He therefore that asserts the light of nature to be a sufficient unerring guide in divine matters, ought either to shew, that our second nature is as safe a guide as the first; or that though it is nature, yet it has no natural powers over us.
For since every man is necessitated to take upon him a second nature, which he does not know to be a second, or when it began, or how far it has proceeded, or how contrary it is to his first nature; he that would prove the light of nature to be so perfect, that nothing can be added to it, is obliged to prove, that our second nature, which we receive by education, has the same degree of perfection. For so far as our second nature is different from the first, so far it has changed the first; and if we are to follow nature exclusive of revelation, we may take revenge, self-murder, incontinence, sensuality, pride, self-conceit, and a contempt of all things sacred, to be the true dictates of nature.
For it often happens to people, to be thus educated; so if education is a second nature, and nature is to be esteemed a true and perfect guide; a man thus educated, has all his vices made so many glorious laws of nature; and thro’ the strength of his natural light, he condemns humility, self-denial, and devotion, as foolish bigotry.
This writer says, “Natural religion, that is, the religion of nature, is a perpetual standing rule for men of the meanest, as well as the highest capacities, and carries its own evidence with it, those internal, inseparable marks of truth.[¹] But if education is a second nature, and, as this writer affirms, has the force of a second nature even in things unreasonable and unnatural; then this second nature has not only its natural religion, which is also a perpetual standing rule for men of the meanest, as well as the highest capacities; which carries its own evidence with it, those internal, inseparable marks of truth; but it may also have a natural religion, both unreasonable and unnatural; since education has the force of nature even in things of this kind.”
[¹] Page 243.
Again: If education has this force of nature even in things unreasonable and unnatural; if it is also absolutely necessary for all men to come under the power of some second nature; what can be more vain, than to pretend to state the light, or rectitude of human nature, since it must be for the most part in every man, as the uncertainty, variety, happiness or unhappiness of education has rendered it?
And our author can no more tell, what man would be without education, or what nature would do for those who had no foreign instruction, than he can tell what sort of beings dwell in the moon. And yet he that does not know this, how can he know what the light of nature is in itself?
* Again to declare the light of nature so perfect, as to be incapable of all improvement even by divine revelation, is no less an extravagance, than to declare the education of mankind to be perfect in the same degree.
* For if nature not only wants, but cannot possibly avoid education; if this necessary unavoidable education becomes another nature, undiscernible from the first; then nothing can possibly be affirmed of the perfection of the light of nature, but what must be affirmed in the same degree of the perfection of education. And he that affirms that mankind have had, at all times, and in all places of the world, the same sufficient, perfect light of nature, must affirm, that mankind have had, at all times, and in all places of the world, the same perfect, unerring education.
* When therefore it is just, for all people to abide by the absolute perfection of their education, the infallible light of their second nature, as the unerring standard, of all that is moral, religious, and divine; then it may be just to appeal to the natural light of all men, of all ages, and all places, as a sufficient teacher of all that ought, or ought not to be a matter of religion.