a sottishness that he has no use of reason suppose a man has lived so long that he dotes and is childish will you say therefore reason is not an universal principle If the Atheist say these things happen upon particular accidents so say I does the other if any such thing ever fall out to be Where will you find a man without a particular and extraordinary remark upon him without some conscience But suppose a man by Gods particular permission have for a time extinguished the exercise of that principle and has taken much pains to sear it up does that argue that there never was in him any such principle as conscience or does it not rather establish the truth of it The Atheist will often tell you that what men call conscience is nothing but melancholy and morose thoughts of men when they are in ill humour But 't is to be strongly presumed he finds some image of it in himself that makes him able so to nick-name it in others Let any the highest Atheist tell me whether ever he got for any time rid of his conscience without being at some trouble to oppose it And let him dress it up as he will and give it what name he will and oppose it under what notion he will yet 't is evident he landed in this world with such a principle and let me tell him he can never murder it so sure but that for ought he knows it may revive upon him again Let any man intoxicate himself and be never so drunk yet his reason will probably have a resurrection He cannot be sure to immerge that principle unless he drown his own Being When he awakes he will find he is a man though he did what he could to make himself a beast Those Monsters of men amongst the Roman
the Stars That say to the second they cannot find that excellency in the Doctrine of the Scriptures we speak of but rather find it interrupts and crosses them in all those things they take most delight and pleasure in That reject wholly the third and throw away all be1ief of things past and resolve to credit nothing but what they see That mock at the fourth the divine Power attending the Scripture and deny the Being of any such thing think it a vain imagination and tell you that many fabulous stories and false Religions have equally gained upon the world and found many that have religiously bowed down themselves to them and submitted to deluding impositions from them Those I say that will thus object and feed upon this kind of trash that find a way to convert into humour and disease all such notions of things as are the satisfying food of sober and reasonable men and resolve to believe nothing they do not like that will deny the truth of all divine and rational impressions upon mankind because some of them are deluded and mistaken and will admit no men to have attained a right knowledge in divine things suitable to the truest exercise of their rational faculties because part of the world either by weakness or corruption are under the dominion of vanity and lies Such men are most punished when they are left to themselves nor is it less vain to endeavour their satisfaction than to make a demonstration about colours to one that we know cannot or else is resolved that he will not look upon them or to convine him of the harmony of any sound that resolves before-hand to make no use of his ears or at least to call every thing discord that does not suit with some ill sound his ears are already possessed with Supernatural Religion is a thing proposed to men with reason abundantly sufficient to satisfie a man reasonably willing to be satisfied and to leave him without excuse if he be not satisfied And besides all other proofs of it the same humane evidence by which we rest satisfied in all other things that we do not see descends to all ages but not with answers to every froward dissenters objections that will dispute without end against the truth of it because he dislikes the matter of it and be so absurdly disingenuous to deny that to be a good proof to him of the truth of the Scriptures by which he himself rests satisfied in the truth of a thousand other things He that will give no credit to any divine revelation unless God will satisfie his curiosity in the manner of its conveyance to the world sayes in effect though God have given me other good reason and such as he thought sufficient for me to believe him and upon which he has made it my duty to believe him and such reason as I my self think sufficient for the belief of all other things of the like nature and such as I think abundant proof to make good any thing I have a mind to yet I will not believe him unless I please And though my reason tell me that some Being superiour to all Beings made the world Yet unless I had seen him do it I will not believe it Such men are monstrous Fanaticks men that live upon fancy that fancy to themselves how God should govern the world and how he should reveal himself to it and because he does not do it according to their fancy and descend to gratifie their fond imaginations they make it a Law to themselves that they will neither receive nor admit any of his Laws nor pay any acknowledgement to his Being What delight have men taken of late to upbraid the Scriptures with all kind of uncertainty in the delivery of them and all kind of contradictions and absurdities in the matter of them Mens wits and parts have encreased their value with very many as they could best enlarge upon on these heads and despise others as weak and to be pitied who make any stand for divine Truth By this men tempt themselves and others into a mean value of Religion and at last into the highest irreligion 'T is I confess a noble enquiry