It is true, they had some judicious, weighty, moral, sayings; for in this argument, I would allow them as much as can be allowed them, consistently with fact. But no system of heathen morals proposed any thing, as motives drawn from another world of any force to induce people to act with any due reverence to it—or to prepare for a happy immortality. Reason, consequently, doth not, properly speaking, look into another world. It merely conjectures about it.—The Gospel, or a divine revelation only fully discloses an Eternity to man.—It lays before him Immortality: an Immortality of blessedness, when life is no more, if it have been improved in a pious and virtuous manner.—It denounces on the wicked everlasting misery. But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.——We can now look through all the wastes and glooms of death and the grave to a resurrection of the body—to a judgment-seat—to an endless existence after death—to eternal rewards for the pious—and everlasting woe to the despisers of God and Virtue. By the Gospel, therefore, we have hope, pleasing enrapturing hope—we have light, like the glorious luminary of the sky in his meridian altitude—we have life, spiritual and divine—we have the saving knowledge of God—we have a fulness of felicity opened before us, and promised to us, upon our repentance, faith, and new obedience.
5. Reason and conscience are unable to renew and change our hard hearts, or to give us a true and real light of the excellency of spiritual and divine things. To subdue the obduracy of the heart, to slay the enmity there is in us against the law, character, and perfections of God, is beyond all that reason and conscience can effect. The powers of reason can tell us of our dark, blinded corrupt state. Men of science and liberal enquiry, in all ages, and among all people, have seen, confessed, and bewailed the imperfections and frailties, the infirmities and exceeding depravation of human nature; like a magnificent pile of buildings in ruin—or a fertile and luxuriant soil overrun with noxious plants. It was impossible for candid and inquisitive men among heathen tribes not to have discovered the perverseness and vices of human nature, in general, they are so plain; though they called some things Virtues which were not—and some things Vices which were not. But reason never could suggest, or give a hint of any plan of restoration to a right temper or a holy and innocent condition. There is nothing—no principle in man—no light—or quality that can sanctify, purify, and regenerate the soul. But an inward renovation is absolutely necessary to moral happiness, to become like God, to be either conformed to his perfections, or fitted to enjoy his presence in heaven. The wisest and best heathen confessed it was not in man to heal the moral disorders of his nature, or to rectify the temper, so great was its obliquity; and affirmed that a superior power was needed to effect this, and to make us meet to enjoy forever the favour and friendship of the Creator of the Universe. They felt that a revelation was necessary to lead and direct men how to live, so as to be hereafter blessed, and never once thought of disputing the possibility of such a thing. And nothing, in that Revelation which we enjoy, is plainer than the doctrine of efficacious grace, or more insisted upon than the need of a divine power to sanctify, purify, and change our disordered and depraved nature. Divine influence is essentially requisite, to renew us and to implant within the soul the principle of holiness. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.—But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them for they are spiritually discerned.—No man can come unto me, except the father, which hath sent me, draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day.—Not that we are of ourselves sufficient to think any thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.—Paul may plant and Apollos water, but it is God that giveth the increase.—Yea they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations.
Men do not chuse piety and virtue from any principle within themselves. They chuse their own evil practices which lead to ruin. They actually hate God and holiness, truth and religion, or their conduct would not be such as we see it is, when we carefully examine it. They are not willing to be, and to do, as they ought. They will not, though urged by the weight of the most powerful arguments and all the ardor of importunity, live up to the light which they have; or wisely and diligently improve the talents with which they are entrusted. They hide, like the slothful servant, their talent in a napkin. They have no disposition to improve it. They resemble the prodigal son, in the parable, wasting their substance in riotous living. All men have a propensity to wander from the truth. They do not, and never did, duly and faithfully, improve the light of reason, or those notices of God—of virtue—of the moral law which they had, or now have. All, of course, who shall finally perish, will be self-condemned. They will never have it in their power to say that their Maker has been, either unjust or hard with them; or to reply as the slothful servant did, Lord I know thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed. And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth; lo! there thou hast that is thine.
In the sixth and last place, reason and conscience are insufficient to give us a full and complete system of morality, or moral truths. Let the system of morality taught and believed by the best and wisest of heathen nations, be candidly examined and critically inspected, and it will appear a maimed and imperfect, a broken and defective system. They had endless contentions about what they termed the chief good, that is, the real duty and happiness of man. One of their most eminent moralists reckons up more than one hundred different and contradictory opinions on this subject. Some placed it in self-indulgence: some in riches—some in insensibility—and all in that which never can render us blessed, and in which it can never be found.—Had any one leisure, and could summon up a sufficient stock of patience to collect from all the heathen writers on moral subjects, their various and self-contradictory rules of moral living, we should see how utterly unable mere reason is to form a complete system of moral virtue.
