468 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF HUMAN REASON. Much less can we suppose thereason of any one single man alone could trace them all out Nor is there any book left us by all the, heathens in the least degree comparable to that of the NewTes- tament, even to teach us the truths and duties of natural religion. 1. Among these principles and rules of religion and virtue which lie scattered in the writings of the philosophers, are there not some which are doubted, and sonne directly opposed byothers of these heathen sages ? What endless disputes were found in their schools about the chief good itself, and the way to attain it, oboist God himself,about good andevil, sin and virtue, present and future happiness ? Thus the light, of reason, in these great masters of it, has left matters of such supreme importance as topicsof dispute for their readers, rather than as authentic rules of practice : And,ofhow little use could this be to all the illiterate world ? So that mankind is still left at a vast uncertainty, since not onephilosopher had any just authority to impose his princi- ples and rules upon the rest of mankind. I add yet-5. That if they had been never so perfect in the discovery of the rules of duty, yet they have never given motives actually and practically sufficient to enibrce the practice of them, as Pithander has shewn already. Very poor and feeble must their motives be for the practice of sincere piety, and the pure worship of the only true God, when it was opposed, rather than encouraged, by some of the greatest of their wise men, who had anypower or influence in the state. That ingenious writer 11ír. Jackson, in his late Ans- wer to Christianity as Old as the Creation, page 14. tells us, that All the very best systems of human laws among the Gentiles estab- lished superstition andidolatry, as may be seen fromPlato's iv. and viii. Book of Laws, and also from Cicero's ii. Book of Laws throughout. A foul blemish upon the reason and religion of twoof the greatest men of heathenism. The utmost therefore, that I can say for them, is this, that thereasoning powers of these polite parts of the heathen world had very little, if any thing more than a sort of speculative or national sufficiency, for true re- ligion and future happiness ; for its best rules were very imper- fect, its motives very feeble, and scarce ever effectual in fact and practice, and wheresoever they were effectual in here-and-there a particular person or his family, it was rather owing to the tra- ditions they had of some divine revelation, or to an acquaintance with some doctrines of the Jews, in their various dispersions. And these dispersions of the Jews did providence ordain for the preservation, or rather for the recovery of the knowledge of the one God and his worship and religion among the countries of hea- thenism, whohad no remarkable revelation made to themselves, or had lostit perhaps for several generations. Log. But if I mistake not, Sir, some ingenious modern
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