CONFERENCE II. 435 yet it is not very difficult to give several solid answers, which will skew its weakness. First then, Sir, you will please to ob- serve, that your argument supposes these distinct characters of virtue and vice, of lovely and hateful, to be set before heathens, even of the savage kind, in their proper colours, and the immor- tal rewards and punishments, that attend them, to be found out and ascertained by their reasoning powers. But I entreat the favour ofyou, Sir, to bethink yourself, how very short you came yesterday of your intended proof, that all heathens can find out those truths or duties which belong to religion, or can set forth the distinct characters of virtue and vice, in their lovely or unlovely appearances. Think again, Sir, how much you have failed of any plain proof of the doctrine of a future and eternal stateknowable by these heathens how unable the stupid Ameri- cans are to find out, that God will certainly receive penitent sin- ners to his favour, at least into such a degree of favour as to free them from all punishment, and to make them happy for ever in another world nor have you provedthat their reason will shew them, that God will make the men of vice for ever miserable. Now if these things are not effectually proved, nor so much as the probabilityof them made evident and easy to the stupid Africans, where are your strong motives to virtue ? What is become of your sufficient obligations to practise religion ? They vanish and disappear at once : And therefore in the ruder nations of the earth, these motives canhave no power to enforce religion or vir- tue, for they have no existence there in the minds of men, nor are likely to have any existence by the mere workings of their rude reason. Forgive me, good Logisto, if I take the freedom here to suppose, that this argument of yours, for the power of reason to enforce the practice of virtue and religion, was framed in your thoughts, and glowed there with superior fervour and force, while you imagined these distinct characters of moral good and evil, these lovely features and excellenciesof virtue, these hateful ideas of vice, and the motives of everlasting rewards and punishments, to be all easily found by the light ofreason, in every heathen : but since you are disappointed in the proofof their rea- son as a sufficient guide or light to teach them their duty, you must accept the disappointment too of your expectations of the sufficient force or power of reason to influence the practice of it. Loe. I must confess, Pithander, I came to this conference yesterday bigwith expectation ofproving reason in all men, even in the rudest heathens, to be a very sufficient guide ; and though Ido not yet yield up all that point entirely, yet I am constrained to acknowledge your replies have greatly weakened my arguments in that first part of our debate, and thence follows a degree of debility of my arguments in the second. You saw in the begin- ning of the present discourse, I was something consciousof it. a e 2
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