It would be great injustice to the subject before us, not to remark here, that some of the greatest moralists among the Greeks and Romans, had seen the writings of Moses, or the New-Testament, and had gleaned from them, a great proportion of the moral lessons which they delivered. Many of them, which is indeed much to their honour, travelled into the famous countries of Asia, where mankind were first planted by the adorable Creator, and where communications from the Almighty were first made to man, and they returned home to their own countries, enriched with the learning of others. But with all these advantages none of them, Socrates, Plato, or Seneca, who were universally known to be most renowned for moral sayings, formed any thing like a full and perfect system. They leave out many important virtues. They admit many odious and horrible vices; such as self-murder, cruelty, incest, and revenge.—And they place all the virtues on a wrong foundation, and persuade to the practice of them from improper and weak, or sinister and wicked motives. Even the celebrated Cato, who gave forth many moral maxims—who was called honest, just, inflexible in integrity—who was said by his contemporaries to be possessed of a stern virtue, put an end to his own life, because he could not bear to be a witness of the corruption and degeneracy of the age, in which he lived.—Few crimes perpetrated by man can be more heinous than self-murder. There is something terrifying in the extreme to think of ushering ourselves, uncalled, unbidden into the presence of the Deity and into the invisible world. Many nations now in the world where the Gospel was never known or christian doctrines propagated, have no idea at all of the Creator of the universe, or immortality of the soul, or pious duties, or fear of, or love to God.—The heathen tribes of this Land, as those tell us who have had the best opportunities of information, where no European has disseminated any seeds of religious belief, have no idea who made them—or who made the world—or of duty to God. In the interior parts of Africa, a late traveller there, asserts, that various tribes, visited by him, as far as he could learn, had no idea at all of any God or religion, or even words to express any worship to be paid to any power above them. But admit this to be a mistake, still truth compels us to believe them extremely ignorant on moral and religious subjects. They have however as bright faculties and powers of mind as the nations who have the Gospel. The immense difference is to be ascribed principally to that very Christianity, which is, alas! so much neglected by us.—
If we would know what light there is in man—what light all men have—or what help all need, we must see what nations, which never enjoyed any divine Revelation, have known—done—and believed as to God, Piety, and Morality. Superficial reasoners, men who indeed pretend to reason and philosophy—and reject the Gospel, and tell us of the sufficiency of nature’s light—of reason and conscience—or any other principle, lose, and bewilder themselves by not fairly looking into the history of the heathen nations and their moral writings, and seeing what their ideas, notions, and improvements have been, and still are. Their history, in truth, is but one continued narrative of ignorance—idolatry—vices—unnatural lusts—wars—bloodshed—barbarity—and misery; and their moral writings, so far as they have reached our times, contain no just or full system of morality at all. If a man were to conform himself to the whole of their rules of moral living, and understood them all, his life would be a scene of inconsistence and error, vice and folly; and his end self-murder. Our modern scepticks, it must be carefully remembered, collect all their ideas of morality and of God, if any just ones they have, and so far as any of their ideas be just, from that very Religion which they reject. They are, therefore, like a wayward and perverse Child that disowns its parent, merely because he wishes him to be good and happy—to be and do right; and takes the indispensably necessary measures for this purpose.—And if, among the haters of Religion, any be found at this day who have adopted the Atheists Creed, under the splendid name of philosophy—it is a most striking proof of what is the subject of this discourse.—Upon the whole, we may come to this conclusion, that all the conduct of man, since the day he was expelled from the earthly paradise for his Apostacy, proves clearly, even to a demonstration, that there is no light in him, or guide to duty and happiness, which may be depended upon—or which is safe for him to trust to—or sufficient to lead him to God and glory. Without Christ and the Gospel, all is darkness—confusion, and despair. There is no hope, no help, no salvation, no true system even of morality, if we deny a Saviour and his Gospel. See what the pagan world is from the holy Apostle Paul. He will tell you the truth. He will not deceive you by misrepresentation.—But how can I read! How can you hear without confusion!—I shudder at their awful and horrible vices, and utter depravation of heart, and morals. Professing themselves wise, they became fools. And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies with themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever, amen. For this cause God gave them up to vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet, and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient—being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.—Here is a true account of the polished heathen of the antient Roman Empire: of their philosophers as well as of the vulgar. More ignorant and Savage nations and tribes are, if possible, still more vile.—What, then, is human nature? What is man’s true state or character before renewed by divine grace?—What! is he as holy and innocent as Adam was when he was first formed? Is he, in his mind, fair and unspotted, as a clean sheet of paper?—Has he a light in himself sufficient to all the ends of spiritual life on earth, and eternal life in heaven! See what mankind are without the Gospel,—Aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having ho hope, and without God in the world.
