998 A CAVEAT AGAINST INFIDELITT. God alone who is their Ruler and Judge: He knows, how much doctrine and duty is necessary, for the salvation of every man, under the particular dispensations and advantages he enjoys: His mercy will make favourable allowances, for what parts of the patriarchal religion they never learned, because their fathers had lost or neglected, or forgot them : And he knows how far to make allowances of forgiveness also, for what tolerable follies and lesser superstitions, they or their fathers have added, if it has risen from an inward sincere and mistaken desire to please him. But God alone is a sufficient judge in this case, and we must leave them to hisjudgment. Objection IH. But in the New Testament the scripture does not seem to speak of the heathens, as having any knowledge of divine revelation, or as practising the religion revealed to Adam, or Noah, or Abraham, but as left to the light of nature, to the law written in their hearts, and to their own consciences, accusing or excusing them; Rom. ii. 15. Answer. It is so indeed with the bulk of the heathen world, for most of them seemed by that time, when the New Testament was written,. to have forgotten the religion of Noah : But then, consider what a wretched state or condition it is, in which the scripture represents the bulk of the Gentile nations, because l?y their own and their fore- fathers' negligence, they had lost all the revelations of grace. They are filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, full of envy, murder, malice, haters of God, without natural affection, covenant-breakers, implacable, unmerciful; Rom. i. 29-31. Given up to work uncleanness with greediness ; Eph. iv. 19. Strangers to all the covenants of promise, without hope, and without God in the world ; chapter ii. 12. And if amongst this wretched herd of sinners, there should happen to be here and there one -in a thousand, that humbly followed every glimmering track of divine light in his own conscience, and earnestly entreated the favour of God, I shall account for such a man's hopes in the tenth proposition. IX. As for those families or nations, to whom God has made any new and further revelations of his mind and will, be- yond the religion of Noah, and enjoined other duties upon them, they can haveno hope of acceptance with God, unless they com- ply with these new revelations, and perform the duties enjoined. Let us consider them particularly : If the seed of Abraham, who received an evident and authentic account of Abraham's religion, utterly refusecircumcision, or renounced their faith in the seed of Abraham as a Saviour, they must account for it, to God their Judge, nor do I see how they can claim his favour. If the Jews, before the coming of their Messiah, renounced the law of Moses, and rebelled against the discoveries of grace and duty, that were made to their nation, I see but little grounds for their
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