abstain from the high-seasoned, but unwholesome, morsel; nor from the third bottle, when he hath already drank one too much yet, like an Irish proprietor, she is full of her former grandeur, and, in proportion as she is sunk from her real station and prerogative, affects to talk high of her rights and powers, as if they were much greater, and more extensive, than in truth they ever were. She is ever giving proofs of her inability to determine points of the greatest plainness, and yet presuming to examine and pronounce most peremptorily about mysteries, and other matters, which, in her highest power and perfection, she was utterly unable to form any competent judgment of. What is most absurd, now that she is fallen extremely low, both in dignity and ability, she claims kindred with God, and says, it is she that dictates to him all the wisdom of his actions. To this presumption she is prompted by those very imaginations and passions, to which she owes her fall from her real dignity and station; for of herself, weak as she is grown, she could never have been capable of so much folly and vanity.

Dech. I find you are no friend to reason, by your reflections; nor she to you, by your arguments.

Shep. And I find she is not to be humbled, at least in you, to a just sense of her own infirmity, which, as I take it, is the first necessary step to the recovery of her original dominion. Were she able rightly to direct the conscience, and to affix its approbation to actions really good in themselves, and its dislike, even to the worst of crimes, she had never suffered, as I have already but too often observed, whole nations to offer human sacrifices to their gods, to kill and eat their own parents, and the very wisest and politest of them to destroy their own children, and feast their eyes, at their public diversions, with the blood and slaughter of their fellow-creatures. If she is not capable of approving the most horrible enormities, why does she, in this late age of the world, when she hath had time enough, one would think, to open her eyes and come to a right sense of religion and morality, suffer the Americans and Africans to worship the devil, and even Christians, contrary to the express and repeated dictates of their religion, to hate and persecute and burn one another for God's sake?

Dech. Some people, as Tindal hath observed, endeavour

to reason themselves and others out of their reason. It must be owned, you do not deal so unfairly by her. You do not turn her own weapons against her, nor absurdly set her up to persuade people, with her own mouth, not to mind one word she says. You only heap up reflections of your own against her, and wisely endeavour to make us despise reason, in order to bring us over to Christianity..

Shep. There is this difference, sir, between your reason and mine, that yours is self-taught and infallible, whereas mine is forced to seek for her materials from other faculties of the mind, to take some pains in acquiring the art and habit of reasoning rightly, and, when all is done, is but too apt to err. These defects, which my reason is modest enough to confess in herself, she also perceives in all other men, not excepting the very Deists. Your reason claims privileges, and pretends to powers, under the present degeneracy of human nature, which mine could never have presumed to ascribe to herself in a state of the highest perfection she is capable of.

Dech. Yet, deficient as reason is, or may be, we have nothing else to examine the truth or falsehood of whatsoever is proposed to us, or to determine this or any other controversy with, but reason; and if that is so defective as you would represent it, all we are doing at present is but groping in the dark, all the researches of mankind after truth are vain and fruitless, and our Maker hath so constituted our nature, that error is unavoidable.

Shep. I insist, again, the nature of man is not as God made it; the human understanding, as it came from the hands of its Creator, was equal to the station or office assigned it; yet, although it is exceedingly debilitated by its fall, it still retains a considerable degree of vigour it is dim-sighted, indeed, but not blind; it is like an eye that cannot distinguish objects clearly without the assistance of glasses. Reason could not have come so weak, nor the passions so strong, from the appointment of infinite wisdom, goodness, and power. You say, reason is set over the lower faculties and propensities of the mind, to regulate the operations of the first, and check the motions of the last. Our appetites and passions bid us enjoy, without confining us to a due distinction of objects, or to safe and

moderate bounds. Our reason often prescribes neither distinction nor bounds, and, when she does, for the most part executes her office so weakly, that her prescriptions are afterward found by herself to have been wrong; and, besides, are little regarded. Did God originally put this internal war, between reason and appetite, into our nature? Did he establish opposition and contradiction in the minds of his rational creatures? Or did he give the government to reason, and yet render her too weak to hold the reins?

Dech. If the mind is at present so unhappily constituted; if, instead of an orderly government, there is nothing but anarchy within us; what then is to be done?

Shep. Reason is to cast her eyes upon some ally, powerful enough to support her against her rebellious subjects; she must call in the fear of God to awe them, and the love of God to attach them to somewhat more worthy and attractive than their present destructive ends and objects: and as for herself, she is to learn from him the true remedy for her own defects, and the right method of preserving her own dignity and power.

