Dr. T. himself observes, (Key p. 1.) That in about four hundred years after the flood, the generality of mankind were fallen into idolatry. And thus it was every where through the world, excepting among that people that was saved and preserved by a constant series of miracles, through a variety of countries, nations, and climates, great enough,-and through successive changes, revolutions, and ages, numerous enough to be a sufficient trial of what mankind are prone to, if there be any such thing as a sufficient trial.

And

That men should forsake the true God for idols is an evidence of the most astonishing folly and stupidity, by God's own testimony, Jer. ii. 12, 13. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be ye horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord: For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewed out to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. that mankind in general did thus, so soon after the flood, was from the evil propensity of their hearts, and because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge: as is evident by Rom. i. 28. And the Universality of the effect shews that the cause was universal, and not any thing belonging to the particular circumstances of one, or only some nations or ages, but something belonging to that nature which is common to all nations and which remains the same through all ages. And what other cause could this great effect possibly arise from, but a depraved disposition, natural to all mankind? It could not arise from want of a sufficient capacity or means of knowledge. This is in effect confessed on all hands. Dr. TURNBULL (Chris. Phil. p. 21.) says: "The existence of one infinitely powerful, wise, and good mind, the Author, Creator, Upholder, and Governor of all things, is a truth that lies plain and obvious to all that will but think." And (ibid. p. 245 :) "Moral knowledge, which is the most important of all knowledge, may easily be acquired by all men." And again, (ibid. p. 292.) Every man by himself, if he would duly employ his mind in the contemplation of the works of God about him or in the examination of his own frame, might make very great progress in the knowledge of the wisdom and goodness of God. This all men, generally speaking, might do, with very little assistance; for they have all sufficient abilities for thus employing their minds, and have all sufficient time for it." Mr. LOCKE says, (Hum. Und. p. iv. chap. iv. p. 242. edit. 11.) "Our own existence and the sensible parts of the universe, offer the proofs of a Deity so clearly and cogently to our thoughts, that I deem it impossible for a considerate man to withstand them. For I judge it as certain and clear a truth as can any where be delivered, that the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by

the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead." And Dr. T. himself, (in p. 78.) says, "The light given to all ages and nations of the world, is sufficient for the knowledge and practice of their duty." And (p. 111, 112,) citing those words of the apostle, Rom. ii. 14, 15, he says, "This clearly supposes that the Gentiles, who were then in the world, might have done the things contained in the law by nature, or their natural power." And in one of the next sentences he says, "The apostle, in Rom. i. 19, 20, 21, affirms that the Gentiles had light sufficient to have seen God's eternal power and godhead in the works of creation; and that the reason why they did not glorify him as God, was because they became vain in their imaginations, and had darkened their foolish heart; so that they were without excuse. And in his paraphrase on those verses in the 1st of Rom. he speaks of the very heathens that were without a written revelation, as having that clear and evident discovery of God's being and perfections that they are inexcusable in not glorifying him suitably to his excellent nature, and as the author of their being and enjoyments." And (p. 146. S.) he says, "God affords every man sufficient light to know his duty." If all ages and nations of the world have sufficient light for the knowledge of God and their duty to him, then even such nations and ages, in which the most brutish ignorance and barbarity prevailed, had sufficient light, if they had but a disposi tion to improve it; and then much more those of the heathen which were more knowing and polished, and in ages wherein arts and learning had made greatest advances. But even in such nations and ages there was no advance made towards true religion; as Dr. WINDER observes, (Hist. of Knowl. vol. ii. p. 336.) in the following words :-The pagan religion degen erated into greater absurdity the further it proceeded; and it prevailed in all its height of absurdity when the Pagan nations were polished to the height. Though they set out with the talents of reason, and had solid foundations of information to build upon, it in fact proved that with all their strengthened faculties and growing powers of reason, the edifice of religion rose in the most absurd deformities and disproportions, and gradually went on in the most irrational, disproportioned, incongruous systems, of which the most easy dictates of reason would have demonstrated the absurdity. They were contrary to all just calculations in moral mathematics. "He observes, "that their grossest abominations first began in Egypt, where was an ostentation of the greatest progress in learning and science: And they never renounced clearly any of their abominations, or openly returned to the worship of the one true God, the Creator of all things, and to the original, genuine sentiments of the highest and most venerable antiquity. The Pagan

religion continued in this deep state of corruption to the last. The Pagan philosophers, and inquisitive men, made great improvements in many sciences, and even in morality itself; yet the inveterate absurdities of Pagan idolatry remained without remedy. Every temple smoked with incense to the sun and moon, and other inanimate material luminaries, and earthly elements, to Jupiter, Juno, Mars, and Venus, &c. &c. the patrons and examples of almost every vice. Hecatombs bled on the altars of a thousand Gods, as mad superstition inspired. And this was not the disgrace of our ignorant untaught northern countries only; but even at Athens itself the infamy reigned, and circulated through all Greece, and finally prevailed, amidst all their learning and politeness, under the Ptolemys in Egypt, and the Caesars at Rome. Now if the knowledge of the pagan world in religion proceeded no further than this; if they retained all their deities, even the most absurd of them all their deified beasts, and deified men, even to the last breath of pagan power: We may justly ascribe the great improvements in the world on the subject of religion to divine revelation, either vouchsafed in the beginning when this knowledge was competently clear and copious; or at the death of paganism, when this light shone forth in its consummate lustre at the coming of Christ."