I think it proper, here, to subjoin a few passages of Scripture, out of many, which declare that mankind are corrupted and depraved—or that they have no principle within them, sufficient to enable them to attain to eternal life without the powerful operations of divine grace.—How full to this purpose are those words (Gen. vi. 5). And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is evil from his youth.—The Psalmist David fully testifies what man is when he puts himself forward as an example. Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.—Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my Mother conceive me.—The prophet Jeremiah speaks of man’s depraved state in very strong terms.—The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? It follows, I the Lord search the heart, to give to every man according to his works. If the heart be deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, is it, at the same time possessed of any degree of a holy principle—or has it any light to guide it to heaven, or to be a sufficient directory in matters of faith and practice?—How the Apostle Paul viewed man as he is in himself, appears from the long quotation above made from him, and also from the following words—What then are we better than they? no, in no wise, for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin. As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one.—And again, Now we know that what things soever the law saith: it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God—for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The same inspired teacher leads the mind to the source of all, the sin of the first man, who stood as a public head for all his posterity. Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin: and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.—Again, you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.—Our blessed Lord himself says, he came to seek and save that which was lost. If we be not lost we need no Saviour, or atonement, or help.—It appears, then, with an evidence exceedingly strong, that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God—and that man, in a natural state, is wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. He has no principle in himself, by whatever name it may be called, which can, being duly exercised, form him for the service of God on earth, or his immediate presence in heaven.
What remains is to add a few reflections by way of improvement.
1. And what hath been said teacheth us the importance of realizing the misery and ruin of the condition of all men, as they are born into the world. A want of belief, or due sense of this, leads to a denial of the Gospel—to a rejection of the propitiatory sacrifice of the Redeemer—to almost every heresy and error. Men cannot bear to admit so mortifying a truth as that of their ruined and fallen, guilty and miserable state. Pride rises up, and repudiates the unpleasing doctrine. One says we are not depraved: another affirms which indeed is the same thing, that we have a light of our own adequate to all the purposes of our salvation:—a third contends that there is a portion of real saving grace in every human heart. All these, in effect, disown the scripture doctrine of the text, the utterly ruined and perishing condition of man in himself. The truth endeavoured to be established in the above discourses, is that the light of reason or highest wisdom of mankind is insufficient to teach us the true and saving knowledge of God. It is of the utmost moment to realize this. The world by wisdom knew not God.—Where there is no vision the people perish: but he that keepeth the law happy is he.—To open their eyes, is the design of the Gospel, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sin, and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in me. Understand ye brutish among the people! and ye fools when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? he that chastiseth the heathen, shall he not correct? he that teachest knowledge, shall he not know? The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity.—I know you, says our Saviour, that the love of God is not in you.—Can any one who seriously believes the scriptures, hold that man has any principle, let it be termed how it may, that can be adequate to all the end of spiritual life here, and eternal life hereafter?—That there is in fact no saving knowledge of God out of Christ, is plain from Acts iv. 12.—Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. He that hath not the son, hath not the father. Deny Christ and reject his Gospel, and you reject life. Misery is, then, inevitable. You must realize that you are, in yourselves, lost and guilty,—wretched and undone,—hopeless and perishing.
2. We infer from the foregoing subject the infinite grace and condescension of the Deity in making a revelation of his will, and of the way of salvation to mankind. He was under no obligation to do it. It would not have been either cruel, or hard, or unrighteous in him, to have withheld all pity from them, and to have let them die in their sins. Most justly might a holy and sovereign God have given them all over to the fatal effects of their own folly. It is no injustice or partiality in him to take one and leave another, because he is not obliged to have mercy on any one. If he reveal his will to any nation or people: or if he sanctify, pardon and save one individual, it is all of free grace. All the glory is his, when he sheweth mercy: all the shame and guilt of sin, if we die in our iniquities, are ours.—Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they will walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance.