But your reasoning justly, not only on this, but on any subject whatsoever, pre-supposes a true judgment already formed, whereon to ground your argumentation. Else, you know, you will stumble at every step: because ex falso non sequitur verum. It is impossible, if your premises are false, to infer from them true conclusions. 32. You know likewise, that before it be possible for you to form a true judgment of them, it is absolutely necessary, that you should have a clear apprehension of the things of God, and that your ideas thereof should be all fixed, distinct, and determinate. And seeing our ideas are not innate, but must all originally come from our senses, it is certainly necessary that you have senses capable of discerning objects of this kind. Not those only which are called natural senses, which in this respect profit nothing, as being altogether incapable of discerning objects of a spiritual kind, but spiritual senses, exercised to discern spiritual good and evil. It is necessary that you have the hearing ear, and the seeing eye, emphatically so called; that you have a new class of senses opened in your soul, not depending on organs of flesh and blood, to be the evidence of things not seen, as your bodily senses are of visible things; to be the avenues to the invisible world, to discern spiritual objects, and to furnish you with ideas of what the outward "eye hath not seen, neither the ear heard." 35. And till you have these internal senses, till the eyes of your understanding are opened, you can have no proper apprehension of divine things, no just idea of them. Nor consequently, till then, can you either judge truly, or reason justly concerning them: seeing your Reason has no ground whereon to stand, no materials to work upon. 34. To use the trite instance. As you cannot reason concerning colours, if you have no natural sight, because all the ideas received by your other senses are of a different kind ; so that neither your hearing, nor any other sense, can supply your want of sight, or furnish your reason in this respect with matter to work upon : so you cannot reason concerning spiritual things, if you have no spiritual sight; because all your ideas received by your outward senses are of a different kind. Yea, far more different from those received by faith or internal sensation, than the idea of colour from that of sound. These are only different species of one genus, namely, sensible ideas, received by external sensation : whereas the ideas of faith differ toto genere from those of external sensation. So that it is not conceivable that external sensation should supply the want of internal senses; or furnish your reason in this respect with matter to work upon. 35. What then will your reason do here? How will it pass from things natural to things spiritual! From the things that are seen to those that are not seen! From the visible to the invisible world! What a gulf is here! By what art will reason get over the immense chasm? This cannot be till the Almighty come in to succour, and give you that Faith you have hitherto despised. Then upborne as it were upon eagles' wings, you shall soar away into the regions of eternity; and your enlightened reason shall explore even "the deep things of God," God himself "revealing them to you by his Spirit." 36. I expected to have received much light on this head, from a treatise lately published, and earnestly recommended to me, I mean, Christianity not founded on Argument. But on a careful perusal of that piece, notwithstanding my prejudice in its favour, I could not but perceive, that the great design uniformly pursued throughout the work, was to render the whole of the Christian Institution both odious and contemptible. In order to this, the author gleans up with great care and diligence, the most plausible of those many objections that have been raised against it by late writers, and proposes them with the utmost strength of which he was capable. To do this with the more effect, he personates a Christian: he makes a shew of defending an avowed doctrine of Christianity, namely, the supernatural influence of the Spirit of God; and often, for several sentences together, (indeed in the beginning of almost every paragraph,) speaks so like a Christian, that not a few have received him according to his wish. Mean while, with all possible art and show of reason, and in the most laboured language, he pursues his point throughout, which is to prove," that Christianity is contrary to reason;" or, "that no man acting according to the principles of reason, can possibly be a Christian." 37. It is a wonderful proof of the power that smooth words may have even on serious minds, that so many have mistook such a writer as this for a friend of Christianity: since almost every page of his tract is filled with gross falsehood and broad blasphemy: and these supported by such exploded fallacies, and common place sophistry, that a person of two or three years standing in the university, might give them a sufficient answer, and make the author appear as irrational and contemptible as he labours to make Christ and his apostles. 