sinners, that the cause of their sin and the hinderance of their recovery is in themselves; and that God is not unwilling to forgive and save them, if they were but meet for forgiveness and salvation."

Even now, men's consciences take God's part against themselves, and tell them, That the infinite good, that communicateth all the goodness to the creature which it hath, is not so likely to be the cause of so odious a thing as sin, nor of man's destruction, as he himself.' If I see a sheep lie torn in the highway, I will sooner suspect a wolf than a lamb to be the cause, if I see them both stand by. And if I see a child drowned in scalding water, I will sooner suspect that he fell in by folly and heedlessness himself, than that his mother wilfully cast him in. Is not silly, naughty man, much more likely to be the cause of sin and misery, than the wise and gracious. God? Much more hereafter will the sinner's conscience justify God.

Sect. 11. God hath planted in the common nature of mankind an inseparable inclination to truth as truth, and to good as good, and a love to themselves, and a desire to be happy, and a lothness to be miserable; together with some reverence and honour of God, till they have extinguished the belief of his being, and a hatred and horror of the devil, while they believe he is; all which are a fit stock to plant reforming truths in, and principles fit to be improved for men's conversion, and the excitation and improvement of them is much of that recovering work."

Sect. 12. Frequent and deep consideration being a great means of man's recovery, by improving the truth which he considereth, and restoring reason to the throne, it is a great advantage to man that he is naturally a reasoning and thoughtful creature, his intellect being propense to activity and knowledge.

Sect. 13. And it is his great advantage, that his frequent and great afflictions have a great tendency to awake his reason to consideration, and to bring it to the heart and make it effectual. And, consequently, that God casteth us into such a sea and

Homines ad Deos nullâ re propius accedunt, quàm salutem hominibus dando. Nihil habet fortuna majus quàm ut possit; nec natura melius quàm ut velit, servare.-Cicero pro Ligar. Notitia peccati, initium salutis.-Sen. Saith Epictetus, As our parents deliver us to schoolmasters to be nurtured, so God delivereth us to our consciences, whose nurture is not to be contemned. Nemo adeo ferus est, ut non mitescere possit.

Si modo culturæ patientem commodet aurem.-Horat. Ep. 1.

wilderness of troubles, that we should have these quickening monitors still at hand.

Sect. 14. And it is man's great advantage for his recovery, that vanity and vexation are so legibly written on all things here below; and that frustrated expectations, and unsatisfied minds, and the fore-knowledge of the end of all, and bodily pains which find no ease, with multitudes of bitter experiences, do so abundantly help him to escape the snare (the love) of present things.

For all men that perish are condemned for loving the creature above the Creator: and, therefore, such a world, which appeareth so evidently to be vain, and empty, and deceitful, and vexatious, and which all men know will turn them off at last with as little comfort as if they had never seen a day of pleasure in it I say, such a world, one would think, should give us an antidote against its own deceit, and sufficiently wean us from its inordinate love. At least, this is a very great advantage.

Sect. 15. It is also a common and great advantage for man's recovery, that his life here is so short, and his death so certain, that reason must needs tell him, that the pleasures of sin are also short, and that he should always live as parting with this world, and ready to enter into another."

The nearness of things maketh them to work on the mind of man the more powerfully: distant things, though sure and great, do hardly awaken the mind to their reception and due consideration. If men lived six hundred or a thousand years in the world, it were no wonder if covetousness, and carnality, and security, made them like devils, and worse than wild beasts to one another but when men cannot choose but know that they must certainly and shortly see the end of all that ever this world will do for them, and are never sure of another hour; this is so

Miserum te esse judico, qui nunquam fueris miser: Traxisti sine adversario vitam: Opus est ad sui notitiam experimento. Quid quisque possit non nisi tentando didicit.-Sen. de Pro, Non omnine Diis exosos esse, qui in hac vita cum ærumnarum varietate luctantur; sed esse arcanas causas, &c.— Macrob. 1. 1. Saturn.

Rem pateris modicam et mediocri bile ferendam

Si flectas oculos majora ad crimina―Juven.

"Quotidie morimur, quotidie enim demitur aliqua pars vitæ : Et tunc quoque cum crescimus vita decrescit. Hunc ipsum quem agimus diem, cum morte dividimus.-Sen. Ep. 24. Natura nihil hominibus brevitate vitæ præstitit melius.-Id. Nihil æque tibi proficiet ad temperantiam omnium rerum, quam frequens cogitatio brevis ævi et hujus incerti. Quicquid facis respice ad mortem.-Sen. Ep. 25.

great a help to sober consideration, and conversion, that it must be monstrous stupidity and brutishness that must overcome it. Sect. 16. It is also a great advantage for man's conversion, that all the world revealeth God to him, and every thing telleth him of the power, and wisdom, and goodness, and love of God; and of his constant presence, and so showeth him an object which should as easily overpower all sensual objects, which would seduce his soul, as a mountain will weigh down a feather.*

Though we see not God, (which would surely put an end to the controversy whether we should be sensual or holy,) yet while we have a glass as large as all the world, which doth continually represent him to us, one would think that no reasonable creature should so much overlook him, as to be carried from him with the trifles of this world.

