or function, to take care they are not implicitly led into unhappy and fatal mistakes. We of this company have been blessed with happy means of information, and are obliged, under all the ties of religion and humanity, to improve those opportunities to the best advantage, that we may from thence derive, among our ignorant neighbours and acquaintances, the wholesome seeds of profitable knowledge. The vulgar are accountable to God for no more than they have means of knowing. We are accountable in the same manner for our means; and as we can easily gather more knowledge, than is necessary for our own purposes, we are not to imagine, that our whole lives are to be spent in reading and inquiring; but that, as the wealthy are stewards for the poor, so we should be treasurers for the ignorant. We owe a great deal this way to the world; and it would be injustice and cruelty to withhold it. It would be still infinitely worse, it would be a thing shocking to nature, and monstrous in the sight of God, should we, in obedience to our lusts, or the love of the world, suck in pernicious principles, and then take a pleasure in sowing them among our illiterate acquaintances, who may want knowledge sufficient to defend themselves against them.

Cunn. I think it does almost as great dishonour to Christianity to suppose its evidence, in any measure, unapparent to the vulgar, as to suppose it unconvincing to the learned and judicious.

Shep. Some part of the evidence for Christianity may be unknown to the illiterate, without detriment of the reasonableness of their faith, if the evidence they may have is sufficient. But I own it is necessary they should be instructed in the principles of Christianity by others more knowing than themselves; and so they are liable to error through wrong instructions, and to corruption by bad examples. The ignorant are therefore compared, in Scripture, to flocks of sheep, weak, simple, liable to be misled and injured; and those who are set over them, to shepherds, who are to feed them with wholesome knowledge, to guide them in safe ways, to be extremely tender of them, and, at last, to account to their great owner for their care of his precious charge, for whose sakes chiefly they were made great either in knowledge or power. I, as a clergyman, often tremble,

when I consider what I am to answer for; when I reflect, how many souls depend on me, in some measure, for religious knowledge; and you, gentlemen, who are placed over so many people, ought to be well aware, that they will judge of your principles by your actions, and by your discourses, perhaps when you are most light and careless; that they will be apt to give into your supposed principles, and imitate all they see you do. It is the office of the poorer and lower class of mankind to supply the whole world with the necessaries of life. It cannot be expected of such people, that they should know much of any thing but the one they are employed about, which takes up all their time. Labour exhausts their spirits, stiffens their nerves, and makes them stupid. Reading and disputing therefore, and such like means of knowledge, they are strangers to; and would know little or nothing of religion, were it not, that they are called off their labour, once a week, to be instructed in it by God's word, and his ministers. Persons educated and instructed, both lay and clerical, are set as lights and guides to the ignorant; and are therefore called in Homer, as well as in the Scriptures, the shepherds of the people.' The working man is as feet to all the upper classes of mankind. He is next the ground, and supports the whole. Those who stand highest in the world, and can see farthest before them, should do the office of heads and eyes of those, who bear them up, and lift them so high; and if they should lead them, or even suffer them to stray among pits and precipices, they themselves must get a fall for their ingratitude and cruelty; because, if the people, for want of necessary cultivation, grow barbarous and wicked, they will soon too grow averse to honest labour, to agriculture and arts, and betake themselves to rebellion and rapine.

Dech. You observe very justly, concerning the common people, that they have neither leisure nor ability to read and dispute; and from thence I think it is plain, that they can have nothing to say to a learned religion.

Shep. And pray, how much better, when they are left to themselves, do they understand what you call natural religion? Is it possible for the wildest imagination, even though you suppose it possessed and ridden by a demon, to contrive a more monstrous, a more absurd, or wicked set of notions,

than have been received for true religion in all the ages and nations of the earth, that have not had the benefit of revelation? How could unassisted reason, so magnified by libertines, contrive such hideous schemes of superstition; or, if they had been contrived by priestcraft or power, how could reason have either swallowed them itself, and argued for them, or permitted them to take a full possession of the politest nations in the world? The most ignorant Christian knows more of God, of true religion, and of moral obligations, than the most knowing Pagan that ever lived. A modern philosopher would turn a downright adorer of Plato or Cicero, should he find such a lecture in either of them concerning the unity, the omnipresence, the omniscience, the justice, mercy, and power of God, concerning the creation of the world, the degeneracy and corruption of human nature, and the means of its recovery, as a poor tradesman or farmer delivers to his children on a Sunday evening.

