510 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF HUMAN REASON. practically within their reach ì Suppose that the great Judge at last shall pass a sentence of death upon no soul but who shall be made to recollect his own guilty. conduct, either by opposing the dictates of his conscience, by stifling convictions of sin or duty, by suppressing some inward principles or tendencies towards truth or virtue, or at least by a wilful neglect to pursue such hints of knowledge as have been given him in the course of pro- vidence, or by the good Spirit of God : Will not this thought fairly relieve theobjection; and vindicate the honour of the divine perfection ? It is the characterof the heathens ; Rom. i. 18, 23, 28. That they did not like to retain God its their knowledge, that they held the truth in unrighteousness; they stifled the die- , tates of their own minds ; and wizen they knew God, they would not glorify him as God. Even the wise men of the nations, who were acquainted with the true God; wilfully complied with national idolatries, to the scandal of their own reason, and the great provocation of their Maker, so that hegave them up to judicial bliudness,'for'their own vile abuse of the light of their reason and consciences: Is not the great Governor of the uni- verse to be justified in this conduct ? The design of the day of judgment is to justify or condemít men according to their works, and to make the equity of the great God as Governor of the world, appear in that sentence of justification or condemnation : and therefore I am inclined to believe, that noperson in that clay, shall fall under the condemn- ing sentence of theJudge, but who shall alsobe judged and con- demned by his Own awakened conscience, for those very things upon which hiscondemnationproceeds from.the lips of the Judge. Everq Mouth will be stopped by sucha procedure as this, and all the heathen world who shall be condemned in that day, shall be made to recollect their own resistance of conscience, and their wilful neglects, and by thelight of their own reason shall confess the justice of the sentence, and the equity of him that condemns. Though it has been suflicientby proved, that the barbarous and savagenations of the earth have not a proximate and practi- cal sufficiency in,their reasoning powers to find out the necessary truths and duties of religion, in order to obtain happiness, yet perhaps every single creatureamongst them had a practical and proximatesufficiency to find out antiknowmore of God and their duty, and to practise more rules of virtue thanthey ever actually found or practised. And let it be added also, that if there were any soul amongst them that hadfollowed theleadings of his own reason and conscience, together with every beam of light, or hint of knowledge that occurred in the course of life, the blessed God would have manifested his goodness in giving that soul some fur- ther hints of the necessary truths and duties of religion. Itis an universal lawofheaven, To him that hath, that is, improveth
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=