to search into the grounds of Religion that so we may be rationally ascertained of its truth and not take our greatest concern upon trust But to deal in those things with no other intention but to tie knots to invent vexing questions and peevish objections and because the Scriptures cross mens boundless appetites to load them with all imaginable disgrace and contempt that so God may be more easily dismissed out of the world if we deal with the Scriptures I say upon no better or other account 't is no wonder if the success be accordingly and that men steering such a course not only turn their backs upon all supernatural Religion but at last arrive at the utmost confines of all prophaneness and contempt of Religion it self in down-right Atheism Fifthly 'T is no unusual thing to see many that if they may not enjoy the worship they are affected to and think the best will go to none at all And from such a habit once gotten 't is easie to foresee what a precipice of Atheism men are at the brink of All men are not so well catechized in Religion nor so well affected to it as to try all experiments before they forsake it There is in the generality of men something in the parties and persons they adhere to and in the mode of Worship they joyn in which pleaseth them and has some part in their affections as well as Religion it self purely and abstractly considered And although such collateral things are in themselves not the best and highest motives to divine Worship yet they are such as considerably prevail with not the least part of mankind And they are such as God in his providence over-rules to preserve men in their open owning a Deity and a visible subjection to him in some outward worship and to prevent a total apostacy to Atheism We may not unreasonably suppose that the restraint which in some times past was upon the use of the Liturgy and the present worship of the Church of England to which the generality of the Nation were earnestly inclined did much occasion that Atheism which hath too visibly infected many amongst us For not being able to enjoy the way of worship they most liked and wholly disgusting the way that was then used in publick 't is to be feared that in a short time many came by that means to throw off all thoughts of God and by a disuse of paying any homage or service to him came at last totally to deny him and positively to dispute against him The great concern of a Christian State is to justifie the common cause of God in the world and to dam out the flood of general Atheism Such who can have no tye from above and disown all superiour obligations are never to be ruled but by
Allegiance to a Deity without any thing supernatural But yet where men in possession of Supernatural Revelation upon any account begin to oppose and reject it as it most commonly ariseth from a general dislike to the notion of a Deity and Religion so it usually ends in a total desertion of both First To bottom all Religion upon humane authority and derive it from the power and pleasure of men tends in the consequences of it to destroy all Religion and at last to bring men to no Religion If we once take away divine Authority from Religion we have made an inrode upon its best defence It will never be kept up with any other interest in the Consciences of men and where 't is not supported by the Conscience 't is ever tottering and yields to the blasts of every humane pleasure If once it be taken for granted that the Scriptures have no Authority but what the Civil Power gives them they will soon come upon a divine account to have none at all Nothing gratifies the Atheist more when he is pulling down the pillars of Religion than positions of this nature 'T is to render the homage men pay to Religion as a thing divine upon even terms with the reverence men pay to an Idol When they come at last to consider 't is nothing in the world that is 't is nothing of what they in their worship take it to be that 't is a thing of humane make a piece of wood or a piece of stone that has nothing upon it but the stamp of mens Artifice and that 't is not an intrinsique worth but the art and pleasure of men that give it its authority their reverence will in time wear off from it and they will come to value it just as it is Dangerous therefore to the concerns of Religion are the consequences of such assertions as tend this way An Author not a little popular amongst many other expressions that complexion the same way hath this passage saies he The Apostles could not make their Writings obligatory Canons without the help of the Soveraign Civil Power and therefore the Scripture of the New Testament is there only Law where the Civil Power hath made it so Hobs Leviathan Chap. 24. p. 285. And in his 38 Chapter he tells us plainly 'T is impossible a Common-wealth should stand where any greater rewards and punishments are talked of than what the Civil Soveraign is able to dispense which is present life and present death and therefore sayes that eternal life and eternal death being higher rewards and punishments are things well to be considered of what is meant by them And toward the end of the chapter concludes There is no ground to believe any one man should have an eternal life in punishment Which things corresond well to the description he gives of Religion it self in the beginning of his book where he tells us in his sixth chapter in these words that fear of Power invisible feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publickly told is Religion First such notions as these about the Scripture make it impossible the Gospel should ever be legally