ESSAY 1V. 385 assent or dissent by these innate principles, though without ex- press reflection on them. Now these principles influencethe mind in the same manner, though not as strongly in all things, as the desire of happiness, or aversion to .misery, which are allowed to be innate practical principles. After all, it must be confessed with lamentation, to the shame and reproach of human nature, that though these moral principles of judgment in the mind of man, if they were well improved, would lead us in the most common cases to discern and judge what is our duty, and what is sin ; yet the prejudices of evil education, customs of iniquity, worldly interest, our sensual appetites, and many other evil influ- ences have so perverted and abused this principle ofreason in the mind of man, that now-a-days the mind often goes astray from the truth; and instead of directing us to virtue, bath sometimes been led into gross abominations. The eye of the understanding is strangely blinded, and the judgment strangely perverted by the fall of man ; we are led to false judgments of things by tire corruptions of our minds, by the unhappy influence that present sensible things have over our whole nature, and the empire which appetite and evil passions have gotten over our superior faculties. Blessed be God for scripture, and the gospel, wherein there is a plain revelation macle of our duty to God and man ; wherein the method of divine grace and salvation is set before us, and whereby even in this world, we are sensibly relieved from the darkness and error, the mistakes and miseries, whichare -the effects of our fall, and shall be raised to perfect deliverance, to light, truth, and happiness in the other world, if we sincerely comply with the proposals of grace and peace. VOL. VIII. 13 a
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