pofe now that thefe falutary methods had proved ineffectual, and that the orthodox faith was at this time creeping about in corners, as the Arian faith actually is, and was preferved only by a few rational and thinking men, who were fain, in their outward profeffion and worship, to go with the herd, and to keep to the religion established by law: I ask, would it be fair to conclude, that the orthodox faith had never been the faith of the Chriftian church, and that this abominable herefy had been established from the beginning? It would not be fo, most certainly. To recapitulate, therefore, and to conclude: I think it plain, that the knowledge and worship of the one true God must have been the religion of mankind for a long time, if the mosaical hiftory be authentic, and was not therefore confined from the beginning to the family of SEM, nor to the Ifraelites, who pretended to be of it. I think it plain, that the affumed confinement of this orthodox faith and worship could answer no imaginable defign of a divine economy, preparatory to the coming of CHRIST; fince the Jews, who had it, were not better prepared than the Gentiles, who are faid not to have had it, to receive and embrace the gospel; and fince this doctrine was propagated much more by heathen philofophers than by Jewish doctors. I think it plain, that, if we suppose the unity of God to have been discovered by reafon, and to have been propagated by human authority merely, the belief belief of it must have gone through all the vicif fitudes, and have been exposed to all the corruptions, that appear to have attended it. I add, that we have the lefs reafon to be surprised at this, or to doubt of it, fince we fee that very faith, which God himself came on earth to publish, which was confirmed by miracles, and recorded by divine infpiration, fubject to the fame viciffi tudes and the fame corruptions. ESSAY ESSAY THE FOURT H. A SECTION I. LL men are apt to have an high conceit of their own understandings, and to be tenacious of the opinions they profess: and yet almost all men are guided by the understandings of others, not by their own; and may be faid more truly to adopt, than to beget, their opinions. Nurses, parents, pedagogues, and after them all, and above them all, that univerfal pedagogue cuftom, fill the mind with notions which it had no fhare in framing, which it receives as paffively as it receives the impressions of outward objects, and which, left to itself, it would never have framed perhaps, or would have examined afterwards. Thus prejudices are established by education, and habits by cuftom. We are taught to think what others think, not how to think for ourselves: and whilft the memory is loaded, the understanding remains unexercised, VOL. II. R or |