preached in any Heathen State for where 't is no Law it can never be lawfully preached as a Law And Secondly Whoever is so discipled to them as to believed 't is in the power of every State whether the Gospel shall be Authentique or not must needs throw off all divine respect to it and be in a very fair way to trouble himself little with any devotion arising from it The whole of these Principles point men to direct Atheism and have accordingly found a grateful acceptance amongst such as travel that way The plain effect of them is to make the rise and termination of all Religion to be from civil and humane Authority and a power inherent in and derived from this visible world and that all things beyond this world are meerly fabulous and such Phantasms as men have fondly conceived and created within themselves How can the Atheist have better service done him than to have a nullity put upon the Divinity of all Religion and to have those great supporters of it in the minds of men eternal rewards and punishments secretly undermined and demolished The ultimate result of all these documents is that men come at last firmly to believe nothing and so freely practise any thing Secondly When a practical conformity to the plain common truths of Religion is rendered a thing to be derided and turned into a common mockery as a thing foppish and ridiculous 't is a plain presage of Atheism Though it be done to the practice of those whose principles in other things we never so much dislike and upon the account of a Religion never so much otherwise mistaken 't is the ready way to make men serve all Religion so and at last to deride at the whole Systeme of it under any opinions or practices whatsoever 'T is not reasonable to believe that there should be any other bottom of a mans denying himself in forbearing to sin and doing such things as would otherwise please and advantage him but Religion and conscience and that having its rise from the sense of an eternal Being above him that forbids such things And therefore when a man lies under contempt for so doing the truth of such proceedings is to mock at all notion of a Deity and the Being of God himself As the chiefest so the most amiable part of Religion lies in the practick if that once come under contempt all the Theory of it will soon expire He that will deride a man because he will not lye for his advantage and be unjust for his gain nor be prophane to please another will scorn him much more if he discourse of a Trinity in Heaven and mens rising again after death Matters of this nature should be sacredly kept from prophane contempt Such things as are the common coin of all Christians though they be done either upon grounds mistaken or principles hypocritical yet they are well done for the bare act of them and so far challenge encouragement We must not pretend to such a Superiority over the rectitude of mens judgements or the Sincerity of mens intentions as to take occasion thereby to scorn all practice of Religion out of the world When the most indisputable parts of Religion nay the practice of any Religion comes to be the publick sport of mens wit and the triumph of common drollery when men design the exercise of their parts to find out the most apposite waies to make Divinity the great object of publick derision and contempt it cannot but presage a drowning deluge of Atheism Men can never be serious with that and reverence it at one time which they make the subject of their scorn at another Render a Prince or a State ridiculous before the people and once bring them under open contempt and you will soon remove the peoples obedience and in that pursuit soon
foundations they bottomed the Christian Religion upon and their own justification in the profession of it was the miracles that were openly and visibly wrought for the first settlement and after confirmation of it in the world And the effect of such Apologies as Eusebius and other Ecclesiastical Writers plentifully inform us was that the Christians very often obtained favour and thereby procured rest and ease to themselves from their sore and grievous persecutions Now 't is not to be imagined but that if the fact of such miracles had been false and the Christians had made such a lye their refuge their enemies would have been thereby rather inraged than appeased and it would certainly have hastened their ruine rather than have procured their liberty But methinks that which ought abundantly to satisfie any reasonable man of this truth that there were miracles wrought in those primitive times of the Gospel is that we not only find the Christian Writers in that age una voce proving the miracles of Christ to the Heathens by testimonies from amongst themselves and their own acknowledged records and the consent of the whole age both friends and foes wherein they were wrought to the truth of them as hath been shewed but also we find the loudly crying out to the Heathens that if any doubted of the miracles wrought by Christ and the Apostles if they would come amongst the Christians they would then shew them actually and visibly miracles wrought before their own eyes by the power of Christ every day that is worth consideration with what wonderful and general triumph they defend their Religion and oppose the Heathens with this challenge and with an offer to convince them by their own eye-sight of the miracles that were frequently wrought amongst them Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew speaks very largely and fully about this matter and tells him We that believe in Jesus Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate