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human nature sometimes breaks through those barriers which a deep and sincere belief in the truth of revealed religion opposes to its operation, how surely will it flow from the hearts of those who have ceased to feel any check from religious considerations, and who have cast off the fear of the Lord.

Accordingly, moral obligations will be violated when temptations to do so are presented. The duties of life will be neglected whenever their worldly interests interfere with them, and even health, reputation, and fortune, will be sacrificed to the momentary pleasures of sin. "When you look to individuals, to families, to districts, to nations, that are deeply tinctured with infidelity, do not you find it accompanied with profligacy and crime? From what you have witnessed in such cases, would you not feel yourself warranted to conclude, that irreligion and immorality have a natural connexion with each other among the bulk of mankind. If you wished to encourage virtue, would you not deem it advisable to cherish a sense of religion; or is there any thing else, which, for that purpose, you would substitute in its place? When you see an infidel indulging in licentiousness and sin, is it not the remark which you uniformly make, that his practice is exactly what might have been expected from his principles? Is it not notorious and undeniable, that a great proportion of our unbelievers have become so, and continue so, not because they have reasoned themselves into infidelity, but because their deeds are evil? Because they are desirous or resolved to live at large, and cannot do so with any consistency or with any freedom while the impression of a holy God and of a coming judgment are still reigning in their minds? Because they wish to have an apology for their past transgressions, and to have a warrant for future delinquency, and can find these nowhere but in the system they have fled to, which allows its votaries to act without control, and to sin without remorse? Is there not in all this a most decisive proof that infide

lity is essentially and necessarily hostile to moral virtue, and to every thing by which it may be secured and promoted in the world ?"*

24. (III.) The objections which have been urged against a divine revelation prove that infidelity is hostile to religion and morality. These objections will be found to militate as strongly against natural as against revealed religion; and are we not therefore entitled to conclude, that those who advance them are opposed to all religion?

This is not the place to consider these objections in detail: an answer will be found to them in another part of this work. In the mean time, we may remark, that if revelation be objected to on the ground of its being mysterious, natural religion may be impugned for the same reason. For what article of the religion of nature does not contain mysteries? If revelation be objected to on the ground of its not being universal, is not natural religion liable to the same objection? How many thousands of years have passed away without its being discovered and practised by a single tribe on the face of the earth? It may truly be said in reference to it, as well as in regard to the doctrines of a clearer faith, that during many ages darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people.

25. I am not aware of a single objection that can be brought against revelation, merely on the ground of its being a revelation, which may not with equal propriety be urged against the religion of nature. Is it unwarrantable, therefore, to conclude that the objector is prepared to go all the length which consistency requires him to go, that is, to renounce religion altogether? Are we doing him injustice, or acting uncharitably, in supposing that his opposition to Christianity springs from opposition to all religion? We cannot think so, when we advert to the avowed opinions, and the undeniable practice of the great

* Thomson's Sermons on Infidelity.

majority of infidels, in connexion with the arguments which they urge against a revelation of the will of God.

26. Now, our argument is this:-When we find the deliberate opinions, the general practice, and the objections of deists to a divine revelation, all opposed even to natural religion and morality; when we find that if all men were to adopt their views, and imitate their conduct, the whole race would soon be reduced to a state of savage barbarism; and when we find that this result would inevitably follow, notwithstanding the talents and acquirements of some of the advocates of infidelity, we are forced to the conclusion, that revealed religion is the only preventive to the irreligion, immorality, and misery of mankind, and that therefore revealed religion is absolutely necessary to our wellbeing both in this life and in that which is to

come.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE SUPPOSED PRESUMPTIONS AGAINST A REVELATION ON THE GROUND OF ITS BEING MIRACULOUS.

1. A DIVINE REVELATION necessarily implies what is miraculous; and, as Butler has observed, it is commonly supposed that there is some peculiar presumption from the analogy of nature against miracles. But, in reply to this seeming objection, I remark,

2. (I.) There can be no presumption against a revelation of the will of God having been given at the beginning of the world; for a miracle presupposes, and has relation to, an established course of nature, and implies a deviation from a known and uniform order of operation. But, in the beginning of the world, no such established course or order of nature was in existence. It was therefore no deviation from any settled constitution of things in the Deity to give a direct revelation of himself and of his will

In such an interposition

to the first parents of our race. there was, properly speaking, nothing miraculous; and such an interposition, according to the declaration of the Bible, did take place in regard to the first man. Nor will it be denied, that we learn from the same authority, that a revelation which was thus begun at the earliest period, was repeated from time to time in successive ages of the world, till the period when the books which are contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were completed.

3. Now, on the supposition that these Scriptures are a revelation of the will of God, is not the mode in which they have been thus progressively communicated suited to our conceptions of the wisdom and goodness of God? And was not this the mode that was most adapted to the wants and the circumstances of man? The Deity, in forming the constitution of our world, would embrace this as a part of his great plan; and those frequently occurring dispensations which took place from the beginning of the world till the fulness of time, which we regard as deviations from the course of nature, were really included in the vast scheme of God's government of the world. "There does not appear the least intimation in history or tradition, that religion was first reasoned out; but the whole of history and tradition makes for the other side, that it came into the world by revelation. Indeed, the state of religion in the first ages, of which we have any account, seems to suppose and imply that this was the original of it among mankind. And these reflections together, without taking in the peculiar.authority of Scripture, amount to a real and very material degree of evidence, that there was a revelation at the beginning of the world. Now, this has a tendency to remove any prejudices against a subsequent revelation.'

4. (II.) There is no such presumption against miracles

* Butler.

wrought during a continuance of a course of nature as to render them in any way incredible, because, in the first place, there may have been reasons and circumstances which warranted and required a miraculous interposition, or a deviation from the course of nature. When we take

religion into view, we know that such reasons and circumstances did exist, and that the magnitude of the moral and religious interests which were at stake rendered it highly desirable, and even necessary, that God should interpose in an extraordinary way. On what ground can we suppose that such miraculous interpositions did not form a part of the original plan of things? But, in the second place, a miracle is a fact or operation which comes under the cognizance of the senses, and is as capable of proof as any other fact or operation. The witnesses, in this case, testify what they have observed. And on what other principle does the theist, who, from his observation of the ordinary phenomena of nature and providence, believes that he sees the proofs of wisdom and design in the universe, infer the existence of God? It was from observing the miracles of Christ that those who witnessed them inferred the truth of his mission and of his doctrine; and it is from an observation of the operations of nature in her established constitution, that we infer the existence of an almighty and intelligent Being, the creator of all things. Upon all this I conclude," says Butler, "that there certainly is no such presumption against miracles as to render them in any way incredible; that, on the contrary, our being able to discern reasons for them, gives a positive credibility to the history of them, in cases where those reasons hold."

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5. (III.) It is no presumption against miracles that they are not witnessed by the greater number of those who believe the system which they are intended to support, because, in the first place, the doctrines of natural religion must be established chiefly by facts admitted on the evidence of testimony. Which of these doctrines, if we