CONFERENCE Il. 469 writers have informed us, that humanreasònhas determined, with the greatest ease, what opinions are true and false, in all the main articles and duties of religion: They assure us, that heathen* deists generally agreed in the belief of one supreme self-existent 'agent or God, and of his providence in the government of man- kind ; that they agreed in the unalterable obligations of virtue, and the displeasure of God against all vice and impiety ; that there were rewards for good men, and punishments for the wicked in a future state: That God was to be worshipped with a pious heart, and with a conscience free from sin; that justice and goodness were to be practised for their own excellency and de- dight, as well as in imitation of. the blessed God: And they teach us, that all but atheists agreed in thesegreat and necessary points of religion. Sopn. Then I may justly infer, thatnine-tenths of the hea- then world were atheists, with all their boasted sufficiency of reason ; for it is pretty evident, that there was not one tenth part of the heathen world,. in the days of the Grecian philosophers, who agreed to hold and profess all these principles, Logisto, which you have now reckoned up. I would yet farther observe; that though any of our ingenious writers should give a loose to their enconíiums upon human reason, and tell us how far some of the heathenphilosophers were led by it in their discoveries -of the true God, and his worship, though they should make a sort of saints of them, yet we have no reason to infer, in large and ge- neral terms, concerning the heathen nations, this was the scheme of their religion ; nor should they tempt us tó suppose these were the general sentiments of all the ancient Gentiles, and that thii was the sense of mankind, without a revelation. Flowwide this encomium even of the heathen philosophers is from strict truth, we have observed already. And yet if these things con- cerning the philosophershad been strictly true, we should neither' make nor believe any universal and unreasonable inductions from a few single instances of philosophers, in opposition to -the-coin, mon multitude and bulk of mankind, in towns, cities, and villa- ges ? Let us remember that the common people, even in those polite nations, received their religion rather from their priests and their rulers than from their philosophers : they much ,more willingly and readily learned, and more universally practised the impious and ridiculous idolatries and superstitions of their coun- try, than ever they 'would hearken to the moral or self.denying dictates and abstract reasonings of their philosophers : for princes and priests had much more authority. Now manyof these superstitions and doctrines of their gods tended to corrupt their moral principles, and destroy and kill the very seeds of * But how few were these heathen deists, if you except the platonists ? Thd :rest were generally atheists, or polytheists, or doubters about the ooe true God. og3
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