to Christ, to teach them the rudiments of happiness, and the first and lowest things of reason; that when Christ was come, all mankind might become perfect; that is, be made regular in their appetites, wise in their understandings, assisted in their duties, directed to, and instructed in, their great ends. And this is that, which the Apostle calls "being perfect men in Christ Jesus;" perfect in all the intendments of nature, and in all the designs of God. And this was brought to pass by discovering, and restoring, and improving the law of nature, and by turning it all into religion.

25. For the natural law being a sufficient and a proportionate instrument and means to bring a man to the end designed in his creation, and this law being eternal and unalterable, (for it ought to be as lasting and as unchangeable as the nature itself, so long as it was capable of a law,) it was not imaginable, that the body of any law should make a new morality, new rules, and general proportions, either of justice, or religion, or temperance, or felicity; the essential parts of all these consisting in natural proportions and means toward the consummation of man's last end, which was first intended, and is always the same. It is, as if there were a new truth in an essential and a necessary proposition. For although the instances may vary, there can be no new justice, no new temperance, no new relations, proper and natural relations. and intercourses, between God and us; but what always were in praises and prayers, in adoration and honour, and in the symbolical expressions of God's glory and our needs.

26. Hence it comes, that that, which is the most obvious and notorious appellative of the law of nature, that it is " a law written in our hearts," was also recounted as one of the glories and excellencies of Christianity. Plutarch, saying that "Kings ought to be governed by laws," explains himself, that this law must be "a word, not written in books and tables, but dwelling in the mind, a living rule, the interior guide of their manners, and monitors of their life h." And this was the same, which St. Paul expresses to be the guide of the Gentiles, that is, of all men naturally. "The Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in

ἡ Οὐκ ἐν βιβλίοις ἔξω γεγραμμένος, οὐδὲ ἐν ξύλοις, ἀλλ ̓ ἔμψυχος ἂν ἑαυτῷ λόγος, ἀεὶ συνοικῶν, καὶ μηδέποτε τὴν ψυχὴν ἐῶν ἔρημον κηδεμονίας.

the law; which shows the work of the law written in their hearts." And that we may see it was the law of nature, that returned in the sanctions of Christianity, God declares, that, in the constitution of this law, he would take no other course than at first, that is, he would write them in the hearts of men: indeed with a new style, with a quill taken from the wings of the holy Dove; the Spirit of God was to be the great engraver and the scribe of the new covenant, but the hearts of men should be the tables. "For this is the covenant, that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their hearts, and into their minds will I write them: and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no morek:" that is, I will provide a means to expiate all the iniquities of man, and restore him to the condition of his first creation, putting him into the same order towards felicity, which I first designed to him, and that also by the same instruments. Now I consider, that the Spirit of God took very great care, that all the records of the law of Jesus should be carefully kept and transmitted to posterity in books and sermons; which, being an act of providence and mercy, was a provision, lest they should be lost or mistaken, as they were formerly, when God writ some of them in tables of stone for the use of the sons of Israel, and all of them in the first tables of nature with the finger of creation, as now he did in the new creature, by the finger of the Spirit. But then, writing them in the tables of our minds besides the other, can mean nothing but placing them there, where they were before, and from whence we blotted them by the mixtures of impure principles and discourses. But I descend to particular and more minute considerations.

27. The laws of nature either are bands of religion, justice, or sobriety. Now I consider concerning religion, that whenever God hath made any particular precepts to a family, as to Abraham's; or to a single person, as to the man of Judah prophesying against the altar of Bethel; or to a nation, as to the Jews at Sinai; or to all mankind, as to the world descending from Noah; it was nothing else but a trial or an instance of our obedience, a particular prosecution of the law of nature, whereby we are obliged to do honour to God,

which was to be done by such expressions, which are natural intercourses between God and us, or such as he hath made to be so. Now in Christianity we are wholly left to that manner of prosecuting this first natural law, which is natural and proportionable to the nature of the thing, which the holy Jesus calls "worshipping God in spirit and truth:" in spirit, that is, with our souls heartily and devoutly, so as to exclude hypocrisy and indifferency; and in truth, that is, without a lie, without vain imaginations and phantastic resemblances of him, which were introduced by the evil customs of the Gentiles, and without such false guises and absurd indecencies, which, as they are contrary to man's reason, so are they contrary to the glory and reputation of God'; such as was that universal custom of all nations, of sacrificing in man's blood, and offering festival-lusts and impurities in the solemnities of their religion; for these being against the purpose and design of God, and against right reason, are a lie, and enemies to the truth of a natural and proper religion. The holy Jesus only commanded us to pray often, and to praise God, to speak honour of his name, not to use it lightly and vainly, to believe him, to revere the instruments and ministers of religion, to ask for what we need, to put our trust in God, to worship him, to obey him, and to love him; for all these are but the expressions of love. And this is all Christ spake concerning the first natural law, the law of religion. For concerning the ceremonies or sacraments, which he instituted, they are but few, and they become matter of duty but by accident; as being instruments and rites of consigning those effects and mercies, which God sent to the world by the means of this law, and relate rather to the contract and stipulation, which Christ made for us, than to the natural order between duty and felicity.

