Perhaps, no one doctrine is so much, and so often insisted upon, in sacred Writ, as the perishing condition of sinners. And, there is no one, most certainly, that has been so much denied, or that is so humiliating. It directly militates against our natural pride, and those high notions of our dignity, of which we are so apt to boast.—A patient and candid hearing is therefore requested.——There can be but two notions of our state before renewed by saving grace: one is that we have no really holy principle of spiritual life, in any degree, however small; and the other that we have. All the various ideas and ways of representing our condition before regeneration, which have been adopted by different writers or sects, are resolvable into one, or the other of these. And, that the scripture is most clear and abundant, in the proof, that we are altogether destitute, as we are by nature, of the true principles of holiness or of spiritual life, no one who impartially weighs what it offers, can, it is conceived, call in question. No words are more full than these, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
The reason why any reject altogether the Gospel, or reproach it as a mere fiction, is because they believe that the light of natural reason or conscience is entirely adequate to the purposes of discovering our duty, in its full extent, and guiding us safe to happiness.—And the reason, also, why others, who profess to believe it, have swerved so far from its pure doctrines, is a disbelief of the lost condition of man, or his being wholly under the power and dominion of sin.—Though it be acknowledged, that the world of mankind cannot, by mere natural reason and wisdom, attain to a true and saving knowledge of God; yet it may be very useful to enquire how far the light of nature can go.——And, we readily allow, that the light of nature and common reason may teach us some things concerning the being of God. That he doth exist, the whole universe is a clear demonstration. Sun, moon and stars declare that the hand which made them is divine. Every thing around us, and above us lead us to the Creator. The dawning and dying light equally proclaim the divine existence. Let a man but reason on the nature of cause and effect, and he cannot withhold his assent from this proposition, there doth exist some great intelligent cause of all things, both in the natural and moral world. Indeed, after opening our eyes on the beauties of Creation, it is an infinitely greater absurdity not to believe in the divine existence, than not to believe our own. In reason’s ear, all nature from the highest to the lowest, cries aloud that there is a God. Because that which may be known of God, is manifest in them for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.—The Psalmist hath a most lofty and sublime passage to the same effect: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their light is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. It seems impossible for any, in the exercise of reason, to deny the being of a God; and of course, none can have any valid excuse for refusing to admit this first principle of all religion. The very frame of our bodies—the structure of the human mind—the curious and exquisite formation of every animal or insect cannot fail to convince us, that there doth exist an Almighty Creator. Every house is built by some man, but he that built all things is God. The worlds rolling on high—the wonderful revolution—the grandeur,—the distance,—the size of the heavenly bodies—the beautifully variegated canopy of heaven, which cannot but please and astonish us, when we open our eyes to behold it, prove, beyond all contradiction, that there is a God. The light of reason is sufficient to teach us, then, the divine existence. Accordingly we find that God never sent a messenger to declare or reveal this to us; or would have a miracle wrought to establish it.—And there is none but the fool in his heart can say there is no God. If any men claiming to be philosophers have been found to be speculative atheists, it is owing to their having perverted reason, by their sophistical arguments, and metaphysical reveries. If barbarous nations and tribes of men have been discovered, in remote parts of the world, where it appeared that they had no idea, at all, of a supreme being, it is to be ascribed not to the insufficiency of nature’s light, but to their stupid inattention to that light.
2. The light of reason is sufficient to give all mankind some knowledge of some of the attributes of the divine nature. The heathen world may know from the things that are, the wisdom, power, and goodness of the Deity. If natural reason can discover the being of God, by its own researches, it can also, discover some of the attributes of his being; such as his Almighty power, infinite wisdom and boundless goodness. The very idea of a divine existence implies, a glorious existence—a necessary and eternal existence. It seems to be a clear dictate of reason that if he exist at all, he must exist, in such a manner, as no other being doth or can, by an absolute necessity of nature: that he must be omnipresent—or every where, at one and the same time: be excluded from, and confined to no space. Reason teaches that he inhabits the infinitude of space.—If he be the first cause and Maker of all things, he must be independent, alsufficient and uncontroulable; he must be infinitely the greatest of all beings. Plato, a heathen philosopher who uttered more wise and just sayings about the nature of the Supreme Being than any one of the antient sages, speaking of the divine omnipresence, or ubiquity of the Godhead, says, he is, “a Circle whose centre is every where, and whose circumference is no where.” That he must be omniscient, or possessed of infinite knowledge, is a necessary consequence of his omnipresence.—And reason is likewise able to prove his Eternity. For if he made all things, he must be before all, and above all,—that is, he must be eternal. Hence we find the greatest Lights in the pagan world, when they are speaking of their celestial Divinities, use the epithets eternal—immortal—omnipotent. This is a full proof that reason teaches man, if duly improved, that eternity, almighty power, and wisdom were some of the perfections of God. And the incomprehensibility of these attributes is no evidence that reason does not discover them to be perfections of the divine existence. Far exalted, indeed, above all finite comprehension is the self-existent—necessarily existent—independent—all-sufficient—omnipresent God. All nature is but a temple made by him, and filled with his presence. Heaven is his throne, and the earth his footstool. His power is infinite. Wherever we turn our eyes, we cannot help beholding the displays of it. The heavens declare its glory. All things, in Creation and Providence, speak forth its greatness.—Enough may be seen, in the occurrences of human life, to satisfy all men, even where the light of the Gospel has never shined, that the Deity bears long with his creatures; and that he rules, in his divine greatness and majesty, among the nations. They cannot, if they only exercise, in a proper manner their rational faculties, but know, that he is their preserver, and the benefactor of the world, who dispenses his favors, with a liberal hand, to all men. Accordingly the Apostle Paul, when the Priests of Jupiter, at the City of Lystra, would have done sacrifice, or paid divine honours to him and Barnabas, as divinities, supposing that the Gods were come down in the likeness of men, bid them desist, and told them who alone was the proper object of religious homage; and, that, in the course of his Providence, he had given sufficient tokens of his preserving care and bounty: saying, Sirs, why do you do these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God which made heaven, and earth, and the Sea, and all things that are therein. Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without a witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.
