434 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF HUMAN REASON. conduct man safe to the happiness that is suited to his intellectual and immortal nature, and to bring motives sufficient to enforce the practice of necessary duties. I will beginmy argument there- fore on this subject, and try what canbe said. PITH. I think Sophronius has set the matter right, and I entreat Logisto to proceed to his proof. Loc. Then I begin thus. When two things are set before us whereof our reason tells us, with great assurance, that one is vastly more excellent and desirable than the other, reason does what is sufficient to engage us to chuse that which is most excel- lent. Now to apply this to the business in hand : Reason, work- ing in a heathen, may assure him, that virtue hath much beauty and loveliness in it, because it is acting what is fit and right, and according to the nature of things : But vice is ahateful thing, contrary to what is right and fit : Reason can chew him, that the everlasting favour of such an almighty and all-sufficient being as God, and the happiness and joys of a future state, whichare the rewards of virtue and religion, are vastlypreferable to all the delights of sense, which are but short and vanishing, and to all the forbidden indulgences of appetite and passion, which often leave a sting 'behind them : I think then, that reason does its office, and performs what is sufficient to incline the man to chuse virtue, the favour of God, and future happiness, above all pre- sent and temptingsensualities, and to enforce the practice of reli- gion and goodness. Again ; When two things are set before us, whereof our reason assures us, that one will bring a hundred times more pain and sorrow upon us than the other, reason does what is sufficient to engage us most carefully to avoid that which brings the greatest misery, and to endure the less evil for the sake of avoiding the greater : And therefore when reason, working in a heathen, assures him, that anguish of conscience, and thedis. pleasureand wrath of an almighty God, through all our state of immortality, which will be the consequent ofa vicious life, will be inexpressibly harder to bear than a little troublesome self- denial, which he finds in the present life, in the restraints ofhis passions and appetites, and in the practices of virtue, reason then does what is sufficient to incline the man to avoid vice and to practise virtue ; because it teaches him, that it is far better to venture the lesser pains of self -denial here in this life, in order to avoid the more terrible pains and sorrows which the displeasure of God may bring both upon his body here, and his immortal soul hereafter. How can any thing be sufficient, Pithander, to bring men to religion and heaven, if such motives as these are not sufficient ? And these are the motives that reason finds out and produces. PITH. Though your argument seems to run on, Sir, in so smooth a current, and to carry such perspicuity and force with it,
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