18 SELF -LOVE AND VIRTUE RECONCILED. and virtue, and made plain a multitude of these particular duties both by many express commands, and prohibitions, and various parallel examples, both of vice and virtue, that even the common people may learn what they are to believe, and what they are to practise, or avoid, by a far more easy and ready way of instruc- tion. Milk-maids and plowmen, and the meanest offices or ca- pacities in the worldmay learn their duty here. All the rules of virtue given us by the heathen philosophers, from their supposed fitness of things, fall vastly short of what Moses and the pro- phets, Christ and his apostles, have done inclearing up the com- mon rules of virtue to mankind, by divine revelation. This is all I shall say concerning the necessity of revelation, to make the rules of virtue plain and evident to the bulk of mankind. As to the obligationsto practise virtue, even upon the suppo- sition of the being of a God, still there is something wanting to render them. effectual. This sufficiently appears in the wicked lives of many of the heathen philosophers, who held the truth in unrighteousness, and sinned against conscience abundantly ; and they made it appear how feebly their moral obligationsimpressed their minds ; for when they knewGod, they gloried him not as God ; but practised all the idolatries of the common people, and gave themselves up to all immorality, as St. Paul informs us ; Rom."i. 21-32. But the great and awful things that are revealed to us in scripture, enforce these obligations of virtue with many additions of strength and efficacy. It is the word of God which sets be- fore us the terrors of the law of God, andhis indignation against sinners ; it is this gives assurance of pardon of sin upon repen- tance, anda trust in his mercy through Jesus the Saviour ; which tends much to melt our hearts down to repentance, and love, and new obedience. It is this word which tells us, that God takes exact cognizance of all our actions ; and that there shall be a great day of judgment, when we shall be called to an account for our behaviour, and rewarded or punished according to our 'works. It is the word of God which sets before us the certain joys or glories of heaven, and the certain torments and sorrows of hell, where happiness and misery are distributedin perfection, according to vice and virtue. These are the things which awa- ken all the reasoning and active powers of man ; these influence his hopes and fears much more powerfully than the mere light of nature could ever do, and the doctrines of virtue arising from the mere fitness of things. These discoveries of scripturehave ac-. tually produced more piety and virtue in a town or city of chris- flansthan heathenism, or the mere light of reason could ever do in whole nations. Besides all this, the gospel acquaints us with those divine assistances of the holy Spirit, which persons who pray earnestly a.
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