4Sß STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF HUMAN REASON. nations and countries. Now if these things are spoken concern- ing the more knowing nations, what most dismal characters of deeper darkness, despair and death would the apostle have given to the stupid Laplanders, to the brutal creatures of New- Holland, in human shape, to the savages of the wild regions of Africa and America, hadthe course of his travels led him through their countries ? Surely you can never suppose, that he would have pronounced their reason, under these ten-fold clouds of stupidity, prejudice, and error, ever likely to break through these obstacles, and to lead one in a thousand of them into the ways of truth, holiness, and eternal life ? And this is what we call a practical insufficiency. Loe. Really, Sir, I think you have made it out beyond my expectations, that your good friend Paul, your apostle and oracle, was muchof your opinion in this matter. I shall not cite him again in haste for a witness on my side. But I will ask leave to cite a great writer, whom you may call my oracle, if you please, so far as I pay deference to the authority of anyman ; and that is Cicero, whom I take to be a man of honour and virtue, and as bright a genius at least as St. Paul was, and much more im- proved in the learning of the philosophers; I cannot but fancy him to be one of the greatest men of all antiquity. For this reason I have two very good editions of his works by me, one of which,I always keep in this summer -house,, and another in my library. Let us therefore turn to some places of his writings, to which a late author has directedme, and see what he says of the universal power and sufficiency of reason to lead all mankind to their duty, to preserve them from sin, and to be, as it were, a divine law within them. See his thirdbook De Republica, and that noble fragment there preserved by Lactantias : " Est quidem vera lex recta ratio natura congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, sempiterna, qua vocet ad oflicium.jubendo; vetando, a fraude deterreat. Nec vero aut per senatum ant per populum solvi hac lege possumus: Neque est quarendus explanator ant interprés ejus alius : Nec erit alia lex Roma, alga Athenis, alga nunc, alga posthac: Sed et omnes gentes, et omni tempore una lex et sempiterna et immortals continebit : Unusque erit com- munis quasi magister et imperator omnium Deus ille legis hujus inventor lator, &c." In his second book De Legibus, he says, " Legem neque homnium ingeniis excogitatam, neque scitum aliquod esse populorum, sed sternum quiddam quod universum mundum regal" You see what a high esteem he has every where for this law of nature, written in the hearts of all men : Ile repeats it often ; you find it again 'lib. iii. De Officiis, " Ipsa natura ratio, qua est lex divina et humana, cui parere qui velit nunquam committet ut alienum appetat, et id quod alteri detrax- erit sibi assumat." And in the third book of his Tusculan
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