CONFERENCE L 393 be able to furnish the world with a good scheme of religion and virtue. But suppose these virtuosos had done it with much labour and fatigueof thought, yet can you imagine the unlearn« ed and vulgar part of the world, the labourers for daily bread, could ever frame such a scheme for themselves ? Could human reason in the poor and busy part of cities, towns, and villages,. find out such a religion as would lead them into the favour of God ? The grand enquiry is not, whether reason could possibly conduct a few bright and studious men to religionand happiness; but whether it is sufficient, as the case of human nature and the circumstances of human life now stand under so many weak- nesses and prejudices, so many businesses and cares of life, to re- form the bulk of the world,, or to guide them into, such a reform. ation as might bring them to heaven. Loc. Well, I grant this point also and affirm the sufficiency of reason in heathen blacksmiths, in coblers and milli maids, in the followers of the plough, and the drudges of the mill, to find out and practise religion sufficient to save them. PITH. Then, dear Sir, I will try your patiencebut withone exception more, and that is, that though human reason in the busy tribes of the world, as well as philosophers, should llave been capable of learning religion and virtue in such a city as Rome or Athens, in Europe ; as Pekin in China ; as Smyrna or Ephesus, in the lesser Asia, and other polite countries, where they are aided by their converse with learned men and philoso- `. ,phersv, yet are the reasoning powers of the savage nations in Africa. and America sufficient for this purpose ? For I conceive this is the present point ofour debate, whether all mankind, even the meanest figures of it, in the darkest, the most bar- barous anduncultivated nations of the earth, have in themselves suchaprinciple of reason as is a sufficient light to guide them to happiness. Loc. Well then, I hope we have now settled the point with great exactness; and I declare I am of this mind, that every rational being, in all the regions and quarters of the world, bas suchprinciples of understanding and will within him, if he will * Yet let it be observed here, that the common people and the gentlemen, evert in polite countries, reheived their religion rather from their priests and their rulers, than from the lectures and reasoning of their philosophers: They much more easily, willingly, and universally learned and practised all the im- pions and shameful idol +tries and superstitions of their country, than ever they would hearken to the lectures of their pniloaophers, whose moral dictates of virtue and tnortdicatios, and whose abstracted reasonings on the chief good were neither soiled to their tame nor to their understanding: and especially when many of these phil sopbera neglected to practise their own rules of virtue, and :all of them complied with the religions of their country, vile and abominable religions and superstitious rites which tended to corrupt all their moral principles, and to destroy their virtue, tf eret the seeds of it began to appear, as I shill spew afterward.
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