CONFERENCE I, dgl and degenerate circumstances, who is ready to mistake error for truth, whose reason is much blinded and biassed, by the prevail- ing influences of flesh and sense, and perpetually led astray by appetites and passions, and so many thousand prejudices which arise from things both within him and without him ; I say, whe- ther human reason, in this degenerate state of man, be sufficient to teach him such a religion, as will restore a sinner to the fa- vour of God, secure to hjn. everlasting felicity, and renderhis immortal soul happy in the love ofhis Creator. Lou. Pray Pithander, let us hear no more of this old dull story of the degenerate and corrupt 'state of man. It is a notion, indeed, that has prevailed for almost seventeen hundred years among Christians, and even among the Jews long before them ; but I can see little foundation for it. I think man is a very excel- lent being as he was at first, and his reason, and his other facul. t;as of soul, are noble powers, and have always been, and al- days will be, sufficient to direct and bring him to happiness for which his nature was made, notwithstanding all your pretences of a bruise gotten by some ancient fall, which, as you say, reach- ed all mankind in their powers, and weakened them even to this day. Sorts. Forgive me, Logisto, if I presume to interpose a word here, when I find you speaking with such spirit and warmth against an opinion which is not perm/jar to the Jews and chris- tians far several of the heathenphilosophers acknowledged and maintained it by the mere influence of the light of nature and reason. .Q.ntoninus, the philosophic emperor, confesses, that we are born mere slaves, that is, in the sense of the Stoics, slaves to our vicious inclinations and passions, destitute of all true knowledge and true reason. Book XI. Sect. 27. The platonists are well 'known to believe a pre-existent state wherein all souls sinned, and they lost their wings whereby they were once capa- ble of ascending upward, and so they sunk into these bodies, partly as a punishment for former follies. This was called in their form of speech aolepoppum-ic, or a moulting of their wings., Their daily experience in themselves, and their wise observation ofthe world, convinced them, that all mankind come into the worldwith propensity to vicerather than Virtue, and that man is not suchacreature now as he came from his Maker's hand, but is some way or other degenerated from his primitive rectitude andglory, though they indulged 'strange guesses at the cause of it, and indeed they were utterly at a loss to find how it came to pass. This is only revealed in the bible. Loc. I'thank you, Sophronious, for your gentle reproof. It is notat all improper for you to interpose, when you find any thing too keen and pungent escape from either of our lips in the course of disputation. This is one part of a moderator's office,
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