38. I have hitherto spoken to those, chiefly, who do not receive the Christian system as of God. I would add a few words to another set of men; (though not so much with regard to our principles or practice, as with regard to their own:) to you who do receive it, who believe the Scripture, but yet do not take upon you the character of religious men. I am therefore obliged to address myself to you likewise, under the character of men of reason. 39. I would only ask, Are you such indeed? Do you answer the character under which you appear? If so, you are consistent with yourselves. Your principles and practice agree together. Let us try whether this be so or not. Do you take the name of God in vain? Do you remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy? Do you not speak evil of the ruler of your people? Are you not a drunkard, or a glutton, faring as sumptuously as you can every day? Making a god of your belly? Do you not avenge yourself? Are you not a whoremonger or adulterer? Answer plainly to your own heart, before God the Judge of all. Why then do you say, you truly believe the Scripture ? If the Scripture be true, you are lost. You are in the broad way that leadeth to destruction. Your damnation slumbereth not. You are heaping up to yourself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Doubtless, if the Scripture be true, (and you remain thus,) it had been good for you if you had never been born. 40. How is it that you call yourselves men of reason? Is reason inconsistent with itself? You are the farthest of all men under the sun from any pretence to that character. A common swearer, a sabbath breaker, a whoremonger, a drunkard, who says he believes the Scripture is of God, is a monster upon earth, the greatest contradiction to his own, as well as to the reason of all mankind. In the name of God, (that worthy name whereby you are called, and which you daily cause to be blasphemed,) turn either to the right hand or to the left. Either profess you are an infidel, or be a Christian. Halt no longer thus between two opinions. Either cast off the Bible, or your sins. And in the mean time, if you have any spark of your boasted reason left, do not count us your enemies (as I fear you have done hitherto, and as thousands do wherever we have declared, 66 they who do such things shall not inherit eternal life,”) because we tell you the truth: seeing these are not our words, but the words of him that sent us. Yea, though in doing this, we use great plainness of speech, as becomes the ministry we have received. "For we are not as many who corrupt" (cauponize, soften, and thereby adulterate) "the word of God. But as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ." 41. But it may be, you are none of these. You abstain from all such things. You have an unspotted reputation. You are a man of honour, or a woman of virtue. You scorn to do an unhandsome thing, and are of an unblamable , life and conversation. You are harmless (if I understand you right) and useless from morning to night. You do no hurt, and no good to any one, no more than a straw floating upon the water. Your life glides smoothly on from year to year; and from one season to another, having no occasion to work, "You waste away In gentle inactivity the day." 42. I will not now shock the easiness of your temper, by talking about a future state. But suffer me to ask you a question about present things. Are you now happy? I have seen a large company of reasonable creatures called Indians, sitting in a row on the side of a river, looking sometimes at one another, sometimes at the sky, and sometimes at the bubbles on the water. And so they sat (unless in the time of war) for a great part of the year, from morning to night. These were doubtless much at ease. But can you think they were happy? And how little happier are you than they? 43. You eat, and drink, and sleep, and dress, and dance, and sit down to play. You are carried abroad. You are at the masquerade, the theatre, the opera-house, the park, the levee, the drawing-room. What do you do there? Why sometimes you talk: sometimes you look at one another. And what are you to do to-morrow? The next day ? The next week? The next year? You are to eat, and drink, and sleep, and dance, and dress, and play again. And you are to be carried abroad again, that you may look at one another! And is this all? Alas, how little more happiness have you in this, than the Indians in looking at the sky or water! Ah, poor dull round! I do not wonder that Col. M(or any man of reflection,) should prefer death itself, even in the midst of his years, to such a life as this! and should frankly declare, "that he chose to go out of the world, because he found nothing in it worth living for." 44. Yet it is certain there is business to be done: and many we find in all places, (not to speak of the vulgar, the drudges of the earth,) who are continually employed therein. Are you of that number? Are you engaged in trade, or some other reputable employment? I suppose, profitable too; for you would not spend your time, and labour, and thought, for nothing. You are then making VOL. XII. C |