CONFERENCE III. 483 such creatures, amongwhom we can hardly suppose there is one in a whole nation, or a whole age, nay scarce one in many nations and many ages, who ever found out, or knew, or believed these rules and these sanctions ? I beg you, Sir, not to constrain me to repeat these things so often, by urgingover again, what has been abundantly answered even ttf'Your own conviction. Sopn. Pray, 4ithander, let me entraat you to guard your temper a little. Perhaps Logistohas read over these arguments in some modern pamphlets, since your first day's conference, and they being fresh in his thoughts, may have renewed his difficul- ties, and he is willing to have every obstacle 'entirely removed that lies in the way of his complete conviction of the truth, and his establishment in it. , Loa. Sophronius is much in the right. He has spoken the matter of fact, and the very 'sense of myheart. I proceed there- fore to propose another difficulty, and I hopePithander, you will not call this a repetitionof what has been answered before, since I borrow it&from your own favourite writer St. Paul, whom I have never yet cited against you. Do you remember what be writes in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, that the eternal power and godhead are known by the visible things of creation ; though he adds indeed, that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but that they held the truth in unrighteoùsness; that is,they did not hearken to the truths which their reason taught them, but unrighteously im- prisoned or stilled those truths, and therefore, they were without excuse: And did you never consider, what he says in his second chapter of that letter, verses 14, 15. The Gentiles who have not the law, that is, any written law, do by nature the things contained in the law ; these are a law to themselves ; which spew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also hearingwit- ness, and their thoughts excusing or accusing them y What can be more evident and express than that this writer believes and de- clares, that the rules of duty which the Gentiles owed to God and man, were implanted in their minds, and that when they transgressed either of them, they sinned against their know- ledge, their own consciences accused them, and they were inex- cusable ? And yet that sometimes they obeyed some of these 'rules, and then their consciences excused them, or approved their actions. PITH. If such a writer as St. Paulhad told me, that human reason, in all the heathen world, was practically sufficient to guide them into true religion and happiness, and there were no facts to contradict it, I pay such a veneration io his writings, that I would readily drop the dispute, and give up the cause en- tirely : But I donot find St. Paulsays any such thing, either here or any where 'else, nor can his words be construed to amount to nhz
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