THE PREFACE. A Poem with fo bold a title, and a name prefixed from which the handling of fo ferious a subject would not be expected, may reasonably oblige the author to say somewhat in defence, both of hisnfelf and of his undertaking. In the first place, if it be objected to me that being a layman, I ought not to have concerned myfelf with fpeculations, which belong to the profeffion of divinity; I could answer, that perhaps laymen, with equal advantages of parts and knowlege, are not the moft incompetent judges of facred things; but in the due sense of my own weaknefs and want of learning I plead not this: I pretend not to make myself a judge of faith in others, but only to make a confeffion of my own. I lay no unhallowed hand upon the ark, but wait on it with, the reverence that becomes me at a diftance. In the next place I will ingenuously confefs, that the helps I have used in this small treatise, were many of them taken from the works of our own reverend divines of the church of England; fo that the weapons with which I combat irreli gion, are already confecrated; tho I suppose they may be taken down as lawfully as the sword of Goliah was by David, when they are to be employed for the common cause against the enemies of piety. I intend not by this to intitle them to any of my errors, which, yet I hope are only thofe of charity to mankind; and such as my own charity has caufed me to commit, that of others may more eafily excufe. Being naturally inclined to fcepticism in philofophy, I have no reafon to impofe my opinions in a subject which is above it; but whatever they are, I fubmit them with all reverence to my mother church, accounting them no further mine, than as they are authorised, or at least uncondemned by her. And, indeed, to fecure myself on this fide, I have used the neceffary precaution of fhewing this paper before it was published to a judicious and learned friend, a man indefatigably zealous in the fervice of the church and ftate; and whofe writings have highly deserved of both. He was pleased to approve the body of the difcourfe, and I hope he is more my friend than to do it out of complaifance it is true he had too good a taste to like it all; and amongft fome other faults recommended fecond view, what I have written perhaps to my too boldly on St. Athanafius, which he advised me wholly to omit. I am fenfible enough that I had done more prudently to have followed his opinion but then I could not have fatisfied myfelf that I had done honeftly not to have written what was my own. It has always been my thought, that heathens who never did, nor without miracle could, hear of the name of Chrift, were yet in a poffibility of falvation. Neither will it enter eafily into my belief, that before the coming of our Saviour the whole world, excepting only the Jewish nation, fhould lie under the inevitable neceffity of everlafting punishment, for want of that revelation, which was confined to so small a spot of ground as that of Palestine. Among the fons of Noah we read of one only who was accurfed; and if a bleffing in the ripenefs of time was referved for Japhet (of whofe progeny we are) it feems unaccountable to me, why fo many generations of the fame offspring, as preceded our Saviour in the flesh, should be alf involved in one common condemnation, and yet that their posterity should be intitled to the hopes of falvation as if a bill of exclufion had paffed only on the fathers, which debarred not the fons from their fucceffion. Or, that fo many ages had been delivered over to hell, and fo many referved for heaven, and that the devil had the first choice, and God the next. Truly I am apt to think, that the revealed religion which was taught by Noak to all his fons, might continue for fome ages in the whole pofterity. That afterwards it was included wholly in the family of Sem is manifeft; but when the progenies of Cham and Japhet fwarmed into colonies, and those colonies were fubdivided into many others: in process of time their descendants loft by little and little the primitive and purer rites of divine worship, retaining only the notion of one deity; to which fucceeding generations added others: for men took their degrees in those ages from conquerors to gods. Revelation being thus eclipsed to almost all mankind, the light of nature as the next in dignity was fubftituted; and that is it which St. Paul concludes to be the rule of the heathens, and by which they are hereafter to be judged. If my fuppofition be true, then the confequence which I have affumed in my poem may be also true; namely, that Deism, or the principles of natural worship, are only the faint remnants or dying flames of revealed religion in the posterity of Noah and that our modern philofophers, nay and fome of our philofophifing divines have too much exalted the faculties of our fouls, when they have maintained that by their force, mankind has been able to find out that there is one supreme agent or intellectual being which we call God: that praise and prayer are his due worship; and the rest of thofe deducements, which I am confident are the remote effects of revelation, and unattainable by our difcourfe, I mean as fimply confidered, and without the benefit of divine illumination. So that we have not lifted up ourfelves to God, by the weak pinions of our reason, but he has been pleased to descend to us; and what Socrates said of him, what Plato writ, and the rest of the heathen philofophers of several nations, is all no more than the twilight of revelation, after the fun of it was fet in the race of Noah. That there is fomething above us, some principle of motion, our reafon can apprehend, tho it cannot discover what it is by its own virtue. And indeed 'tis very improbable, that we, who by the strength of our faculties cannot enter into the knowlege of any Being, not fo much as of our own, should be able to find out by them, that fupreme nature, which we cannot otherwife define than by saying it is infinite; as if infinite |