3. The light of reason, and conscience, which last, all mankind have, and which, also, is essential to moral agency and accountableness to God, farther teaches all men that worship and obedience are due from the Creature to the Creator. Every rational creature, throughout all worlds, is indispensably bound by the very laws of his existence, to pay reverence and honour, worship and fear, gratitude and obedience to the author of the Universe. If reason can only once discover that there doth exist an almighty, first, intelligent Cause of all things—and that he is possessed of such attributes as wisdom, goodness, omnipresence and omniscience, its voice will call all men to pay divine honours to this great, eternal, almighty Being. It will inform us, that such perfections as inhere in his nature, necessarily claim from all men, homage and submission. Had we no divine revelation, or suppose God never gave one to man, at all, but had left him to the mere light of his own mind to find out the paths of duty and of felicity, we should be indispensably obliged to pay honor and homage to the ruler of the world. If we can prove that he made us, and is the Creator of all things, we can, also, prove that we ought to fear, reverence and worship him. That the Maker of the world, the Father of our spirits and former of our bodies, deserves our grateful acknowledgements and devout adorations, is one of the most obvious dictates of reason. Before we can deny this, we must have perverted our reason, or shut our eyes upon a very plain truth. We can prove, from reason, the obligation to pay divine honours to God, as clearly as we can the duty of justice between man and man—the offices of humanity—and kindness—or any part of morality. And, by similar arguments. Our obligations to moral Virtue—to do justly and love mercy, to speak the truth and to relieve distress, result from the relation we stand in, towards each other. Man bears such a relation to man that he is bound to be just, faithful, tender-hearted:—to mitigate the grief which he beholds, if in his power, and to advance the welfare of society. We are all brethren. We had our beings from one divine Author. We participate in the same common nature. We are exposed to the same calamities, and are Candidates for an endless existence, beyond the grave. We are, therefore, bound, by our very make and station, in the universe of the Almighty, to certain moral duties to each other. These moral duties cannot be omitted or violated without high criminality. Our obligations to pay divine homage to God, in the same manner, result from the relations in which we, as rational Creatures, stand, towards him, the greatest and best of all beings. He is our Creator—our Preserver—our Benefactor. He is the sovereign Lord, legislator, all-wise disposer, and proprietor of the world. The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. As he bears such relations, reason, by its own exertions, without any foreign assistance, teaches all men to revere—to trust in—and to pay divine worship to him. To render unto God the things that belong to him, is as much an exercise of justice, as to render unto man the things that belong to him. A system of morals which excludes the worship of the Deity, or the duties which we owe him, is as essentially defective and as repugnant to reason, as if it excluded all the duties of the social life, or which man owes to man.—Agreeably to this, we find all the pagan world, who admitted the being of a God, paying divine honours, of some kind, to their fancied Divinities. Their mistaking in the object of worship and the manner, does not weaken the force of the argument. It only proves the absolute need of a divine Revelation to instruct us, in the alone proper object of all religious adoration and praise, the one living and true God, and the manner in which we may acceptably serve him. Almost all the writers of pagan antiquity, who have come down to us, and have not been buried in the rubbish of time, in some part of their writings, either speak of, or recommend worship of their Gods—or the divinities acknowledged, in the respective Countries where they lived. This all know who have read them. I shall mention but one particular instance, and that is of a Prince famed for his greatness and amiable virtues; Xenophon informs us, that what Cyrus the great preferred before all other things was the worship of the Gods. Upon this, therefore, he thought himself obliged to bestow his first and principal care. He began by establishing a number of Magi, to sing daily a morning service of praise to the honour of the Gods, and to offer sacrifices, which was daily practised among the Persians to succeeding ages.—
That natural reason, or the very nature of things, points out the obligations of divine homage, is plain from the appeal made by the supreme Being, in the following words; a son honoureth his father, and a servant his master, If then I be a Father, where is mine honour? And if I be a Master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts.—The anxious enquiry of the awakened conscience is, wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oyl? Shall I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? The solicitude is not whether the rational creature ought to worship and serve the Deity; but how he is acceptably to worship and serve him; in what manner he will be worshipped. And, here, as will be soon proved, natural reason fails us. It cannot teach us the way, in which we are to worship and serve God.