adjure all Devils and unclean spirits and have them obedient to us You may know that Jesus died rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven by that which is done in your sight by his power for the Devils tremble at his Name and being adjured thereby are overcome with much more to the same purpose professing the miracles that were every day wrought in the fight and view of all men Iraeneus in his Book adversus Haereses lib. 2. chap. 36. speaking of miracles then wrought by the name and power of Christ hath these words Wherefore in his Name they who are truly his Disciples receiving grace from him are inabled to benefit the rest of men for some cast out Devils most really and truly so that they who are cleansed from those unclean spirits do often believe themselves and are in the Church some have the knowledge of things to come visions and prophetical readings and others by the imposition of hands cure those that are sick of any infirmity and restore them perfectly whole And even now as we have said both the dead have risen and many years have remained with us Origen in his Book against Celsus cryes out to him If thou wilt not believe other miracles yet believe what thou seest now for 't is the magnificent work of Jesus to heal even to this day in the name of Jesus whom God pleaseth Tertullian is so plain and positive in this matter that in his famous Apology for the Christians before mentioned he tells the Roman Senators that if they pleased to try the truth of that miraculous power that was then in the Church they would see it openly execised when they pleased before their own tribunals in the 23 chap. of his Apology 'T is wholly incredible to believe the world should be universally deceived in these things and that no body no not such who were highly concerned to do it and engaged by a contrary Religion to overthrow a Religion chiefly established and upheld by such miracles should contradict the fact of them and discover the cheat if they were meerly fictitious There seems to be a king of infallibility in this circumstanced testimony about a bare matter of fact For whether such a thing were done or no or whether there was such a man or such a place or no is not capable of any defilement by conveyance 'T is not like a story which is capable of all kind of alterations additions and diminutions but 't is such a thing as must be either an intire positive truth or an intire falshood If any man in this age should pretend to work a miracle it would be the business of almost every man to discover the truth of it and if he were found an Impostor and that truly and really there was no such thing how many would strive to proclaim the cheat first And the testimony of the whole age would be his executioner Nor have we only this moral certainty of the fact of these miracles but the concurrence of that important occasion upon the account of which they were wrought and very good reason to think they should be wrought upon it which was the setling of the Christian Religion in the world To put an end not only to Gentilism and all Heathenish worship but to determine that Ecclesiastical Policy of the Jews which had been by the like extraodinary miracles before settled in the world And that such a thing as the Christian Religion was then introduced we have not only the same general concurring testimony but also we our selves at this time see the effects products and continuance of it daily before our eyes which is the utmost evidence we can possibly have of any thing transacted and passed heretofore Secondly He that upon no terms will admit us to be morally certain of any matter of fact by the testimony of the age when it was done for if ever he will admit it he must in this case where all things concurre he must with great absurdity and without the least colour of reason or certain knowledge of his own to contradict it put the fool and the lye upon all men of all sorts in an age and of necessity render them so foolishly weak as not to be able to judge whether a thing be done or not done or else so maliciciously false to all mankind as to agree together to convey a lye down to them and impose an eminent cheat upon them This as it is in the reason of the thing absurd to think when there is no visible reason why they should do so and many apparent reasons why they should not do so so our experience tell us that there was never yet any such thing done in the world There never was an offer made to cheat the world with a matter of fact but in that very age 't was discovered and made appear and together with the story of the cheat that discovery of it likewise so to be hath been conveyed to all future times There have been but three Religions in the
world that ever pretended to a Systeme of supernatual revelation which are the Jewish Religion the Christian Religion and the Mahumetan Religion The matters of fact of both the former have had all the concurrence of humane testimony and no man can shew that in the ages wherein they were transacted they were ever denyed by any The last which is the Mahumetan Religion was openly discovered in that age to be a cheat and the world is as well assured of a Mahomets being an Impostor as they are of the Religion he framed and that by the testimony of the age wherein he lived Does not the story of that age tell us how he began his Religion What advantage he took by the disease he had of the Falling-sickness to tell men whenever he was in a fit that he was in a rapture and conversed with the Angel Gabriel How one Sergius of Alexandria an Apostate and discontented Monk