496 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF HUMAN REASON. Loe. Well then, let us suppose mankind to come into the world in any circumstances of degeneracy, yet still it is agreed, that each of them has an immortal soul, each ofthem is accounta- ble to God for his own actions, each of them is rewardable for his services to God, and punishable for his neglects of duty, and for the indulgences of vice; therefore, surely, all mankind hath a right; by the common laws of equity, to be furnished with the knowledge of those things for which they areaccountable, the differenceof vice and virtue, and the duties they owe to God and toman : They have a right to be enduedwith a sufficient power to findout, and to practise them : And ifthis sufficiency of light andpower be not planted in the reason and nature of men, they have a right to haveit bydivine revelation : Otherwise they would he excusable in their foulest vices, in their neglect of duties, and their practice of all ungodliness, because they seem to be left under almost an unavoidable necessity of neglecting their duty, and of sinning against their Maker. PITH. In such a degenerate and sinful world of creatures as we are, who have so shamefully rebelled against him that made us, perhaps it is, sufficient to vindicate the equity of God, if he has left in mankind such anatural and remote power of sufficiency to find out and practise their duty as Sophronius has allowed in his distinction as for the ruder and wilder nations, this is cer- tainly and evidently the ease': By their brutal thoughtlessness, their obstinate prejudices from age to age, their vicious propen- sities, and their long contracted habits of wilful ignorance and impiety, these natural powers of reason are so disused and unpractised in matters of piety and virtue, that they will scarce ever be rightly exercised, or lead them into the path of religion andhappiness They have forfeited the proximate and practical sufficiency of their reason, and without the superior light of reve- lation, they can hardly be ever supposed to recover it. Loe. Dear Sir, I intreat you to consider, that however the great and righteous God might punish the first man by such a forfeiture, however such mere reliques of a natural and remote sufficiency be all that was afforded to the supposed first parent of our race himself, who sinned against God, yet can his children and posterity, for a hundred generations, be involved in this for- feiture ? Though the equity of God may justify itself in confin- ing Adam himself to such a limited and contracted capacity of attaining happiness after his sin, yet can the equity or goodness of God be justified in leaving his offspring in such hopeless and calamitous circumstances, with such a narrow pittance of reason and powers to find out their duty, to secure their own welfare, and obtain the felicity of their beings? What was the crime of these poor ignorant wretched infants, that could forfeit any part of the powers due to their natures ? What have these millions of
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