SECTION II. 7 sinful man to the favour and likeness of God, which the light of nature, or the law of natural religion, could not do : The na- tions of the earth, and the men of the brightest reason among them, in long successions of ages, had made sufficient experi- ments of the practical insufficiency of human reason for that divine purpose. But when we come to enquire what rules Christ has laid down for our conduct in social religion, distinct from these evangelical doctrines and personal duties, here we shall find far the greatest numbers of the same things which are prescribed to us by the holy scripture, or at least represented as the practices of the apostles and primitive christians, to be also prescribed by the light of nature; we shall find them to be such practices, or rules of conduct, as upon the supposed revelation of the christian doctrine and sacraments, human reason and prudence would, for the most part, lead us to perform. And we may take notice by the way, that the chief peculiaritiesof the gospel in faith and practice, so far as relates to our personal religion, are much more plainly and expressly dictated to us in scripture, by way of direct and explicit revelation andcommand; whereas the aflairs that relate only to social religion, excepting the sacraments are, for the most part, hinted to us in a wayof narrative, and are to be drawn out by inferences ; wherein much more is left to the exercises of our own reasoning powers, than in the matters of personal faith and practice. IV. 'I would ask leave to observe here, that it is a fashion- able and modish thing now-a-days, to represent the whole reli- gion of Christ, whether personal or social, as little more than the mere religion of nature, revised and reformed from the cor- ruptions of the sinful and degenerate nations, both Jewish and Gentile which opinion I can never assent to, so far as it regards the peculiar evangelical and glorious truths and duties, which relate more immediately to our personal religion, to our salva- tion and eternal life in the world to come : Yet, in matters that relate to the constitution and government of christian churches, whose chief design is to hold forth and maintain our religion publicly and visibly in this world, I am not afraid to say, there is a most happy correspondency and similarity between the dictates of the light of nature, and the prescriptions of the New Testament almost all the way. In this affair revelation does not add a great deal of new duty beyond what reason would teach us, as very proper to maintain natural religion in the pub- lic profession of it. This will sufficiently appear in the follow- ing particulars. SECT. IL Instances ofthe Agreement ofReasonand Revelation in Social Religion. I. Wheresoever public and social religion is to be maip..
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