Dr. T. often speaks of the idolatry of the heathen world as great wickedness, in which they were wholly inexcusable; and yet often speaks of their case as remediless, and of them as being dead in sin and unable to recover themselves. If so, and yet according to his own doctrine, every age, every nation, and every man, had sufficient light afforded to know God and their whole duty to him; then their inability to deliver themselves must be a moral inability, consisting in a desperate depravity and most evil disposition of heart.

And if there had not been sufficient trial of the propensity of the hearts of mankind, through all those ages that passed from Abraham to Christ, the trial has been continued down to this day in all those vast regions of the face of the earth that have remained without any effects of the light of the gospel; and the dismal effect continues every where unvaried. How was it with that multitude of nations inhabiting South and North America? What appearance was there when the Europeans first came hither, of their being recovered, or recovering, in any degree, from the grossest ignorance, delusion, and most stupid paganism? And how is it at this day in those parts of Africa and Asia into which the light of the gospel has not penetrated?

This strong and universally prevalent disposition of mankind to idolatry, of which there has been such great trial and

so notorious and vast proof, in fact, is a most glaring evidence of the exceeding depravity of the human nature; as it is a propensity in the utmost degree contrary to the highest end, the main business, and chief happiness of mankind-consisting in the knowledge, service, and enjoyment of the living God, the Creator and Governor of the world-in the highest degree contrary to that for which mainly God gave mankind more understanding than the beasts of the earth, and made them wiser than the fowls of heaven; which was, that they might be capable of the knowledge of God. It is also in the highest degree contrary to the first and greatest commandment of the moral law, That we should have no other Gods before JEHOVAH, and that we should love and adore him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The scriptures are abundant in representing the idolatry of the heathen world as their exceeding wickedness and their most brutish stupidity. They who worship and trust in idols are said themselves to be like the lifeless statues they worship, like mere senseless stocks and stones.(Psalm cxv. 4-8. and cxxxv. 15-18.)

A second instance of the natural stupidity of mankind is that great disregard of their own eternal interest, which appears so remarkably, so generally among them who live under the gospel.

Mr. LOCKE observes, (Hum. Und. vol. i. p. 207.) "Were the will determined by the views of good, as it appears in contemplation greater or less to the understanding, it could never get loose from the infinite eternal joys of heaven, once proposed and considered as possible; the eternal condition of a future state infinitely outweighing the expectation of riches or honour, or any other worldly pleasure which we can propose to ourselves; though we should grant these the more probable to be obtained." Again, (p. 228, 229.) "He that will not be so far a rational creature as to reflect seriously upon infinite happiness and misery, must needs condemn himself, as not making that use of his understanding he should. The rewards and punishments of another life, which the Almighty has established as the enforcements of his laws, are of weight enough to determine the choice against whatsoever pleasure or pain this life can shew. When the eternal state is considered but in its bare possibility, which nobody can make any doubt of, he that will allow exquisite and endless happiness to be but the possible consequence of a good life here, and the contrary state the possible reward of a bad one, must own himself to judge very much amiss, if he does not conclude that a virtuous life with the certain expectation of everlasting bliss, which may come, is to be preferred to a vicious one, with the fear of that dreadful state of misery which it is very possible may overtake the guilty, or at least the terrible uncertain hope

of annihilation. This is evidently so; though the virtuous life here had nothing but pain, and the vicious continual pleasure; which yet is for the most part quite otherwise, and wicked men have not much the odds to brag of, even in their present possession: Nay, all things rightly considered, have I think even the worst part here. But when infinite happiness is put in one scale against infinite misery in the other; if the worst that comes to the pious man, if he mistakes, be the best that the wicked man can attain to, if he be in the right; who can, without madness, run the venture? Who in his wits would choose to come within a possibility of infinite misery? which if he miss, there is yet nothing to be got by that hazard: Whereas, on the other side, the sober man ventures nothing, against infinite happiness to be got, if his expectation comes to pass."

That disposition of mind which is a propensity to act contrary to reason, is a depraved disposition. It is not because the faculty of reason which God has given to mankind is not sufficient fully to discover to them, that forty, sixty, or an hundred years, is as nothing in comparison of eternity-infinitely less than a second of time to an hundred years-that the greatest worldly prosperity is not treated with the most perfect disregard, in all cases where there is any degree of competition of earthly things, with salvation from exquisite, eternal misery, and the enjoyment of everlasting glory and felicity. But is it a matter of controversy, whether men in general shew a strong disposition to act far otherwise, from their infancy till death sensibly approaches? In things that concern their temporal interest, they easily discern the difference between things of a long and short continuance. It is no hard matter to convince men of the difference between being admitted to the accommodations and entertainments of a convenient, beautiful, wellfurnished habitation, and to partake of the provisions and produce of a plentiful estate for a day, or a night; and having all given them and settled upon them as their own, to possess as long as they live, and to be theirs and their heirs for ever. There would be no need of preaching sermons, and spending strength and life to convince them of the difference. Men know how to adjust things in their dealings and contracts one with another, according to the length of time in which any thing agreed for is to be used or enjoyed. In temporal affairs, they are sensible that it concerns them to provide for future time as well as for the present. Thus common prudence teaches them to take care in summer to lay up for winter; yea, to provide a fund, or an estate, whence they may be supplied for a long time to come. And not only so, but they are forward to spend and be spent, in order to provide for their children after they are dead; though it be quite uncertain, who shall