The Epistle.

I send you here, my Lord, that discourse enlarg'd, which frighted the lady into a cold sweat, and which had like to have made me an atheist at court, and your Lordship no very good Christian.

I am not ignorant that the fear of Socinianism at this time, renders every man that offers to give an account of religion by reason, suspected to have none at all; yet I have made no scruple to run that hazard, not knowing why a man should not use the best weapon his Creator hath given him for his defence.

That Faith was by the apostles both highly exalted and severely enjoin'd, is known to every man, and this upon excellent grounds; for it was both the easiest and best way of converting; the other being tedious and almost useless: for but few among thousands are capable of it, and those few not capable at all times of their life, judgment being required. Yet, the best servant our Saviour ever had upon earth, was so far from neglecting or contemning reason, that his epistles were admir'd,

even by those that embrac'd not the truths he delivered. And, indeed, had the fathers of the church only bid men believe, and not told them why, they had slept now unsainted in their graves, and as much benighted with oblivion as the ordinary parish priests of their own age.

That man is deceivable, is true; but what part within him is not likelier than his reason? For, as Manilius said,

"Nam neque decipitur ratio, nec decipit unquam."

And how unlikely it is that that which gives us the prerogative above other creatures, and wholly entitles us to future happiness, should be laid aside, and not used to the acquiring of it?

But by this time, my Lord, you find how apt those who have nothing to do themselves, are to give others trouble. I shall only therefore let you know, that your commands to my Lord of Middlesex are performed; and that when you have fresh ones, you cannot place them where they will be more willingly received, than by Your humble servant,

Bath, Sep. 2nd.

JOHN SUCKLING.

AN

ACCOUNT OF RELIGION BY REASON.

AMONG the truths, my Lord, which we receive, none more reasonably command our belief than those which by all men, at all times, have been assented to.

In this number, and highest, I place this great one—that there is a Deity; which the whole world hath been so eager to embrace, that, rather than it would have none at all, it hath too often been contented with a very mean one.

That there should be a great disposer and orderer of all things, a wise rewarder and punisher of good and evil, hath appear'd so equitable to men, that by instinct they have so concluded it necessary; nature, which doth nothing in vain, having so far imprinted it in us all, that should the envy of predecessors deny the secret to succeeders, they yet would find it out.

Of all those little ladders with which we scale heaven, and climb up to our Maker, that seems to me not the worst, of which man is the first step. For, by examining how I, that could contribute nothing to mine own being, should be here, I come to ask the same question for my father, and so am led in a direct line to a first producer, that must be more than man. For if man made man, why died not I when my father died? since, according to that maxim of the philosophers, the cause taken away, the effect does not remain.

Or, if the first man gave himself being, why hath he it not still? since it were unreasonable to imagine any thing could have power to give itself life, that had no power to continue it.

That there is then a God, will not be so much the dispute as what this God is; or how to be worshipped, is that which hath troubled poor mortals from the first, nor are they yet in quiet. So great has been the diversity, that some have almost thought God was no less delighted with variety in his service, than he was pleased with it in his works. It would not be amiss to take a survey of the world from its cradle; and, with Varro, divide it into three ages: the unknown, the fabulous, and the historical.

The first was a black night, and discover'd nothing; the second was a weak and glimmering light, representing things imperfectly and more falsely; the last, more clear, left handsome monuments to posterity.

The unknown I place in the age before the flood, for that deluge swept away all things as well as men, and left not so much as footsteps to trace them by.

The fabulous began after the flood in this time godheads were cheap, and men, not knowing where to choose better, made deities one of another.

Where this ended, the historical took beginning for men began to engrave in pillars, and to commit to letters, as it were by joint consent: for the three great epochas or terms of accompt were all establish'd within the space of thirty years: the Grecians reckoning from their Olympiads; the Romans from the building of their city; and the Babylonians from their king Salmanasser. To bring into the scale with the Christian religion any thing out of the first age, we cannot, because we know nothing of it.

And the second was so fabulous, that those which took it up, afterwards smil'd at it as ridiculous and false: which, though, was easier for them to do, than to show a true.

In the historical, it improved, and grew more refin'd: But here the fathers entered the field, and so clearly gain'd the victory, that I should say nothing in it, did I not know it still to be the opinion of good wits, that the particular religion of Christians has added little to the general religion of the world.

Let us take it then in its perfecter estate, and look upon it as in that age which was made so glorious by the bringing forth of so many admirable spirits: and this was about the eightieth Olympiad, in the year of the world 3480; for in the space of an

hundred years, flourish'd almost all that Greece could boast of: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Architas, Isocrates, Pythagoras, Epicurus, Heraclitus, Xenophon, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Demosthenes, Parmenides, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, Empedocles, Timæus, with divers others, orators and poets. Or rather; for they had their religion one from another, and not much different, let us take a view of it in that century in which nature, as it were to oppose the Grecian insolence, brought forth that happy birth of Roman wits: Varro, Cicero, Cæsar, Livy, Sallust, Virgil, Horace, Vitruvius, Ovid, Pliny, Cato, Marcus Brutus; and this was from Quintus Servilius's consulship to that of Augustus, 270 years after the other.

And to say the truth, a great part of our religion, either directly or indirectly, hath been professed by heathens; which I conceive not so much an exprobation to it, as a confirmation; it being no derogating from truth, to be warranted by common consent.

First then, the creation of the world is deliver'd almost to the same in the Phoenician stories with that in Moses: from this the Grecians had their Chaos, and Ovid the beginning of his Metamorphoses.

That all things were made by God, was held by Plato, and others that darkness was before light, by Thales: that the stars were made by God, by Aratus: that life was infused into things by the breath of God, Virgil: that man was made of dust, Hesiod and Homer: that the first life of man was in simplicity and nakedness, the Egyptians taught: and from thence the poets had their golden age. That in the first times men's lives lasted a thousand years, Berosus, and others: that "something divine was seen amongst men, till that the greatness of our sins gave them cause to remove," Catullus: and this, he that writes the story of Columbus, reports from the Indians of a great deluge, almost all.

But to the main, they hold one God; and though multiplicity hath been laid to their charge, yet certainly the clearer spirits understood these petty gods as things, not as deities; second causes, and several virtues of the great power; by Neptune, water; Juno, air; by Dispater, earth; by Vulcan, fire; and sometimes one god signified many things, as Jupiter, the whole