esteemed to be sons, one who had converse with the gods. The general maxim of Plato," that all laws and constitutions about divine worship were to be had only from the gods, was every where received and believed in the world; and when kings made appointments in these matters, their subjects received what they ordered, as the dictates of inspiration, believing that a diwine sentence was in the lips of their kings and that their months transgressed not in the appointments which they had made. To this they readily acceded, not being artfully betrayed by kings into a belief of revelation; but believing them to be inspired, from the universal knowledge which the world was then full of, that God had revealed to their several ancestors and heads of families, in what way and manner they should worship him. If reason only had been the first guide in matters of religion, rulers would neither have thought of, nor have wanted the pretence of revelation, to give credit to their institutions. Whereas on the other hand, revelation being generally esteemed in all nations as the only true foundation of religion; kings and rulers, when they thought fit to add inventions of their own to the religion of their ancestors, were obliged to make use of that disposition, to which they knew their people inclined to receive what came recommended to them under the name of a revelation. But to proceed to the second query: if there was no revelation made to the men of the first ages, how came the knowledge and worship of GOD so early into the world? Perhaps some will answer, according to Lord Herbert," from in De Legib. 1. 6. Lib. de Religione Gentilium: VOL. 1. Y "Prov. xvi. 10.. nate principles. If they do, I must refer them to what our ingenious countryman Mr. Locke has offered upon that subject. The only way that reason can teach men to know God, must be from considering his works; and if so, his works must be first known and considered, before they can teach men to know the Author of them. It seems to be but a wild fancy, that man was at first raised up in this world, and left entirely to himself, to find out by his own natural powers and faculties what was to be his duty and his business in it. If we could imagine the first men brought into the world in this manner; we must, with Diodorus Siculus, conceive them for many ages to be but very poor and sorry creatures. The invisible things of GoD are indeed to be understood by the things that are made; but men in this state would for many generations be considering the things of the world in lower views, in order to provide themselves the conveniences of life from them, before they would reflect upon them in such a manner as should awaken up in their mind any thoughts of a GOD. And when they should come to consider things in such a light as to discover by them that there was a GOD; yet how long must it be before they can be supposed to have arrived at such a thorough knowledge of the things of the world, as to have just and true notions of him? We see in fact, that when men first began to speculate and reason about the things of the world, they reasoned and speculated very wrong. In Egypt, in Chaldea, in Persia, and in all other countries, false and ill-grounded notions of the things which Gon had made, induced them to worship the creatures instead of the Creator; and that at times when other per sons, who had less philosophy,were professors of a truer theology. The descendants of Abraham were true wor shippers of the Gon of heaven, when other nations, whose great and wise men pretended to consider and reason about theworks of the creation,did in no wise rightly ap prehend or acknowledge the workmaster; but deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world; * being delighted with their beauty, or astonished at their power, they took them for gods. In a word, if we look over all the accounts we have of the several nations of the earth; and consider every thing that has been advanced by any or all the philosophers; we can meet with nothing to induce us to think, that the first religion of the world was introduced by the use and direction of mere natural reason. On the other hand, all history, both sacred and profane, offers us various arguments to prove, that GoD revealed to men in the first ages how he would be worshipped; but that, when men, instead of adhering to what had been revealed, came to lean to their own understandings, and to set up what they thought to be right, in the room of what God himself had directed, they lost and bewil dered themselves in endless errors. This, I am sensible, is a subject which should be examined to the bottom; and I am persuaded, if it were, the result of the enquiry would be this, that he who thinks to prove, that the world ever did in fact by wisdom know God; ' C Wisdom xiii. 1, 2, 3, 4. * 1 Corin. i. 21. that any nation upon earth, or any set of men ever did, from the principles of reason only, without any assistance from revelation, find out the true nature and the true worship of the Deity; must find out some history of the world entirely different from all the accounts which the present sacred or profane writers give us ; or his opinion must appear to be a mere guess and conjecture of what is barely possible, but what all history assures us never was really done done in the world. STRICTURES on Dr. Shuckford, by Bishop Clay- ABEL killed Why his sacrifice was accepted beyond Cain's Abraham, where his ancestors lived When he was born .... Page 61 2 75 140 246 243 243 244 245 253 275 187 14 15 19 27 32 Their wickedness which occasioned the Flood what? 42 Antediluvian world, the chronology of it....... The geography of it...... How many persons in it.... Arabians not corrupted in their religion in the days of Aram, where he and his sons settled after the disper- sion from Babel....... Ararat, Mount, where situate.... Ark of Noah, its dimensions... Arphaxad, where he lived after the confusion oftongues 139 Askenaz, what country he planted after the dispersion 157 ..... 131 Astronomical character of Gemini, whence derived the Scripture-chronology.... Astronomy of the ancients, not exact. BABEL Tower, when began 310 164 296 92 How long the project of building it was continued 128 |