458 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS Or HUMAN REASON. tion, at 'least for those nations where reason is not sufficient. Besides, if the reason of man be only sufficient, in some of the best of the heathen nations, to find out and practise such an acceptable religion, then your proposition concerning the suffici- ency of human nature, is not universally true, since there are other nations inwhom it is not sufficient. Loc. I am forced to confess, that the narratives which Sophronits has given of the state of these wretched countries, goes very far to destroy the good opinion that I hadof the univer- sal power of reason, and to incline me to give up the point in dispute very much in your favour. But pray, Sophronius, tell us a little what you think of the rest of the nations of the world, excepting such savage creatures as those, whose religion, or atheism, youhave described, and in whom humannature is sunk into sucha degenerate and senseless state ? Sores. Though there are not, perhaps, very many nations of the earth that are so far brutifiedas these are, whose customs I havebeen now relating, yet there are several other large countries in Africa and America, who come not very far behind them in gross ignorance of their Creator, in abominable superstitions and idolatries, in barbarity and shameful vices. The little sketches of account which we have of the inhabitants of Nova Zembla, in the north òf Asia, and of New Holland, which lies south of Java in the East-Indies, give usreason to expect, that we should find them every whit as destitute of the knowledge or practice of religion ,or virtue, as anyof the savages of which I have already spoken, or perhaps more brutish than they. Europe, the best quarter of the world, has some countries shamefully ignorant : The tribes of men in Lapland, and even in the northern parts of Russia itself; are blind and brutish enough : They have some superstitions among them, but no true religion. I have read in the writings of travellers, and I have been informed, by those who lvhö have lived in those countries, that the Russes are devout idolaters, but immoral men : They are very zealous to have images in their houses, even in their best rooms or parlours, and particularly that of St. Nicholas, who as they suppose, governs the world, and besideshim many of them seem to know no other God. They atone for great crimes by making many images of St. Nicholas, and dressing them up very fine. St. Nicholas always stands in some corner of their rooms, and to him they pay their devotions themselves,, and expect their neighbours and visit- ants shouldpay it at first when, they enter into the room : They profess christianity indeed, butmix it withsuch heathen surpersti- tions, that it is not like the religion of the New Testament. They esteem it a very ungodly thing for any inhabitant to have no image or god in some part of the room, where they receive their friends: and yet they have scarce any notionof the obliga-.
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