Temp. This, I think, gives us the true picture of ourselves, and the true use of religion.

Dech. You say, Mr. Shepherd, that reason is to call on God. Do you not, in this, confess that reason knows there is a God?

Shep. Yes, sir; reason knows there is a God; for he hath often told her so: he hath often revealed himself in person to her, and his works are sufficient to convince those, whom his revelations have been only related to, that those revelations are true.

Temp. I think it is very plain, that neither reason nor sentiment can sufficiently fix the pleasures, whether of conscience, sense, appetite, or passion, to that which is morally good, nor their pains and aversions to that which is morally evil, without better lights, and greater strength, than are to be found in the mere nature of man.

Shep. And if that is the case, we need not, by any other argument, prove the insufficiency of such rewards and punishments as are vague and undetermined; encouraging, indiscriminately, either virtue or vice, to support and enforce any law.

However, although we should even grant, that good actions are always attended with complacency of mind, and evil ones with proportionable remorse; it still remains to inquire, whether this complacency and remorse are, for weight and degree, sufficient by themselves to deter mankind, in their present proneness to vice, from bad actions, and to incite them, under their present indifference to virtue, to good and regular lives. Is there nothing more required to enforce the divine law, on the observance of which such an infinite deal depends, upon the minds of a corrupt and degenerate race of creatures? We may safely answer, I think, that they are wholly insufficient.

Dech. If you had left it to me to answer your question, which, perhaps, you ought to have done, I should have answered it in quite another manner. The moral sense rewards our virtues with very agreeable, and punishes our vices with very painful, reflections. These reflections are farther authorized and heightened by the faculty of reason; but if both seem too feeble sanctions, experience cannot fail to make up what is wanting. A regular and virtuous course of life is always attended not only with inward complacency and peace of mind, but also with health and prosperity; whereas the contrary course produces nothing but remorse, sickness, poverty, untimely death, &c.

Shep. No doubt, when either happens, it is a great encouragement to virtue; and that so it generally falls out, I shall by no means go about to deny ; but when it happens otherwise, when men suffer for virtue, or are enriched and aggrandized for their vices, then the experience of mere temporal events places your rewards and punishments on wrong sides, so that vice must be embraced, and virtue rejected, in obedience to this best sanction of the natural law. Now this is too frequent a case not to need a great and effectual remedy; and would be infinitely more frequent than it is, did not men generally stand in awe of much greater sanctions, to be affixed hereafter, by an unerring judgment, to their good or evil actions. Pray, sir, do you look upon the punishments, annexed to the natural law, to be proportionable to the violations of that law?

Dech. Yes, surely; for a disproportion herein would argue a want of wisdom, power, or justice, in God; who,

having made his law a part of our nature, hath, with the nicest regard to justice, annexed higher horrors, and deeper remorses, to the committal of greater crimes, than to transgressions of a less heinous nature.

Shep. This rule does by no means hold in respect to the generality of mankind; for the old habitual sinner, and most men are so in regard to one vice or other, feels less remorse after the committal of the most enormous crimes, than the raw unpractised sinner does after transgressions of a much more venial nature; so that the punishment annexed to the natural law is far from bearing a just proportion to the violation of it, the punishment growing still less, as the crime, to which it is applied, grows greater.

Dech. But why do you ascribe this to nature, when you yourself say it is the effect of habit?

Shep. Because nature, left to itself, runs almost unavoidably into habits of wickedness; and, as fast as it does, rids itself of its remorses, which ought still to be growing stronger and keener, as habit tempts it to greater enormities. From hence it appears, that some greater punishment, not diminishable by the decay of the moral sense, nor pointed out by the mere light of nature, ought to be expected, in order to prevent our falling into the grossest crimes, or to make examples of us, if we do.

Dech. Perhaps, judging of other men by yourself, you are induced to believe they require stronger sanctions to preserve them virtuous, than are consistent with moral freedom. Man, considered as a moral agent, ought to be free; and therefore the rewards and punishments, annexed to any law prescribed him, ought not to be so great as to take away his freedom. Again, if he be free, he may do wrong; to deter him from which, the rewards of virtue, and the punishments of vice, ought to be present and certain; because, if they are otherwise, he may happen to be little affected by distant and doubtful considerations. Now the rewards and punishments we assign to the law of nature, exactly tally with this rule: they are moderate, and do not compel; they are immediate, and cannot be doubted of, or disbelieved.

Shep. The rewards and punishments of the Christian law are future, and matter of faith, and therefore do not