coming to him perswaded him to form the Alchoran by adding such matters out of the Old and New Testaments to his own devices as might bring in Gentiles Jews and Christians to his Religion The story of that age assures us fully of the whole cheat of his life and of his promise at his death in some imitation no doubt of Christ to rise again within four daies In which time he became putrified and noisome and his Disciples at last forced to bury him The wisest and best men at that very time opposed him and made his drunkenness and horrible debauchery notorious and evident Whoever consults the principles of his Religion will plainly enough perceive the design was to set up himself and engage all parties to him The Alchoran is by some rightly abridged into these eight principles 1. Every one ought to believe that God is a great God and Mahomet is his Prophet Abraham the friend of God Moses the Messenger of God and Christ the Breath of God of whom the Virgin Mary grew with child by smelling a Rose and was deliver'd of him at her breasts 2. Every man ought to marry to increase the Sectaries of Mahomet 3. Every man must give of his wealth to the poor 4. Every man must make his prayers five times a day 5. Every man must keep a Lent one month in a year 6. Must be obedient to his Parents 7. Thou shalt not kill And 8. Do unto others as thou wouldest be done unto thy self 'T is not hard to perceive whence this counterfeit coin was fetch where the legitimate and original stamp is to be found He would induce the good of all Religions so he might be the chief Prophet The whole business then of Mahomet was a grand notorious cheat And though it has possessed so much of the world since yet we have adundant assurance from the testimony of the same age wherein he lived that it was so and the particulars of it exactly handed down to us We are able to trace all false Religions and pretended Deities to their original The word is filled with a sufficient account of the deceit and fabulousness of them all To give one clear instance of it Saturn was the most ancient God the Heathens had amongst them Tertullian sayes this of him You have sayes he speaking to the Romans no God more ancient than Saturn yet Diodorus Siculus Tullus Crassus Severus Cornelius Nepos nor any other Historian ever spake of him otherwise than a man If we seek for proofs drawn out of publick Records and Monuments we cannot meet with faithfuller or more certain than here in Italy it self where we learn that Saturn after many voyages landed in this Province while he was coming from Greece and was received by one Janus The Mountain where he dwelt was called Saturnien The City he founded carries even until now the same appellation It was he who first found out the invention of Tables and signing or making mony with the image of Princes from whence it comes that the publick treasure is placed by you in his Temple Now if Saturn were a man he was the son of another man and being his father was a man you cannot say He was the Son of Heaven and Earth But Saturn in person surprizing the Inhabitants of several places where he landed and they not knowing whence he came passed after for a divine person and a God Tertul. Apol. chap. 8. In the same manner in his ninth chapter he shews them the original of Jupiter Bacchus Ceres Minerva and the rest of their Gods and how they came first to be so accounted and tells them If Bacchus were therefore made a God with them because he first taught them to plant Vines they used Lucullus ill in not making him a God too who first planted Cherry-trees in Italy and brought them from the Kingdom of Pontus So clear and full an account have we of all those things and so little reason has any man to be deceived with those things nor can he be deceived with them unless he have a mind so to be 'T is to be supposed that in matters disputable 't is much more easie to deceive men that are weak and ignorant by imposing upon them than in any bare matter of fact wherein every man even the meanest may confute a falshood there the woâ—d can never come to be imposed upon If all the cunningest men in this age should contrive to let Posterity know that London was never burnt but stands just as it did twenty years ago 'T were not in their power to make Posterity swallow down such a falsehood by perswading this age universally without any contradiction to convey it as a truth down to them Thirdly To deny all kind of certainty from moral testimony is to deny our selves the benefit of any part of the world or of any thing done in any part of the world at any time in the world but just what we our selves saw in the times and places wherein we lived No one age can be of any use to another in any record of it nor any one man of use to another by his credit in such a way For the same reason that will make a man not to believe others will be as good to them not to believe him and so all mankind must live upon their eye-sight and he that wants that must necessarily be a perfect Sceptick This does not only destroy all confidence in present society because if I cannot rest assured of what all men generally in an age past have affirmed and no man has contradicted in that age nor since I can much less be assured of what any number of men shall tell me now when I do not know but that it may be contradicted by some that know otherwise before this age pass over But it doe also interrupt the satisfaction that all men have about themselves and their own relations For what have we but a moral assurance from a concurring testimony with the visible effects of it that such a man is my