and, upon your own principles, the possibility of the fact. We insist on and argue from nature, as far as she lends us any assistance; and if her light were so universally clear and strong, as you represent it, no endeavours of ours could ever extinguish it, and those least of all, that fall in with it, and inculcate a system of principles most agreeable to nature. If the light of nature cannot be extinguished, why, in the name of wonder, am I to be taught that, which the teacher tells me I know already? The teachers of Christianity act a more consistent part; for, as to that religion, they acknowledge it absolutely necessary somebody should teach it, in order to our knowing any thing of it. It is also necessary there should be some people to administer its sacraments to us; for we have no right to take the gifts of God in any way, but that by which he hath thought proper to hand them to us. Now he did not think fit to do this by a ministry of angels; but chose, for reasons which he was not obliged to assign us, to give us men like ourselves for ministers; who, although they may err like other men, have it not in their power to change the nature, or lessen the authority, or render of no effect the ordinances, of our religion. The knowledge of some religion being absolutely necessary to us, and there being no religion which teaches itself, we ought to have instructors, set apart from other employments, to take care of us in a matter of so great concern. Were there no set of men, whose peculiar business and duty it is to study, to transcribe, to translate the Scriptures, and often to call us from our worldly affairs to hear the word and will of God, that word would, in a little time, become useless and unknown; and religion, running in the foul channel of oral tradition only, would undergo great alterations and corruptions from the inventions of men, which you affect to dignify with the title of the natural light. The teachers of our religion have this great advantage over those of yours, that they can prove, or can say at least, that they are sent and impowered by God to teach; whereas yours cannot even say they are either sent or authorized by him, since they maintain, the principles they teach are universally known already, and taught by nature herself.

Dech. ENOUGH, I think, hath been said to support the last article of our creed, by which we anathematize all revelations. I have allowed you a full scope to declaim; for your right to a livelihood was at stake. But your laboured apology, which, I perceive, hath had an unaccountable effect on Mr. Templeton, was far enough from making any impression on me, and perhaps as far from satisfying yourself. Every objection I have made to your religion, was sufficient to shake its very foundations, although no other had been urged; but all united, and built on the arguments for the light of nature, which prove a revelation needless, they amount to a demonstration subversive of revealed religion. This, Shepherd, you are, I verily believe, as sensible of, as I am; but you will not own it, for reasons already intimated.

Shep. I do confess, sir, a pound of feathers is as heavy as a pound of lead. But you must excuse me, if I tell you, that I dare not take your feathers off your hands, at the weight you say they amount to in your demonstrationscales. If no single objection is sufficient to make me renounce my religion, the union of ten thousand such will not impart a demonstrative force to any one of them; and therefore, all put together, they will not be able to convince me, or any other reasonable man. You may make a French triumph after every battle, go it as it will; and I, for my part, who did not dispute for victory, will sing no Te Deums. But there is one thing worth telling you, which I believe you had no notion of.

Dech. Well now, what is that?

Shep. You have been, during all our conferences, disputing most strenuously for the Christian religion.

Dech. How say you! for Christianity! Have I been all along disputing for Christianity, Templetou?

you

Temp. I thought not.

Shep. You have offered a noble proof in its favour; and Mr. Cunningham, will, I am sure, take it as a compliment from me, if I say you have helped your friend to make this proof a little stronger than otherwise it would have been. The immediate followers of our blessed Saviour saw numberless miracles wrought in confirmation of their faith,

from whence they derived this advantage, that they trusted to their own eyes, and not to the report of others. But to make us, who depend chiefly on the most authentic reports, some amends, other proofs for the truth of our religion are afforded us, which the first Christians had the benefit of only in part, and which bring our faith up almost to an equal certainty with theirs. Our Saviour foretold the bloody persecutions which his disciples were to undergo in aftertimes; and he likewise prophesied of the prodigious progress his gospel was to make among mankind. No mere strength of conjecture could have enabled him to foresee these strange and improbable events; and those who did not long outstay him in the world, could receive no full proof in favour of his mission, from the completion of these prophecies, which were not entirely fulfilled till several ages after their deaths. But they, as well as that concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, have since been verified by events, which they fit as exactly, as if they had been wrote immediately after those events. This sort of proof adds prodigiously to the grounds of our faith; and, while there are so many Christians in the world, we, by means of the prophecy concerning the progress of the gospel, afford one another every day a demonstration of its truth.

