3. We are far from supposing that the Heathens shall be condemned for not believing in Christ, whom they never heard of, or not complying with the gospel-overture, which was never made to them. Invincible ignorance, though it be an unhappiness, and a consequence of our fallen state, is not a crime; therefore,
4. The Heathen shall be judged by the law of nature; and, if the apostle’s words, As many as have sinned without law, shall perish without law, Rom. ii. 12. be applicable to them, which, I think, no one will deny; yet their condemnation cannot be equal to that of those, who neglect and despise the great salvation offered to them in the gospel.
5. The Heathen, who have had no other light but that of nature, cannot be exculpated from the charge of many actual sins committed by them; in which respect they have rebelled against the light they have been favoured with. All of them, indeed, have not contracted the same degree of guilt with those whom the apostle describes, who committed sins contrary to nature, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, covetousness, maliciousness, wickedness, chap. i. 25, 26. & seq. and many other sins of the blackest nature, and therefore all of them are not liable to the same condemnation. And, indeed, some of the Heathen moralists have been a blessing, in many respects, to the age in which they lived, who, by their writings and example, have endeavoured to reform it from vice and immorality; and it is certain, that they shall not be punished for crimes which they have not committed: but whether the best of them shall be saved by the merits of Christ, though destitute of faith in him, is the question under our present consideration. To conclude that their good works have merited salvation, is not only contrary to the analogy of faith, but it is more than what can be said concerning the best works that were ever performed by Christians; and to argue, as many do, from the goodness of God, that they shall be saved, is certainly an inconclusive way of reasoning, unless we had some intimation of his purpose relating thereunto. If God has determined so to do, we must have recourse to his revealed will, and prove, from scripture, that there are promises of eternal life made to those who have no interest in Christ, and some ground, at least, to conclude, that some shall be happy in beholding his glory in another world, who have had no communion, by faith, with him in this. These things must first be proved, before we can see reason to deny what is contained in this answer, which we proceed to consider. Accordingly it is observed,
I. That they who never heard the gospel, and neither know nor believe in Christ, cannot be saved. This supposes, that faith and salvation are inseparably connected; and, though it be particularly applied to those who are destitute of the gospel; yet it is levelled against all, who presumptuously expect salvation, without ground, who remain in a state of unbelief and impenitency, whether they have the means of grace or no. And here let us consider that many who are called Christians, though they know little more than the bare name of Christ, yet they doubt not but that they shall be saved by his merits, and so live and die in this fatal mistake, how vile soever their conversation has been, as the prophet Isaiah says, Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way; yet saidst thou not, There is no hope, Isa. lvii. 10. or like the person whom Moses speaks of, who, when he heareth the words of this curse, yet blesseth himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst, Deut. xxix. 19. It is too notorious to be denied, that a great part of men though grossly ignorant, and openly profane, who live without God in the world, notwithstanding, expect to be saved; and it is one of Satan’s great engines, by which he endeavours to banish all religion out of the world, by persuading his deluded subjects that all things shall go well with them, though they make no pretensions to it. This presumption is rather founded in stupidity, than supported by arguments, and is a great instance of the alienation of the mind and affections from God, and shows how deceitful and desperately wicked, the heart of man is, when destitute of divine grace.
But what shall we say of those who pretend to defend this, and thereby put a sword into the hands of those who adhere to them, to destroy themselves? This the Deists do. And, inasmuch as their method of reasoning is subversive of the Christian religion, and of faith in Christ, as connected with salvation, I cannot omit to mention it in this place. These pretend not to be Atheists, though they express not a due veneration for the divine Majesty, that they may not be excluded from the society of mankind, who have some degree of abhorrence of Atheism impressed on their nature. They talk, indeed of God, and of natural religion, but make revealed the subject of their scorn and ridicule. If they read the scriptures, it is apparently with a design to burlesque them, and charge them with inconsistency and self-contradiction. When they speak of revelation, or the gift of prophecy, they give it no better a term than enthusiasm; and, when they mention the failings, recorded in scripture, of those who were otherwise holy and excellent men, they take occasion maliciously to reproach them, and insinuate, that they were vile persons, guilty of the most enormous crimes, and yet were saved: and wickedly infer from thence, that there is nothing solid and substantial in religion, but that persons may be as safe and happy without it, as with it. If they refer to the brightest and most excellent part of the character of the saints recorded in scripture, this they suppose to be the effect of implicit faith, and to take its rise from priest-craft. And our Saviour himself is not only divested by them of his glory, but reckoned, as, they suppose, Moses was of old, a designing person, who brought a new set of notions into the world to amuse and confound it. As for his miracles, which none but the blinded Jews, and they who are equally prejudiced against Christianity, never pretended to contest, much less to vilify, these they treat with the utmost scorn and contempt, as a late writer has done, whose blasphemy has been made manifest, by those who have wrote in defence of this part of our religion.