28. Now all these are nothing but what we are taught by natural reason, that is, what God enabled us to understand, to be fit instruments of intercourse between God and us, and what was practised and taught by sober men in all ages and all nations, whose records we have received, as I shall remark at the margent of the several precepts. For to make these appear certainly and naturally necessary, there was no more

1 Polyd. Virg. de Invent. 1. v. c. 8.

requisite, but that man should know there was a God, that is, an eternal Being, which gave him all that he had or was; and to know what himself was, that is, indigent and necessitous of himself, needing help of all the creatures, exposed to accidents and calamity, and defensible no ways but by the same hand that made him; creation and conservation, in the philosophy of all the world, being but the same act, continuing and flowing on him from an instant to duration, as a line from its mathematical point. And for this God took sufficient care; for he conversed with man, in the very first, in such clear, and certain, and perceptible transaction, that a man could as certainly know that God was, as that man was. And in all ages of the world he hath not left himself without witness, but gave such testimonies of himself that were sufficient; for they did actually persuade all nations, barbarous and civil, into the belief of a God". And it is but a nicety to consider, whether or no that proposition can be naturally demonstrated. For it was sufficient to all God's purposes and to all man's, that the proposition was actually believed; the instances were therefore sufficient to make faith, because they did it. And a man may remove himself so far from all the degrees of aptness to believe a proposition, that nothing shall make them join. For if there were a sect of witty men, that durst not believe their senses, because they thought them fallible, it is no wonder, if some men should think every reason reprovable. But in such cases demonstration is a relative term, and signifies every probation, greater or lesser, which does actually make faith in any proposition; and in this God hath never been deficient, but hath to all men, that believe him, given sufficient to confirm them; to those few, that believed not, sufficient to reprove them.

29. Now in all these actions of religion, which are naturally consequent to this belief, there is no scruple, but in the instance of faith, which is presented to be an infused grace, an immission from God, and that for its object it hath principles supernatural, that is, naturally incredible; and therefore, faith is supposed a grace above the greatest strength

m Maxim. Tyr. Dissert. Ταῦτα ὁ Ἕλλην λέγει, καὶ ὁ βάρβαρος λέγει, καὶ ὁ ηπειρώτης, καὶ ὁ θαλάττιος, καὶ ὁ σοφὸς, καὶ ὁ ἄσοφος.-Ρ. 6. ed. Dav.

of reason. But in this I consider, that, if we look into all the sermons of Christ", we shall not easily find any doctrine, that, in any sense, troubles natural philosophy, but only that of the resurrection: (for I do not think those mystical expressions of plain truths, such as are, "being born again, eating the flesh of the Son of Man, being in the Father, and the Father in him," to be exceptions in this assertion.) And although some Gentiles did believe and deliver that article, and particularly Chrysippus, and the Thracians, (as Mela and Solinus report of them;) yet they could not naturally discourse themselves into it, but had it from the imperfect report and opinion of some Jews, that dwelt among them: and it was certainly a revelation or a proposition, sent into the world by God. But then the believing it is so far from being above or against nature, that there is nothing in the world more reasonable, than to believe any thing, which God tells us, or which is told us by a man sent from God, with mighty demonstration of his power and veracity. Naturally our bodies cannot rise, that is, there is no natural agent or natural cause sufficient to produce that effect; but this is an effect of a Divine power: and he hath but a little stock of natural reason, who cannot conclude, that the same power, which made us out of nothing, can also restore us to the same condition, as well and easily, from dust and ashes certainly, as from mere nothing. And in this, and in all the like cases, faith is a submission of the understanding to the word of God, and is nothing else but a confessing, that God is truth, and that he is omnipotent; that is, he can do what he will, and he will, when he hath once said it. And we are now as ignorant of the essence and nature of forms, and of that, which substantially distinguishes man from man, or an angel from an angel, as we were of the greatest article of our religion, before it was revealed; and we shall remain ignorant for ever of many natural things, unless they be revealed; and unless we knew all the secrets of philosophy, the mysteries of nature, and the rules and propositions of all things and all creatures, we are fools, if we say, that what we call an article of faith, I mean, truly such, is against natural reason. It may be indeed as much against our natural