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A SUPPLEMENT

TO

THE TREATISE,

ENTITLED,

THE NATURE, OBLIGATION, AND EFFICACY

OF THE

CHRISTIAN SACRAMENTS

CONSIDERED.

Wherein the Nature and Value of Positive Institutions is more particularly examined, and Objections answered.

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SUPPLEMENT

TO THE

NATURE

OF THE

CHRISTIAN SACRAMENTS

CONSIDERED.

IN the close of my discourse upon the Sacraments, &c.

I declared, that I should be thankful to any man that would resume the subject, and treat it in a rational and a Christian manner, to strike new light into it. Two or three gentlemen have since appeared, and have performed their parts; but whether in a rational or a Christian manner, let indifferent readers judge. Thus far I take upon me to say, that they might have afforded us more light, if they had had less heat, and had been careful to preserve the coolness and sedateness proper to religious or learned inquiries. And if, amidst all their ardent zeal for morality in theory, they had been pleased to exemplify it in practice, by a strict observance of the moral rules for good writing, they might certainly have succeeded better, and have done more honour both to themselves and their subject. Injurious reflections and studied misrepresentations are immoral, and are the faults of little writers; and such as carry their own shame and punishment along with them. But to let these things pass. I design not

to make any formal reply to my several correspondents: truth will answer for itself, and, I am persuaded, may be left to shift, having been once set competently clear, as I presume it has. Yet some few things there are, capable of farther illustration, and important enough to deserve it; for the sake of which, principally, I throw in this Supplement. And because the author of the Defence of the Answer to the Remarks seems to be the leading man, I shall choose to continue the debate directly with him, and by the way only with the rest. I shall digest his positions into so many articles, and shall remark upon them, more or less, as I shall think there is occasion.

66

I.

THE first and most important article concerns the nature and obligation of moral virtue, upon which he thus clearly expresses his sentiments: "Moral virtue consists "in the conformity of our actions to the relations or reasons of things; and therefore this must be obligatory "to all intelligent beings, even previous to any laws, or "commands, or injunctions, Divine or humana." He goes, we see, upon the independent bottom, and sets up a system of morality without God at the head of it. Previous, he says, to any laws, any Divine laws, natural or revealed: this is his principle. He supposes obligation without law, a religion of nature without a Deity, and duty without a superior to whom it is owing. One might think the very naming of these things might be enough to confute them. Baron Puffendorf observed well of those independent schemists, in the words here following, as they stand in the English translation; "And truly, as "for those who would establish an eternal rule for mo"rality of the actions, without respect to the Divine in"junction and constitution, the result of their endeavours "seems to us to be, the joining with God Almighty some coeval extrinsical principle which he is obliged

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a Defence of the Answer, &c. p. 8. comp. p. 6.

"to follow, in assigning the forms and essences of "things b."

His observation is very just for if God be presupposed as assigning the forms and natures of things, then whatever results from those forms, or natures, or their relations, must be referred up to God as the sole author and designer of all; and then all practical rules resolve into the Divine injunction, since God must be supposed to will and enjoin what himself has made necessary. But if relations or fitnesses be made obligatory, independent of, and previous to, Divine injunctions, there is nothing left to resolve them into, but an extrinsic principle. There seems to have been the like fallacy and mistake in this affair, as in the famous argument for the existence of a God, drawn, as they call it, a priori; which resolves in like manner into a principle extrinsic. For since a properly cannot be supposed antecedent to its subject, nor the substance antecedent to itself, there remains nothing but an extrinsic principle to found the argument a priori upon. But this by the way only.

To return to the matter in hand: I say, if there was any design at all in the contrivance of things, God must be set at the head of all, and then all resolves into his design, will, and injunction: but if we once leave God out of the scheme, there remains only chance, or fate, or I know not what other extrinsic principle. The proof of a religion of nature depends entirely, as Bishop Parker observes, upon the supposition of an Author of nature: For, says he, "unless that be antecedently granted, we "cannot so much as proceed to inquire after the law "of nature. For if he never contrived the nature of "things, it is evidently in vain to search for his design in "the contrivance c." To which I take leave to add, that if God was the author and contriver of nature, then his design, will, and injunction must be considered as antece

b Puffendorf's Law of Nature and Nations, lib. i. c. 2. p. 14. Parker's Demonstration, &c. pref. p. ix.

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