480 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF ROMAN REASON: employing his natural power of thinking, or his innate reason, in the best manner he was able, might and could not but see the reasonableness and obligation of piety and moral duties, viz. that he ought to worship his Creator, to acknowledge and depend on. him, and pray to him for a supply of his wants; that he ought to submit to his providence, and be thankful for the benefits of it ; that he ought also to be obedient to governors for the good of society ; to be righteous, just, and charitable to man his fellow-creature, be willing to do him all the good he could, and abstain from all injury and violence; that also he ought to use temperately the pleasures and enjoyments of life. There never needed any subtle reasoning to prove these plain duties which nature taught' and commanded ; and the transgres- sion of any of which is asrepugnant to the plain evidence and dic- tates of natural reason, as it is to the revealedwill of God. PITH. It has been already granted, that if every one em- ployed his - natural reason in the best manner that he was able, there is a natural sufficiency' in his reasoning powers to find out these things, or at least the chief of them : But the insufficiency lies very much in this, that their prejudices and aversions, &c. are so great and numerous, that not one in ten thousand will em- ploy his natural reason in the best manner, and this Sophronius calls a practical insufficiency. If it were so easy a matter to do it as you represent,,how caine so many millions of people to be ignorant of these things : or to receive notions aboutthem so grossly and shamefully contrary to truth ? fIow came whole na- tions, without one exception, to be so blind and stupid, so impious and immoral, and to continue so from age to age. Lou. But here starts up a fourth difficulty, and it lies en- tirely upon you christians to solve it. Remember, my friend, whatsoever argument can be brought from the actual immorality, irreligion, and superstition of men, in any heathen 'state, to prove the insufficiency of reason in matters of religion, will conclude with equal strength against the sufficiency of the scriptures, be- cause men are as vicious, as irreligious, and as superstitions under the light and profession of christianity, as the worst of hea- thens. Gross and abominable as the heathen superstitions were, yet they have been equalled and even exceeded by popish ido. latry, which has prevailed for many-hundred years over the chris- tian world: As great lewdness has been committed among pa- pists, as ever were known among the heathens, and that with impunity, and esteemed so venial as to bebought offwith money. The bloody persecutions and massacres executed by the papists are far more cruel and inhuman, than the human sacrifices which . the heathens offered to their gods : So that any crimes of the heathens against the light of reason, will not prove the insuffi- ciency of reason to be their guide, unless you allow the same or
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