ESSAY I. 923 breaking their way of themselves, through so much darkness and error, to the knowledge, the fear, and the love of him who made them ? Dreadful truth indeed ; but so far as I can see, it seems to be certain and uncontestable ! Such, I fear, is the case of those of the human race, who at present cover a great part of this earthly globe, with very few exceptions. Then I ran back in my thoughts four or five thousand yeare, and said within myself, what multitudes in every age of the world have been born in 'these deplorable circumstances in the midst of idolatry and profaneness, sin and death ? They are inured from theirbirth to barbarous customs and impious prac- tices : Theyhave an image of the life of brutes and devils wrought in them by their early education: They have had the seeds of many immoralities and wretched wickedness sown and planted, and cultivated in them by the rude and savage instructions of those who went before them ; and their own imitation of such horrible exampleshas confirmed this mischief long before they knew or heard of the being of the true God, or the discoveri, s of his will, or their duty : And perhaps they have never heard it to this day. Scarce any of them have admitted of one thought- ful enquiry, whether they follow the rules of reason, or whether they are in the way of happiness and peace, any more than their parents before them ; and as they are born in this gross darkness, they grow up through all the stages of life to practise these vile idolatries, and all the shameful abominations of their country, and they go on to death in the same course : Nor have they light enough from without to make them plainly see their own folly and danker, nor have they had any probable workings of judgment or conscience within them strong enough to awaken them effectually to ask, Is there not a lie in my right hand? Am I not in the way of sin and destruction ? Then after a length of years in such impieties and madness, such ignorance of the true God and universal wickedness, they are plunged into the invisible world at death, without any evident or reasonable trope of divine favour in the other world, or at least at the utmost peril ofhis displeasure, and a dark and dismal uncertainty of the cir- cumstances of that state, into which they are delivered at the hour of death or the resurrection. St. Paul confirms all that I have said, who, by his long and frequent visits and sojournings among the heathen nations, well knew their temper and state, and he represents them to us as a most abominable herd of creatures, in several of his epistles ; Rom. i. 21-31. Even the wise and the learned among them, the Greeks and the Romanschanged the glory of the incorrupti- ble God into the image of birds, beasts, and creeping things, and worshipped the creature more than the Creator. Their foolish heart was hardened: They were justly abandoned of cod, and
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