436 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF HUMAN REASON. PI-rn. I acknowledge,. Sir, your sincerity and goodness ; but please to permit me to proceed in the next place, and shew, that wheresoever unassisted reason has pretended to find out the futureand immortal recompences of virtue and vice, it is with so much doubt and uncertainty as renders the force ofthe motive very feeble. Reason, in its best exercises, even in the most polite nations, can hardly arise higher than to give them agrand probability, that there is an immortal or everlasting stateofhap- piness in the other world, providedfor the rewards of the brighest virtue on earth. Sophronius has carefully avoided the making the certain knowledge of it a fundamental article : For since all man- kind are sinners, and there is none perfectly righteous, no not one, how can reason assure them, that such imperfect virtue shall have an immortal reward ? Much less could their reason ensure such happiness to those who have been great and long sinners, even though they should repent : For can mere reason ever assure the heathens, that they shall exist for ever ? Why may not God annihilatesuch imperfect and sinful creaturesas they are, and doe it even as a favour granted to the penitent, since for their sins they have deserved to have been made miserable in their natural siate of immortality, that is, to,,have been for ever miserable? And he might still reserve the more profligate and impenitent criminals to some future punishment, to shew the distinction his justice makes between the good and the bad, or rather, between criminals of less andgreater guilt : And yet even this punishment, perhaps, so far as reason could certainly teach us, need not be im- mortal or everlasting. Such mere doubtful hopes and fears therefore as can be raised by such feeble, probable, and uncertain proofs of everlasting pain or pleasure, are but weak things, - Logisto, to oppose thestrength and violence of vicious appetite, and unruly passion in mankind. Things present and sensible, whether they be pleasing or painful, they are still certain, and therefore tjsey will generally have much more powerful influence than these distant and invisible futurities which are set before men in adoubtful and uncertain light., It is the light of revela- tion only that ascertains these important points of religion, and discovers an everlasting heaven and a hell, with full evidence and a ssurance, and tisis adds a far superio strength to the Motives and obligations of religion. And in the second place, with your permission, Logisto, I would proceed farther, and shew, that human reason it very insufficient for these purposes, in comparison of the blessedgospel of Christ, for many new and different motives and obligations to virtue and pietyare present- ed in the religion of Christ, and the gospel, far beyond what the reason of man, untaught and unassisted by revelation, could ever furnish us with. It is the holy scripture, it is Moses and the prophets, it is
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