474 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF HUMAN REASON. not theirreason in their most important concerns, you will grant it is their own fault ; and this renders them condemnable for the neglect or abuse of it, and for the errors and vices proceeding from such an unreasonable conduct of life. This is confessed by the writers of your own side of the question. Besides, the rea- soning faculty, and the remains of conscience, which are found even in the most savage tribes of mankind, may be calledprao- tieally sufficient, though not to conduct to happiness completely, yet, to have taught them much more of the first principles of vir- tue and religion, than most of them either know or practise; and thus to have withheld them from their grossest immoralities and superstitions. Yet further, reason may teach them the duties ofan inno- cent man, but not to recover a sinner to God's favour. Theob- ligations which their reason and conscience might lay on them to practise duty may be clear and strong as far as they go ; and yet these may not besufficient to bring sinners to the favour of God and eternal happiness. Devils are under clear and strong obli- gation to love God, and to repent, and obey him, through the dictatesof a rational nature ; but this rational nature is not sufìî< cient tobring them to happiness and the favour of God. It is granted, the heathens have great hindrances; but great as they are, they are not so insurmountable, but that most or all of them might have arrived at much superior degrees of knowledge and practice in religion, than what any of them have actually arrived at, if they had not been so shamefully and criminally negligent, so exceeding. fond of error and sin, and so lazy in their search after truth and duty. Therefore they are by no means excusable, as you express it, in their greatest immoralities. Give me leave, Sir, to represent this matter by a plain similitude. Suppose Anergus a slave, to have a remote natural capacity sufficient to trace out all the demonstrations in Euclid : Then you consequently must suppose him also to have aproxim- ate and practical sufficiency to trace out some of the first and plainest of them : Criton, his master commands him to demon- strate all the propositions there, or to practise all the problems : but he will not so much as set about the first and plainest of them : Is not Anergus greatly criminal ? If he would have traced out the first, he might perhaps find a growing capacity, and a proximate and practical sufficiency to demonstrate the next and the next in succession, till he came to the last. Is he not chargeable then with the guilt of not demonstrating and prac- tising the whole series, even though he never actually had a practical and proximate sufficience of reason or ability to grasp the deepest and most complicated theorems, or to perform the hardest problems, because he was lazy and thoughtless, and
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