a

practise the moral duties, was neceffary to engage them to put thofe duties in practice: and yet it is found that the very best of the heathen writers upon the offices of men, that is, upon the moral duties which by natural religion men are obliged to the performance of, has never once throughout his whole treatise, made mention of God or his will on the occa.fion.

But, as I hinted before, the truth of the cafe is far otherwife than it has been reprefented for fome duties of natural religion, men, who had nothing but this for their guide, feem never to have known, if we may judge from the writing of the Heathens who wrote before the age of Christianity. Of this fort are the two rules, one about avoiding all occafions and temptations to evil, the other about avoiding all appearance of evil. As far as I have been able to recollect, human reafon did in fact prove deficient in both these rules, by it's filence in cafes, where certainly natural religion was deeply concerned. But thefe are lefs ftriking inftances than those which may be produced. Were I to tell you

a Cicero de Officiis.

that

that unnatural marriages were by law and cuftom allowed in fome heathen countries, and thefts in others; that even human facrifices were thought juftifiable and meritorious among fome nations; and were I to reckon up all the feveral breaches of the law of nature, as notorious and enormous as these are, and all practifed upon a fuppofition of their being not inconfiftent with natural religion, I should have more to fay on the fubject, than the time will permit, though not more than the truth would justify. One inftance only I think proper to give you now, as a specimen of what under natural religion was thought agreeable to it. When a child is born into the world, can any thing be more natural to a mind not corrupted, or appear more a duty to an understanding not darkened, than for the parents to preserve and take care of the life, the health, and the education of that child? and yet it is well known to have been practifed in fome countries, and to have been looked upon as confiftent with duty, for the parents, if they fo pleafed, to expose the new-born infant in fome wood, or elsewhere, and there fuffer it to perish. And this was not,

what

what the most barbarous and uncivilifed nations did, but the cruel inftances are to be found in countries, fuch as Greece and Rome, where the laws of nature and the moral duties were most enquired after, were most attended to, and thought to be the best understood.

Again, reason, without the help of revelation, did not offer men fufficient motives to enforce the observance of those moral laws, which it did teach them: for it gave them no full fatisfaction about the truth of a future ftate of recompence and an immortal life.

That a future ftate, and the immortality of the human foul are things capable of being proved to be highly probable, if not certain by reafon only, I have endeavoured to fhew you in a former discourse: Here I am speaking only of the accidental imperfections of natural religion, and, therefore, here I only affert, that, though these doctrines are discoverable by the light of nature, yet no fuch discoveries were made of them by this help, as were clear and ftrong enough to be of any great use to men, who had nothing but natural religion for their director.

The

The motives which the Heathens had to the practice of their duty, were generally drawn by their best authors on this fubject, from the agreeableness of virtuous actions to human nature, and from the advantage and neceffity of them to fociety: both, indeed, good arguments, and fuch as would, if all men were wife and confiderate, have influence enough to lead them to all those duties which piety and virtue require. But, as the world was before Christianity came, nay, as the world now is fince it came, these are, in fact, not motives fufficient for the important purpose.

The most erect and fprightly geniuses among the Heathens did, it must be confeffed, amuse themselves with hopes of furviving after death, and of living in another state after the foul and body were separated. They pleased themselves with the thought, that poffibly the good, the pious, and the virtuous might enter into scenes of happinefs referved for fuch men after their departure out of life. And we find some of them fo wrapt up in this pleafing thought, that their wishes appear to be ftronger than their arguments for it; for their arguments generally funk beneath the

2

weight

weight of the subject, and dwindled at last into what too plainly fhewed their doubts and their fears about it.

The most seemingly enlightened man in the heathen world, at least that we know of, was Socrates; and he, after having, as it were, grafped at immortality with all his might, and reasoned himself into a belief of it by the strongest arguments which he could think of,

and at a time when it would have been the moft comfortable to him to have been fully perfuaded of it, (for it was juft before his death;) yet finished all his fine reasonings, and put a period to his interefting difcourfe with fuch doubtful words as thefe: But, whether to live or to die be the best for us, is what no man can know: the immortal gods only can inform us about it. Thus he reafoned, and thus he doubted and his reputation is fo great and fo confeffed in the heathen world, that it cannot be thought prefumption to say, that what

a Utrum autem fit melius (vivere an mori) Dii immortales fciunt: hominem quidem fcire arbitror neminem.

Cic. Tufc. Difp. i. 41.

Harum fententiarum, quæ vera fit, Deus aliquis viderit;

quæ verifimillima, magna quæftio eft.

Ibid.

be