Finally, consider the holiness of this religion. Consider its doctrine, which gives a satisfactory reason for all things; even for the contrarieties which are found in man. And consider all these singular supernatural, and divine peculiarities which shine forth on every side, and then judge from all this evidence, if it is possible fairly to doubt that Christianity is the only true religion; and if any other religion ever possessed any thing which could bear a moment's comparison with it.

CHAPTER IX.

PROOFS OF THE TRUE RELIGION, DRAWN FROM THE CONTRARIETIES IN MAN, AND FROM THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN.

THE greatness and the misery of man are both so manifest, that it is essential to the true religion, to recognize the existence in man, of a certain principle of extraordinary greatness, and also a principle of profound misery. For that religion which is true, must thoroughly know our nature in all its grandeur, and in all its misery, and must comprehend the source of both. It should give also a satisfactory explanation of those astonishing contrarieties which we find within us. If also there be one essence, the beginning and the end of all things, the true religion should teach us to worship and to love him exclusively. But since we find ourselves unable to worship him whom we know not, and to love any thing beyond ourselves, it is essential that the religion which requires of us these duties, should warn us of our weakness, and guide us to its cure.

Again, religion, to make man happy, should teach him that there is a God; that we ought to love him; that it is our happiness to be his, and our only real evil to be separated from him. It should shew us that

we are full of gross darkness, which hinders us from knowing and loving him; and that our duty, thus requiring us to love God, and our evil affections alienating us from him, we are manifestly in an evil state. It ought to discover to us also the cause of this opposition to God, and to our real welfare. It should point out to us the remedy and the means of obtaining it. Examine, then, all the religious systems in the world. on these several points, and see if any other than Christianity will satisfy you respecting them.

Shall it be the religion taught by those philosophers who offer to us as the chief good, our own moral excellence? Is this, then, the supreme good? Have these men discovered the remedy of our evils? Have they found a cure for the presumption of man, who thus makes him equal with God? And they who have levelled us with brutes, and held up as the chief good the sensual delights of earth; have they found a cure for our corrupt affections? These say to us, "Lift up your eyes to God, behold him whom you resemble, and who has made you for his worship. You may make yourselves altogether like him; and, if you follow the dictates of wisdom, you will become his equals." Those say, "Look to the dust, vile reptiles, and consider the beasts with whom you are associated." What then is to be the lot of man? Is he to be equal with God, or with the beasts that perish? How awful the scope of this alternative. What shall be our destiny? What the religion that shall instruct us, at once to correct both our pride and our concupiscence?— Where is the religion that shall teach us, at the same time,our happiness and our duty, the weaknesses which cause us to err, the specific for their removal, and the way to obtain it? Hear what the wisdom of God declares on this subject, when it speaks to us in the Christian religion.

It is in vain, O men! that you seek in yourselves the remedy of your miseries. All the light you have can only shew you, that you cannot find within yourselves either truth or happiness. The philosophers

me.

have promised you both; but they could give you neither. They know not your real happiness, nor even your real state. How could they cure those ills, who did not even know them. Your chief mischiefs are, that pride which alienates you from God, and that concupiscence which fetters you to earth; and they have invariably fostered, at least, one or other of these evils. If they set God before you, it was but to excite your pride, by making you believe that your nature was similar to his. And they who saw the folly of such pretensions, have but led you to an equally dangerous precipice. They have taught you that your nature was on a level with the beasts, and that happiness was only to be found in those lusts which you have in common with them. This was not the way to convince you of your errors. Seek not then from men, either truth or consolation. I made you at the first, and I only can teach you what you are. You are not now in the state in which you were created by I made man holy, innocent, and perfect. I filled him with light and understanding. I made known to him my glory, and the wonders of my hand. Then it was that the eye of man beheld the majesty of God. He was not then in the darkness which now blinds him. He knew not then mortality or misery. But he did not long enjoy that glory, without declining to presumption. He wished to make himself the centre of his own happiness, and to live independently of my aid. He withdrew from beneath my authority. And when, by the desire to find happiness in himself, he aimed to put himself on a level with me; I abandoned him to his own guidance; and causing all the creatures that I had subjected to him, to revolt from him, I made them his enemies: so that now man himself is actually become similar to the beasts, and he is so far removed from me, that he scarcely retains even a confused notion of the Author of his being: so much have his original impressions been obliterated and obscured. His senses uncontrolled by reason, and often overruling it, hurry him onward to pleasure and to in

dulgence. All the creatures round him, now minister only sorrow or temptation. They have the dominion over him, either subduing him by their strength, or seducing him by their fascinations; a tyrannical control, which is, of all others, the most cruel and imperious.

Behold then the present state and condition of men. On the one hand they retain a powerful instinctive impression of the happiness of their primitive nature; on the other hand, they are plunged in the miseries of their own blindness and lust; and this is now become their second nature.

2. In the principles which I have here stated, you may discern the spring of those wonderful contrarieties which have confounded, while they have distracted and divided all mankind Watch attentively all the emotions of greatness and glory, which the sense of so many miseries has not been able to extinguish, and see if they must not have their source in another na

ture.

3. See, then, proud man, what a paradox thou art to thyself. Let impotent reason be humbled; let frail nature be silent. Know that man infinitely surpasseth man; and learn from thy Maker, thy real condition.

For, in fact, had man never been corrupted, he would have ever enjoyed truth and happiness, with an assured delight. And had man never been any other than corrupted, he would never have had any idea of truth and blessedness. But wretched as we are, (more wretched than if we had never felt the consciousness of greatness) we do now retain a notion of felicity, though we cannot attain it. We have some faint impression of truth, while all we grasp is falsehood. We are alike incapable of total ignorance and of sure and definite knowledge. So manifest is it, that we were once in a state of perfection, from which we have unhappily fallen. What then do this sense of want, and this impotency to obtain, declare to us, but that man originally possessed a real bliss, of which no traces now remain, except that cheerless void within,

which he vainly endeavors to fill from the things around him; by seeking from those which are absent, a joy which present things will not yield,-a joy which neither the present nor the absent can bestow on him; because this illimitable chasm, this boundless void can never be filled by any but an infinite and immutable object.

4. It is an astonishing thought, that of all mysteries, that which seems to be farthest removed from our apprehension, I mean the transmission of original sin, is a fact without the knowledge of which we can never satisfactorily know ourselves. For, undoubtedly, nothing appears so revolting to our reason as to say that the transgression of the first man should impart guilt to those, who, from their extreme distance from the source of the evil, seem incapable of such a participation. This transmission seems to us not only impossible but unjust. For what can be more repugnant to the rules of our despicable justice, than to condemn eternally an infant, yet irresponsible, for an offence, in which he appears to have had so little share, that it was committed six thousand years before he came into existence. Certainly nothing wounds us more cruelly than this doctrine. And yet without this mystery, to us of all others the most incomprehensible, we are utterly incomprehensible to ourselves. The complicated knot of our condition, has its mysterious folds in this abyss; so that man is more incomprehensible without this mystery, than is this mystery itself to

man.

this

The notion of original sin, is foolishness to men. But then we should not condemn the want of reasonableness in this doctrine, for in fact it is not assumed to be within the province of reason. At the same time, very foolishness is wiser than all the wisdom of men: (The foolishness of God is wiser than men, 1 Cor. i. 25.) For without this, what explanation can we give of man! His whole condition hangs upon this one imperceptible point. Yet how could he have discovered this by his reason; seeing it is a matter above