controversies that state is deduced from the moral attributes: only with this difference. In the dispute with Atheists, the demonstration of those attributes is made; in the dispute with Deists, it is allowed. The final purpose against Atheism is to prove the BEING AND ATTRIBUTES of God; the final purpose against Deism is to prove a FUTURE STATE: For neither natural nor revealed Religion can subsist without believing that God is, and that he is a REWARDer of them that seek him*. Thus, we see, the question, in each controversy, being different; the premisses, by which each proposition was to be proved, must needs be different. The difference is here explained; the premisses, in the argument against Atheists, werę the moral attributes; the premisses, in the argument against Deists, were the unequal distribution of good and evil.

What Enemy to Religion now, could ever hope to see a Calumny either thrive or rise on so unpromising a ground? or flatter himself with the expectation of an Advocate bold enough to tell the World, that this conduct of the DIVINES, was a CONFEDERACY WITH ATHEISTS, to decry God's Providence; to blot out his Attributes of goodness and justice; to combat his. Government; and to deny his very Existence? The RIGHT HONOURABLE Author does all this: And more; he expects to be believed, It is true, this is a fine believing age: Yet I hardly think he would nave carried his confidence in our credulity so far, had he seen his way clear before him.-lis Lordship is always sublime, and therefore often cloudy; commonly, at too great a distance to look into the detail St. Paul. Hebr. xi. 6. ·

1

of

of things, or to enter into their minuteness: (for which, indeed, he is perpetually felicitating his Genius.) So that, in his general view of Theologic matters, he has jumbled these two Controversies into one; and, in the confusion, hath commodiously slipped in one Fact for another. He, all the way, represents Divines as anaking a future State THE PROOF of God's moral attributes: Whereas, we now see, on the very face of the controversy, that they make the moral attributes A PROOF of a future State. Let us consider how the dispute stands with the Atheist. These men draw their argument against a God, from the condition of the moral world: The Divine answers, by demonstrating God's Being and Attributes: and, on that demonstration, satisfies the objection. Consider how it stands with the Deist.. Here, God's Being and Attributes is a common principle: And on this ground the Divine stands, to deduce a future state from the unequal distribution of things.--But his misrepresentation was to support his slander of a CONFEDERACY: there was no room to pretend that God's Being was made precarious by proving a future state from his Attributes; but could he get it believed, that Divines proved the Attributes from a future state, he would easily find credit with his kind Reader, for all the rest.

Well then, the whole amount of his CHIMERICAL CONFEDERACY comes to this, That Divines and Atheists hold a principle in common; but, in common too with all the rest of mankind; namely, that there are irregularities in the distribution of good and evil here below. And did any thing forbid Divines to employ this common principle, in support of Religion against Atheism and Deism! But whatever his Lord

U 4

ship

ship might think proper to disguise in this reasoning, there is one thing, the most careless Reader will never overlook; which is, that, under all this pomp of words and solemnity of accusation, you see lurking that poor species of a Bigot's calumny, which, from one principlę held in common with an obnoxious Party, charges his Adversary, with all the follies or impieties which have rendered that Party odious. This miserable artifice of imposture, had now been long hissed out of learned controversy, when the noble Lord took it up; and, with true political skill, worked it into a SHAM PLOT; to make RELIGION distrust its best Friends, and take refuge in the FIRST PHILOSOPHY,

HA

SECT.

AVING now proved the first PROPOSITION, That inculcating the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is necessary to the wellbeing of Society, by considerations drawn from the nature of Man, and the genius of civil Society; and cleared it from the objections of licentious Wits;

I proceed to the second; which is, THAT ALL MANKIND, ESPECIALLY THE MOST WISE AND LEARNED NATIONS OF ANTIQUITY, HAVE CONCURRED IN BELIEVING AND TEACHING, THAT THIS DOCTRINE WAS OF SUCH USE TO CIVIL SOCIETY.

This I shall endeavour to prove,

I. From the conduct of Lawgivers, and Institutors of civil policy.

II. From the opinions of all the Learners and Teachers of wisdom, in the schools of ancient philosophy.

I. FROM THE CONDUCT OF LAWGIVERS, AND INSTITUTORS OF CIVIL POLICY: who never omitted

to

to propagate and confirm Religion, wherever they established Laws; RELIGION, I say, which was always first in their view, and last in their execution. They used it as the instrument to collect a body politic; and they applied it as the bond to tie and keep that body together; they taught it in civilizing man; and established it to prevent his return to barbarity and a savage life. In a word, so inseparable, in the ancient World, were the ideas of LAWGIVING and RELIGION, that Plutarch (in his paradoxical preference of atheism to superstition) supposes no other Origin of divine worship than what was the work of the Lawgiver. "How much happier had it been

46

(says he) for the Carthaginians, had their first Lawgiver been like Critias or Diagoras, who believed "neither Gods nor Demons, rather than such a one "as enjoined the public sacrifices to Saturn *!"

That the Magistrate, as such, hath taken the greatest care and pains to inculcate and support Reli gion, we shall prove at large: That this care and pains must arise, and was employed, on account of its confessed and experienced utility to the State, will need no proof.

But here it will be necessary to remind the reader of this previous truth, That there never was, in any age of the world, from the most early accounts of time, to this present hour, any civil-policied nation. or people, who had a Religion, of which the chief foundation and support was not the doctrine of a FUTURE STATE

د

* Τί δὲ Καρχηδονίοις ἐκ ἐλυσιτέλει Κριτίαν λαβᾶσιν ἢ Διαγόρας νομοθέτην ἀπ' ἀρχῆς, μήτε τινὰ θεῶν μήτε δαιμόνων νομίζειν, ἢ τοιαῦτα θύειν οἷα τῷ χρόνῳ ἔθυον;--Περὶ δεισιδ. Ρ. 171. tom. II. fol. 1599. Francof.

of