the profpect of another and a better life; " it " is a light to our feet and a lantern to our paths*," and guides us in the way to hap

piness and glory.

The next affertion contained in the text, that "men have preferred darkness to this

light," may seem to require a proof. To "love darkness rather than light" is fo oppofite to our nature, fo inconfiftent with our general manner of proceeding, that it seems at firft incredible. If it really is the case, so perverse a choice was never made but in religion. Every other kind of light men catch at with the utmost eagerness. The light of the heavens has been ever efteemed one of the greatest bleffings that Providence has bestowed upon us, without which, even life itfelf would be hardly thought worth poffeffing. The love of knowledge, that light of the mind, appears in us as early, and operates in us as strongly, as any one principle in our nature; and in every instance, the human understanding naturally lays hold on

* Pfal. cxix. 105.

every opportunity of information, and opens itself on every fide to let in all the light it is capable of receiving.

How then comes it to pafs that with a mind thus conftituted, thus thirsting after light, men can sometimes bring themselves to do fuch violence to their nature, as to chufe darkness, in that very point where it is of the utmost importance to have all the light they can poffibly get; where every step must lead to happiness or misery, and every error draw after it the most fatal and lafting confequences? Yet our Saviour tells us, that this was actually the cafe in his days, and would God that daily experience did not fhow the poffibility of it, in our own! But when we fee the various artifices with which revelation is every day affailed; when we fee one man * most ingeniously reasoning us out of every ground of certainty, and every

* HUME; whofe uncomfortable and unintelligible fyf tem of Pyrrhonism has been expofed with great spirit and eloquence in DR. BEATTIE'S Essay on the nature and immutability of Truth: where the reader will find that union fo rarely to be met with, of a clear head, a fine imagination, and a heart thoroughly warmed with the love of truth and virtue.

criterion

criterion of truth; involving felf-evident axioms in obfcurity and confufion; and entangling our understandings in the gloomy intricacies of fcholaftic fubtilty and metaphysical abstraction: when we see another * exhausting all the powers of a most fertile genius in ridiculing the difpenfations of the God that gave it; making the most awful fubjects of religion the constant sport of his licentious wit; and continuing to fit with unabated levity in " the feat of the scorner," even on the very brink of the grave: when we fee a third, with the strongest profeffions of fincerity and good faith, propofing most humbly what he calls his doubts and scruples, and thereby creating them in the minds of others; extolling one part of Christianity in order to fubvert the reft; retaining its moral precepts, but rejecting its miracles and all its characteristic doctrines; giving an air of fpeciousness to the wildeft fingularities, by the most exquifite graces of compofition, and infidiously undermining the foundations of the Gospel, while he pretends

• VOLTAIRE.

† ROUSSEAU.

to

to defend it: when I fay our adversaries asfume fuch different shapes, and fet fo many engines at work against us; what else can this mean but to take from us all the fources of religious information, and bring us back again to the darkness and ignorance of our Pagan ancestors? It is to no purpose to tell us here of the light of nature. It is an affront to our fenfes, to offer us that dim taper, in the room of the "fun of righte"oufnefs *." Whatever may be faid (and a great deal has been faid) of the modern improvements of fcience, the discoveries of philofophy, and the fagacity of human reafon, it is to revelation only we are indebted for the fuperior light we now boast of in religion . If nature could ever have pointed out to us right principles of belief, and rules of conduct, she might have done it long ago; she had four thousand years to do it in before the coming of Chrift. But what little progress was made in this vaft space of

* Mal. iv. 2.

+ Mr. Rouffeau himself confeffes, that all the fine morality displayed in fome of our modern publications, is derived not from philosophy, but from the gospel. Vol. ix. p. 71. time;

IO

time; what egregious mistakes were committed, not only in the fpeculative doctrines of religion, but in fome of the most effential points of practical morality, I need not remind you. How comes it then to pass,

that this blind guide is at laft become fo quick-fighted? How comes her eye on a fudden fo ftrong and clear, as to fee into the perfections and will of God, to penetrate into the dark regions of futurity, to take in at one view the whole compafs of our duty, and the whole extent of our existence? It is plain fome friendly hand must have removed the film from her eyes; and what other hand could this be than that gracious beneficent one, which gave eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame; which helped the impotence, and healed the infirmity, of nature, in every instance, in none more than in this? It is in fhort from the facred fources of the Gofpel, that reafon drew that light she now enjoys. Let then men walk, if they will be so perverse, BY THIS LESSER LIGHT * which was only intended "6 to rule the night" of heathenism; but let them be

"

* Gen. i. 16.

+ Ib.

fo