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rience of all ages shows that it is perfectly ridiculous to expect that any such system should ever be considered as binding. Even were human laws established in aid of it, it would still be inefficacious; for no secular power, however it might restrain from crimes, can produce a single action that shall be truly and essentially virtuous. (c) Either, then, God himself must interpose and favour us with rules of virtue, and motives to the practice of it, such as it is difficult to withstand,or the world must necessarily sink deeper and deeper into vice and misery. To admit the latter is to deny that the Supreme Being interests himself about the welfare of those whom he created and governs. Since, therefore, God is a Being of matchless justice, mercy, and bounty, it follows, irrefragably, that if the deficiencies of natural reason, or the inattention of mankind to the footsteps of his providence, were such at any time (and such they have been) that all the inhabitants of the world were in danger of being lost in ignorance, irreligion and idolatry, then would God interpose by extraordinary instruction, by alarming instances of

(c) Similar to this was the reasoning of Tertullian, in his admirable Apologetic (cap. 45). "Your systems of virtue (says he) are but the 66 conjectures of human philosophy, and the power which commands "obedience, merely human: so that neither the rule nor the power is "indisputable; and hence the one is too imperfect to instruct us fully, "the other too weak to command us effectually: but both these are "abundantly provided for by a revelation from God. Where is the phi"losopher who can so clearly demonstrate the true good, as to fix the "notion beyond dispute? And what human power is able to reach the "conscience, and bring down that notion into practice? Human wisdom ❝is as liable to error, as human power is to contempt." See also cap. 18, of the same piece.

judgment or of mercy, by events beyond human anticipation or control, by prophetical declarations of things to come,—that is, by a supernatural revelation of his will, to make us better acquainted with his attributes and our own character,—to point out to us the path of duty, to draw us from the vanities of the world, and to lead us to himself.

June, 1809.

I am, &c.

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LETTER III.

On the Opinions of the Heathens, their Legislators, Poets, and Philosophers, relative to God, to Moral Duty, and a Future State.

It is not surprising, my dear Friend, that your philosophical companions should endeavour to persuade you, in opposition to the train of argument in my last letter, that unassisted reason not only can discover, but has discovered, all that is necessary to be known, as it regards our duty or our expectations. The powers of the intellect, notwithstanding their defects and their limitations, have doubtless done much in every department of art, of literature, and of science: and those who are best able to estimate the value of intellectual productions, are probably, for that very reason, apt to ascribe to the mind much more than it can really accomplish. Besides this, several of the philosophers who have indulged in moral speculations since the æra of the Christian revelation, and even those who have been the warmest opposers of that revelation, have derived, indirectly, from the source to which they would disdain to apply directly, many highly important truths, many valuable rules of conduct, many powerful incentives to virtue: they have thus travelled by a torch snatched from the temple of God, while both themselves and their followers idly imagine their path is illuminated by light of their own creating. Thus, the

later Platonists, Plotinus, Porphyry, Jamblichus, and Hierocles, are well known to have been pupils of Ammonius of Alexandria, a Christian, and the tutor of Origen: whence it happens that the Christian Fathers were accused of Platonizing; instead of which the truth is that the philosophers just mentioned filched from the Christian repository. But, to judge correctly in this respect, let us inquire what was effected in morals and religion by the intellectual energies of the great and learned men and philosophers who existed previously to the dawn of the Sun of righteousness." (d) Such an inquiry will place the subject in a proper point of view; nor can it be thought uncandid towards the advocates of unassisted reason, when it is recollected that, whatever may have been the mental stature of Boling

(d) Indeed there is great reason to believe, that nothing, strictly speaking, in morals or theology, was the genuine result of the mental efforts of the wisest ancient heathens. Many of them were candid enough to profess to have derived what knowledge they had, not merely from the exertions of their reason, but from a higher source, even from very ancient traditions, to which they usually assigned a divine original. "What Socrates said of the Deity (observes Dryden in the Preface to "Religio Laici) what Plato writ, and the rest of the heathen philosophers "of several nations, is all no more than the twilight of revelation, after "the sun of it was set in the race of Noah." Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and Eusebius, all prove that Plato especially learned much from the Hebrews while he was in Egypt. Hence flows an observation which operates two ways in favour of religion, and doubly evinces the goodness of God in his dispensations towards mankind; for we may learn that He prepared a way in his providence for the traditionary dissemination of the principal moral truths he revealed to our first parents; and it will appear farther, I trust, in the course of this work, that at the very period when the light originally communicated had well nigh become extinct, He introduced the full blaze of the gospel dispensation.

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broke, and Gibbon, and Hume, and Voltaire, they would appear diminutive enough when placed by the side of Aristotle, and Socrates, and Plato, and Seneca. If, then, this research, conducted with as much regard to brevity as its nature will admit, shall evince the inferiority of the principal ethical and religious systems of the ancients to the Christian scheme, or shall show their inefficacy to restrain from vice, or to incite to virtue, we shall possess an additional argument for the necessity of Revelation, as well as a cogent proof that the system which is so infinitely superior to all that has been produced by the greatest of uninspired men, must have emanated from Him who is "the Father of lights," physical and mental.

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Now, as to the heathens generally, though it was commonly admitted among them that the formation of the world was owing to chance, yet many of them ascribed it to a plurality of causes or authors: and even those who acknowledged one Supreme Being corrupted the doctrine of the unity, by making him to be of the same nature as the other gods, though of a higher order. And thus originated the custom of the priests, who, in all their sacred ceremonies and devotions, after addressing themselves to the especial deities to whom it was necessary at each particular time to offer up prayers or sacrifices, were wont to invoke all the gods in general. It was, besides, a universal notion among them, that the Supreme God did not concern himself with the affairs of this world, but committed them wholly to inferior deities; whence sprang their idolatry, and the habit of neglecting the

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