Dech. I cannot see how this proves I have been all day arguing for Christianity.

Shep. I shall not long keep your curiosity upon the stretch. Christ foretold, that the Jews should suffer great tribulation, such as never happened from the beginning of the world to that time; that they should be led captives into all nations; and that their city should be trodden down of the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled.' St. Paul, pursuing the same prophecy, says, 'Blindness hath in part happened to the Jews, till the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in, and then all Israel shall be saved;' intimating, that the dispersion and obstinate infidelity of the Jews, were great promoters of the conversion and faith of other nations. This prophecy hath been verified by a fact, visible to all the world, in every age since it was uttered. Jerusalem was trodden down; the Jews have been led captives into all nations; blindness in part hath happened to them, for they have always retained the worship of

the true God, but have rejected Christianity; their casting away hath proved the reconciling of the world, and their diminishing, the riches of the Gentiles;' for to this day they every where verify this prophecy, than which nothing can speak more strongly for the truth of our religion, not even excepting the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning our Saviour, which those very Jews, averse as they are to Christianity, preserve genuine, and explain or translate over the whole world to all, who have any curiosity to hear what their sacred books contain.

Dech. How well he proves me a strenuous defender of Christianity!

Shep. This prophecy concerning the Jews hath so great analogy to that in which St. Paul and St. Peter speak of you, that I could not help introducing the one by the other. Dech. Of me!

Shep. Yes, sir, of you, and all our other libertines. Our Saviour foretold, that false prophets,' which signify the same as false teachers,' should arise;' and St. Paul prophesied, that the time should come, when men would not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts heap up to themselves teachers, having itching ears.' St. Peter gives a prophetical character of the teachers, who, by their novel and seducing doctrines, were to rub the uneasy itching ears of the aforesaid hearers. There shall be false teachers among you, says he, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them; and many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of; they through covetousness shall with feigned words make merchandise of you. Presumptuous are they, self-willed; they speak of the things they understand not, beguiling unstable souls, who have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor. They are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest, who, when they speak great swelling words of vanity, allure through the lusts of the flesh.' To finish this prophetic picture, and give it the last heightening touch, after which it cannot fail to strike, he says, 'There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts.' This prophecy hath this day been literally fulfilled. The time is come,

' when men cannot endure sound doctrine,' but run from teacher to teacher, till they can light upon some one, who will entertain them with new notions and doctrines, pleasing to their lusts; some one, who can assuage their just apprehensions of a future reckoning, and give them a sort of licence from God to live as their nature dictates, that is, as they please. People, who know so well what they would be taught, can easily, in an age and country so luxuriant in novelties and refinements, accommodate themselves with teachers, who privily steal into their minds those 'damnable heresies,' which both the teacher, and the taught, are ashamed openly to own; who teach them to deny the Lord that bought them;' who proselyte them to the 'broad way,' and fill their mouths with bitter scurrilities against the way of truth;' who impose upon them with double expressions, and feigned words, till they have insinuated the first principles, from whence their doctrines, which would have shocked, had they been proposed all at once and openly, are by degrees to be slily deduced, and the whole mystery of iniquity unfolded, leaf by leaf, as their poor deluded disciples can conquer the misgivings of their consciences. Never were teachers more exactly characterized. Presumptuous are they, self-willed.' Here the conceited self-sufficient doctrine, that sends us to ourselves for our laws, that would have us think our understandings well enough enlightened, without any instruction, and turns us loose to the dictates of our own wills, is strongly and plainly pointed at. The peculiar turn of our libertines in railing and gibing, instead of arguing, on points which they will not be at the trouble of considering, is closely and literally expressed, by speaking evil of things they understand not.' Their getting in with young raw gentlemen, who are yet unfixed in principles, and prone to loose pleasures, is as properly set before our eyes, as words can do it, by the expression, 'beguiling unstable souls.' Their being compared to Balaam, who spoke in the name of God, but had his thoughts intent on gain, carries a very strong allusion in it to a set of men, who, for mere worldy profits and pleasures, to rid themselves of religious restraints and tithes, turn the light of that knowledge they have received from revelation against it, and fight it with its own weapons. They are each of them, if we believe themselves,