were few in proportion to the great bulk of mankind, and were utterly unable to produce any considerable change in the prevailing principles and manners of their countrymen. They themselves had but very imperfect and erroneous notions respecting the nature and attributes of God, the worship he required, the duties and obligations of morality, the method of God's governing the world, his design in creating mankind, the original dignity of human nature, the state of corruption and depravity into which it afterwards fell; the particular mode of divine interposition necessary for the recovery of the human race; the means of regaining the favor of their of fended Maker, and the glorious end to which God intended finally to conduct them. Even with respect to those great and important doctrines abovementioned, the immortality of the soul, the reality of a future state, and the distribution of

rewards and punishments hereafter, they were full of doubt, uncertainty, and hesitation; and rather ardently wished and hoped for, than confidently expected and believed, them. But even what they did know with any degree of clearness and certainty, they either would not condescend, or wanted the ability, to render plain and intelligible to the lower orders of the people. They were destitute also of proper authority to enforce the virtues they recommended; they had no motives to propose powerful enough to overrule strong temptations and corrupt inclinations; their own example, instead of recommending their precepts, tended to counteract them; for it was generally (even in the very best of them) in direct opposition to their doctrines; and the detestable vices to which many of them were addicted, entirely destroyed the efficacy of what they taught.

Above all, they were destitute of those awful sanctions of religion, which are the most effectual restraints on the passions and vices of mankind, and the most powerful incentives to virtue, the rewards and punishments of a future state, which form so essential and important a part of the Christian dispensation.

There was, therefore, a plain and absolute necessity for a divine revelation, to rescue mankind from that gulf of ignorance, superstition, idolatry, wickedness, and misery, in which they were almost universally sunk; to teach them in what manner, and with what kind of external service, God might most acceptably be worshipped, and what expiation he would accept for sin; to give them a full assurance of a future state and a future judgment; to make the whole doctrine of religion clear and obvious to all capacities; to add weight and au

thority to the plainest precepts, and to furnish men with extraordinary and su pernatural assistance, to enable them to overcome the corruptions of their nature. And since it was also plainly worthy of God, and consonant to all our ideas of his goodness, mercy, and compassion to the work of his own hands, that he should thus enlighten, and assist and direct the creatures he had made, there was evidently much. ground to expect that such information and assistance would be granted; and the wisest of the ancient heathens themselves thought it most natural and agree. able to right reason to hope for something of this nature.

You may give over, says Socrates, all hopes of amending men's manners for the future, unless God be pleased to send you some other person to instruct

you; and Plato declares, that whatev

Plato in Apollog. Socratis.

er is right, and as it should be in the present evil state of the world, can be so only by the particular interposition of God.* Cicero has made similar declarations; and Porphyry, who was a most inveterate enemy to the Christian Religion, yet confesses, that there was wanting some universal method of delivering men's souls, which no sect of philosophy had ever yet found out.

These confessions of the great sages of antiquity, infinitely outweigh the assertions of our modern infidels, "that human reason is fully sufficient to teach man his duty, and enable him to perform it; and that, therefore, a divine revelation was perfectly needless." It is true, that, in the present times, a Deist may have tolerable just notions of the nature and attributes of the Supreme Being, of the worship due to him, of the ground

*Plato de Rep.

+ Augustin de Civitate Dei, I. 10, c. 32.