will enfure fuccefs, how much more muft it incite and encourage us to engage and perfevere in a religious life, to be affured, that God will co-operate with our virtuous refolutions, enable us to furmount every impediment, carry us through the difficulties and dangers that infeft our path, confirm us in the habits of piety and holinefs, and finally crown us with eternal life and bleffedness. Such is the ftrength of chriftian principles, and the perfection of chriftian doctrine. The clear revelation of a future ftate is a very strong argument in favour of the divine authority and credibility of the chriftian religion. Concerning a future ftate we find a great variety of opinions among those who had only the light of reafon to aid their enquiries. The most learned and eminent philofophers the heathen world ever produced, exprefs themselves, in general, with great hesitation and diffidence on this momentous subject *. A great D * The concluding words of the Apology of Socrates are affectingly expreffive of this Great man's uncertainty. And now it is time to depart-I to death, you to life-but whether I or you are returning to greater happiness, God only knows! Αλλα γαρ ηδη ώρα απιεναι, εμοι μεν, απαθανουμένῳ, ὑμῖν δὲ, βίωσομενοις. οπότεροι δε ήμων έρχονται επι αμεινον πραγμα, άδηλον παντο wann w ew. Platon. Apol. Edit. 2. Forfter Oxon. p. 122. Cicero tells us that while he was perufing Plato's difcourfe on the immortality of the foul his arguments convinced him, but no fooner did he lay afide the book and carefully revolve thofe arguments in his mind, but all his former con viction A great part of them thought the grave terminated all our existence +. Others made a future ftate confift in pleasures altogether unworthy of a rational and immortal foul. Some of the moft diftinguished among them believed that fuch imperfect beings as we are would not be admitted immediately after death into the regions of purity and happiness, but first previously go through a neceffary process of rigorous correction and difcipline, before they could be worthily introduced into the pure and holy feats of Elyfium. They were likewife in great uncertainty with regard to the nature of this ftate, and the happiness men would enjoy in it. Heroes and conquerors, fome imagined, would there amuse themfelves in marhalling and arranging visionary armies-Kings and viction vanished. Nefcio quomodo, dum lego, affentior: cum pofui librum, & mecum ipfe de immortalitate animorum coepi cogitare, affenfio illa omnis elabitur. Ciceron. Tufcul. quæft. p. 22. Lib.1. §.11. Edit. Davis Cantab. 1723. Mortem ærumnarum requiem, non cruciatum, effe; eam cuncta mortalium mala diffolvere; ultra neque curæ neque gaudio locum effe. These are Cafar's words in Salluft. p. 120. In anfwer to them Cato fays: Bene et compofitè C. Cæfar paulo ante in hoc ordine de vitâ et morte differuit, credo falfa exiftimans ea quæ de inferis memorantur. Salluft. p. 128. Edit. Var. Amft. 1690. Supplicia expendunt. Aliæ panduntur inanes. Infectum eluitur fcelus, aut exuritur igni : Quifque fuos patimur manes. Exinde per amplum Mittimur Elyfium, et pauci læta arva tenemus. Virgil En. vi, 736. and Princes in governing and regulating ideal ftates-lawgivers and philofophers in compiling fyftems of laws for imaginary republics-poets, painters, musicians, in cultivating their respective arts-and all orders and claffes of mortals, in thofe happy manfions amuse and recreate themselves in following the fame occupations and studies, in which they once delighted. Others imagined this happiness would not be strictly eternal, but that thefe fpirits, after a flight of many ages, would be brought down to Lethe's ftream-drink its oblivious waters-animate a mortal bodyand for ever lofe all remembrance of what they once weret. What ideal, vifionary, fantaftic, D 2 • Pars in gramineis exercent membra palæstris, con Virgil En. vi. 642. + Has omnes, ubi mille rotam volvêre per annos Lethæum ad flumen Deus evocat agmine magno, Scilicet immemores fupera ut convexa revisant. En. vi, 748, Animæ contemptible reveries are thefe-yet indulged by the wifeft and best men that pagan ages ever produced. O how different is that state of immortality after which the gospel teaches its profeffors to aspire! With what clearness and certainty doth it exhibit it before us in all its grand and ftriking importance! The vail, that once interpofed, is now drawn afide, and the glories of a bleffed futurity spread before us in one vast, various, and boundless profpect. What heathen virtue always wanted to give it its just weight and efficacy with mankind, our Saviour hath given it. Every fyftem of religious and moral truths muft be defective in a very effential point, that either makes no mention of a future ftate, or mentions it in cbfcure, dubious, and ambiguous terms. Chrif tianity is the perfection of all religion, for by bringing immortality to light it hath completely given all thofe additional fanctions to the practice of virtue, which all former fyftems of philofophy wanted. Animæ quibus altera fato Corpora debentur, Lethæi ad fluminis undam Virgil En. vi. 714. SECT. SEC T. VII. The pofitive inflitutions of the NEW TESTAMENT an argument of its divine truth. T is alfo much to the honour of Christianity that its pofitive rites are fo few, and fo obvious to the meaneft capacities. Christianity is not a religion that is loaded with fuperftitious ornaments and oftentatious decorations. It is not like the pagan fuperftition, or like the mofaic inftitution, full of external parade and pageantry, displaying a pompous glitter and glare of embellishment and show-gilded fuperb temples fuming with steams of incense, and filled with odoriferous gales wafted from lofty altars fmoaking with aromatic fpices. The church, which Christ erected, is not like the fpacious magnificent domes in antient times, filled with pompous facrifices, with hecatombs of victims-hundreds of priefts employed, fome in dedicating the animal, fome in flaying it according to the forms prefcribed, others in infpecting the entrails, and prognofticating happy or unhappy events to the votary, others in burning parts of the victim upon the facred altar, and placating the resentment of their offended Deities by a thousand wild and enD 3 * Pecudumque reclufis Pectoribus inhians, fpirantia confulit exta. thufiaftic Virg. En. iv. v. 63. |