But inasmuch as persons, who are not disposed to indulge so great a degree of profaneness, have been sensible that this is not a right method to extirpate Christianity, since it cannot but be treated with the utmost abhorrence, by those who read the scripture with any religious design; there are others who, though they speak of God, yet glorify him not as God. These will, indeed, allow him to have some divine perfections; but they cast a reproach on his providence, and suppose, that he is too great to be affected with, or concerned about the actions and behaviour of so mean a creature as man. And as what we call sin, can be no disparagement to his glory, so he is too good and pitiful to his creatures, to punish them, at least, with eternal torments for it; so that if they allow the soul to be immortal, and capable of happiness in another world, which all of them, without exception, do not; yet they suppose that God made no creature to be for ever miserable. And as for those laws which he has given to mankind, which are enstamped on their nature, and contain nothing but what might have been known without revelation, these they pretend to be designed only to keep the world in order, to promote the interest of civil society, to prevent men from murdering one another, disturbing the tranquillity of the government in which they live, or invading the property of others; which is not doing as they would have others do to them. And as for the punishment of sin; that is no farther to be regarded, than as vice and immorality render persons obnoxious to bodily diseases, some marks of infamy, which custom has annexed thereunto, or the lash of human laws. This is all the scheme of religion, that some among the Deists endeavour to propagate; and every thing that is built more immediately upon divine revelation, they not only reckon unnecessary, but enthusiastic, and no other than a contrivance of some, who, with a view to their own interest, endeavour to puzzle the world with mysterious doctrines, which neither they, nor their votaries understand.
It must be supposed, that these men do not think that the knowledge of Christ, or faith in him, is necessary to salvation; yet they doubt not but that it shall go well with them in another world, if there be a future state, which, through the influence of that scepticism, which is, for the most part, a concomitant of Deism, they sometimes question. We shall not make so great a digression from our present subject as to give a particular reply to these assertions, which, though propagated with much assurance, are not pretended to be defended by solid arguments; and, indeed, the whole gospel is a reply to it. Whatever doctrine thereof is maintained by Christians, it will have a tendency to give them an abhorrence of it, and confirm their faith against such attempts, as are used to stagger and pervert it.
Thus concerning the methods that are used, by some, to overthrow revealed religion, and the necessity of faith in Christ to salvation. We shall now proceed to consider on what grounds persons hope to be saved, without the knowledge of Christ, or faith in him. And,
1. Some have no other ground of hope but the goodness of the divine nature; and accordingly they think, that because God delights not in the misery of any of his creatures, but takes all occasions to make himself known, as a God of infinite kindness and compassion, whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways, and will not resent those injuries which we may offer to him, but will lay them under eternal obligations to him, who have, by their sins rendered themselves unworthy to be saved by him; therefore they hope that all things shall go well with them, though they are utter strangers to the way of salvation by a Redeemer, and are altogether destitute of faith in him.
But this we cannot call any other than a presumptuous confidence; it is nothing else but to abuse the riches of God’s goodness, and to claim an interest in it, without ground. It is, indeed, a very great truth that God delights in mercy; and that this attribute cannot be too much admired or advanced by us; but yet it must not be set in opposition to any of his other perfections. He is certainly a just and holy, as well as a merciful God; and therefore we are not to suppose that one of these perfections shall be glorified, to the dishonour of another. Might not fallen angels as well make use of the same argument, and say, that because God is merciful, therefore he will deliver them from those chains of darkness and misery, in which they are held; as that the mercy of God should be presumed to be a foundation of hope, to those who have no ground to conclude their interest in it, as expecting it another way, than that in which he has declared his will to glorify it? And it is certain, that whomsoever God designs to glorify his mercy in saving, he first determines to advance the glory thereof, in making them meet for salvation, by sanctifying or purifying their hearts by faith. To separate these two, is therefore a dishonour to the divine perfections: God never designed to save his people in sin, but first to save them from it, and then to crown the work, which he had begun, with complete blessedness. Therefore the man who lives in all excess of riot, and yet hopes for salvation, must be guilty of a groundless presumption. When we read, in scripture, of God’s extending mercy, we find that there are certain marks and characters annexed, of those persons who have ground to lay claim to an interest in it: thus it is said, The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, Psal. ciii. 8. but then it is added, that this mercy is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him; to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them, ver. 17, 18. and elsewhere the Psalmist admires the goodness of God, (which is, doubtless, beyond expression wonderful) when he says, O how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up, and wrought, in which he speaks of the present displays of goodness, and the future reserves thereof; but it follows, that this belongs only to them that fear him, and to them that trust in him before the sons of men, Psal. xxxi. 19. and elsewhere it is said, All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies, Psal. xxv. 10. that is, to them, exclusively of all others.