4. The light of reason and the conscience of mankind, moreover, give some faint and glimmering prospect of a future state. Conscience and reason are different faculties and powers. Conscience is that moral reflecting power in the soul, that respects right and wrong, good and evil; or it is the moral sense; or a sense of right and wrong. That all mankind have this sense, unless by a long course of sinning and perverse reasoning, they have stupified it, no one ever did deny, or dispute; or can dispute, when he either inspects the operations of his own mind, or recollects that Christ is represented as the true Light, that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He, as the Creator, has given to every man the light of reason and conscience; otherwise man could not be a moral agent, or accountable creature, any more than the brutal world. And, that the heathen have this light of Conscience, the Apostle to the Romans expressly declares. And when the Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which shew the works of the law written in their hearts, their Conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts mean while accusing or else excusing one another. All men have, and must have a Conscience; a sense of right and wrong in moral things; an accuser when they do evil, and an excuser when they do well.—If thou do well, shalt thou not be accepted? Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? Now this Conscience points out an hereafter to man. There is some thing in the Soul that always looks forward to another state of existence, and upward to a superior power, conscious of his avenging arm when we do evil, knowingly and habitually—feeling that all its exercises and most secret movements are open to an omniscient eye. That there will be an hereafter, a world of retribution is the voice of nature.—
The light of reason, or the knowledge, which we may attain by the exercise of our reasoning faculties, gives all men some feeble and distant glimmerings of another life, after this, where the good will be rewarded, and the wicked punished. Man seems to wish to exist longer, and still longer. He cherishes the fond desire of immortality. He shrinks back from the bare thought of annihilation. Not to be is an idea indescribably painful. But, without a divine revelation, reason only, as it were, casts a wishful glance over into another world.—It is matter of fact, that the wisest and best among the learned Greeks and Romans rather hoped, than believed, that there will be a future state—Cicero, the prince of Roman Eloquence, who was at once an orator, a moralist, a philosopher, and theologian, in one of his learned works, sums up all that the most celebrated philosophers of his own time, and earlier days, had said or written on the grand subject of the immortality of the soul. He, in a lengthy dialogue, ingeniously exhibits all that the philosophers had said for, or against it. And, he closes all, with this remarkable saying, “that he rather hoped than believed, that there was another state of being after this.”—Reason, then, only conjectures about an Eternity. But the immortality of the soul is necessary to all religion. To talk of religion, if we be not to exist hereafter—if we be to fall into nothing at death, and shall sleep eternally in the grave, is the greatest absurdity.—Reason, then, leaves us much in the dark, on a point so important, as that of a future state. What folly and madness, then, to prefer the boasted oracles of reason to the clear light of divine revelation!—We stand in perishing need of a safer guide, in our voyage through this tempestuous Sea of life. And to refuse a perfect directory, the Chart of life, is like the mad seaman, who should venture to traverse the wide extended ocean without a Compass by which to steer his course. While making our voyage through life, we do not sail on a pacific Ocean. We need all the help therefore we can procure. And happy, if we may but reach the haven of eternal rest! In our enquiries on this subject, whether there be any principle in man, by whatever name it may be called, which is adequate to all the purposes of his salvation, or a sufficient guide in matters of faith and practice, we will give all the credit to the reason and conscience of mankind, which can be given, consistently with fact, and the page of history. The light of reason can no further go, than I have conceded, it is apprehended. And, that it did no further go, in matters of religion, among the most learned and civilized heathen nations, I appeal to all, who have ever read their history. What the light of reason is able to do, on moral subjects, will be stated, in the progress of our argument, in its proper place.—
We proceed—as was proposed—
II. To point out the insufficiency of reason, in things of a moral and religious nature, in those respects, which are not only important, but necessary.—And, here it will appear that mankind, while without Christ, are without hope and without God in the world, with an evidence, I trust, convincing to every candid and honest enquirer after truth and duty.—And,
1. The light of nature and highest wisdom of mankind, cannot attain to such a clear knowledge of God as is necessary to salvation. What God is, and who they are that have true conformity to, and communion with him, are questions of the greatest importance in Religion. And, they are questions which have been as little understood, and perhaps as much misapprehended, by mankind, in general, as almost any which have been discussed. Though, as St. Paul observes, the invisible things of God be clearly displayed by, and to be understood from the visible Creation, so that those are without excuse, who have not the knowledge of God from the light of nature alone, yet the heathen, after all their laborious researches, have not obtained this knowledge. Upon a fair trial of human reason, in matters of religion, under the greatest improvements of natural and moral philosophy, the world by wisdom knew not God. So far from it, that the most learned nations, and the greatest adepts in the sublime mysteries of divinity, in the pagan world, have been so vain in their imaginations, as we are told and their foolish hearts were so darkened, that they have represented and worshipped, the glorious incorruptible God, by images made like to corruptible man, and to the meanest and most despicable creatures, in the animal kingdom. They have attributed to what they worshipped as God, all the weaknesses and vices of fallen and depraved man—Pride—Envy—Cruelty—Revenge—and, even, Intemperance, and lewdness.