Sect. 17. Men that have not only the foresaid obligations to holiness, justice, and sobriety in their natures, but also all these hopes, and helps, and means of their recovery from sin to God, and yet frustrate all, and continue in ungodliness, unrighteousness, or intemperance, impenitently to the end, are utterly destitute of all just excuse why God should not punish them with endless misery, which is the case of all that perish.

Sect. 18. All men shall be judged by the law which was given them of God to live by.

For it is the same law which is regula officii et judicii: God will not condemn men for not believing a truth which mediately or immediately was never revealed to them, and which they had no means to know. Nor for not obeying a law which was never promulgated to them, or they could not come to be acquainted with; physical impossibilities are not the matter of crimes, or of condemnation.

Sect. 19. If any persons are brought by these means alone to repent unfeignedly of an ungodly, uncharitable, and intemperate life, and to love God unfeignedly as their God, above all; and

* Magna pars peccatorum tollitur, si peccati testis adstat.-Sen. What then may the presence of God do? Clemens Alexand. was positive in it that philosophy was blessed to the saving of many heathens who obeyed it. Tunc est consummata infælicitas, ubi turpia non solum delectant, sed etiam placent et desinit esse remedio locus, ubi quæ fuerant vitia, mores fiunt.Sen. Prov. At morbi perniciosiores pluresque sunt animi quam corporis -Qui vero probari potest, ut sibi mederi animus non possit, cum ipse medicinam corporis animus invenerit? Cumque omnes qui corpore se curari passi sunt, non continuo convalescant : Anima autem qui se sanari voluerint, præceptisque sapientum paruerint, sine ulla dubitatione sanentur.-Cic. Tuscul 1. 3. p. 270.

to live a holy, obedient life, God will not condemn such persons, though they want a supernatural revelation of his will. (As I showed before, sect. 6.)

Sect. 20. When sinners stand at many degrees distant from God and a holy life, and mercy would draw them nearer him by degrees, they that have help and mercy sufficient, in suo genere, to have drawn them nearer God, and refused to obey it, do forfeit the further helps of mercy, and may justly perish and be forsaken by him; though their help was not immediately sufficient to all the further degrees of duty which they were to do.

These things are clear in their proper light, I stand not to prove, because I would not be unnecessarily tedious to the reader.

And so much of godliness, or religion, as revealed by natural light.

Object. But all heathens and infidels find not all this in the book of nature, which you say is there.

Answ. I speak not of what men do see, but what they may see, if they will improve their reason. All this is undeniably legible in the book of nature; but the infant, the idiot, the illiterate, the scholar, the smatterer, the doctor, the considerate, the inconsiderate, the sensual, the blinded, and the willing, diligent inquirer do not equally see and read that which is written in the same characters to all.

Sunt enim ingeniis nostris semina innata virtutum, quæ si adolescere liceret, ipsa nos ad beatam vitam natura perduceret. Nunc autem simul ac editi sumus in lucem, in omni continuo pravitate versamur, &c.-Cic. 3. Tuscul. N. B. That when philosophers say, that all is good which nature teacheth, &c., they mean by nature, the true and sound constitution of the soul, which they distinguish from its diseases and corruption.

PART II.

OF

CHRISTIANITY

AND

SUPERNATURAL REVELATION.

CHAP. 1.

Of the great Need of a clearer Light, or fuller Revelation of the Will of God, than all that hath been opened before.

WHILST I resolved upon a deep and faithful search into the grounds of all religion, and a review and trial of all that I had myself believed, I thought meet first to pass by persons, and shut up my books, and with retired reason to read the book of nature only; and what I have there found, I have justly told you in the former part, purposely omitting all that might be controverted by any considerable, sober reason, that I might neither stop myself nor my reader in the way; and that I might not deceive myself with plausible consequences of unsound or questionable antecedents; nor discourage my reader by the casting of some doubtful passages in his way, which might tempt him to question all the rest. For I know what a deal of handsome structure may fall through the falseness of some one of the supports, which seemed to stand a great way out of sight. And I have been wearied myself with subtle discourses of learned men, who, in a long series of ergos, have thought that they have left all sure behind them, when a few false suppositions were the life of all. And I know that he who interposeth any doubtful things, doth raise a diffidence in the reader's mind, which maketh him suspect that the ground he standeth on is not firm, and whether all that he readeth be not mere, uncertain things. Therefore, leaving things controvertible for a fitter place and time, I have thus far taken up so much as is plain and sure; which I find of more importance and usefulness to my own information and confirmation, than any of those