Dech. What such persons prate to their children about those matters, I know not; nor do I believe they borrow their ideas of God and morality from mere tradition or learning. God, indeed, hath not left them trusting to it, but implanted in their own breasts a natural and obvious religion. But as we have already discoursed more opportunely on this topic, under the first and second heads of our creed, I shall say nothing more about it now. And here I think it proper to tell you, in answer to your long harangue about the duty of instructing the people, that the Deists, with a noble and disinterested compassion, are labouring hard to rescue the people from false teachers and superstition, to deliver them from expensive and oppressive errors, that, when their minds are cleared of rubbish, the great instructor within may have free and open ground to build and plant in. But I must observe to you, that as your religion took possession of the ignorant and stupid first, and then preposterously, and directly against the process you have been so pathetically recommending, sent those ignorants to instruct their betters, ours, which begins with the great, the polite, and knowing, I hope in a little time will reach the people.

But you talked, a while ago, concerning the inward marks of truth, by which the ignorant might distinguish the religion of the Bible from false religions; and I might here put

you in mind, that this argument of yours betrays your whole cause. How can those, who have not already a right idea of God, judge whether any religion proposed to them is worthy of God, and fit to come from him? If the people have from nature and reason a right notion of God, they need no other religion; and if they have not, they can be no judges of the fitness or truth of any religion revealed to them. This is a dilemma, which I defy the ingenuity of the greatest religious artist upon earth to extricate himself from; and the difficulty upon you in this respect will be greater than upon another, who never made the vulgar a judge of the internal marks of truth or falsehood in any religion.

Shep. Now I think there will be no difficulty at all in the business. Pray, sir, may not God reveal himself to a person who had no idea of him before?

Dech. I believe he may.

Shep. And may he not by that revelation communicate a right idea of himself to the aforesaid person ?

Dech. He may.

Shep. And, when he hath done this, may he not very naturally and easily proceed to reveal his will in all necessary points, so plainly and fully, that the person mentioned can have no doubt, either that the revelation comes from God, or that it is worthy of him?

Temp. I think this is very easily conceived, and wholly removes the difficulty.

Shep. If a person who hath good eyes, but hath hitherto been kept in the dark, were suddenly removed into the open daylight, would he not see very well about him as soon as the first dazzle was over?

Dech. Yes, surely.

Shep. Pray, Mr. Dechaine, do you understand geometry?
Dech. A little.

Shep. Did you understand it before you learned it?
Dech. That is a very sensible question.

Shep. Did you understand the principles of it before your master began to instruct you?

Dech. No, sir.

Shep. I do not see, then, how it was possible for him, upon your way of thinking, to reveal this science to you.

Dech. Why, sir, he taught me the definitions and prin

ciples first; then he laid the problems before me, and afterward shewed me how to work out the solutions; but it was my own natural talents, all the while, that enabled me to apprehend both the principles and the deductions.

Shep. In like manner the natural talents of man can apprehend a right notion of God, when revealed to him; and, although he was ignorant of that notion before, can tell him it is rational and right. Now, a rational creature, having thus received a right notion of God, may afterward judge very well, whether any religion, pretending to come from God, is in itself reasonable, and worthy of God. As to any revelation which a man receives immediately from God, the person so favoured, if he is fully satisfied the revelation comes from God, hath no room afterward to doubt of its fitness or worthiness.

Temp. Nothing can be more natural or manifest than this short process. It is easy and obvious.

Shep. Yes; for it is that by which all men are taught religion: and were not reason imperfect or corrupted, or biassed by prejudices, no man could be taught a false religion.

Dech. Right reason, then, at least, is to judge, whether any revelation, proposed to us at second or third hand, is worthy of God for its author.

Shep. It is.

Dech. And we are to admit of no revelation, unless God immediately proposes it to us, till we have examined it by reason, and found it rational and fit.

Shep. So I think.

Dech. Shall we then try the Christian religion by this touchstone, and see whether it does not contain such marks of unfitness as ought to determine a rational man to reject it? Shep. With all my heart.

Dech. There are, I think, two sorts of fitness that ought to be found in the true religion; the first in respect to its author, and the second in respect to its end.

Shep. You clearly conceive the matter.

Dech. Remember this, that when we meet to-morrow, we may resume it as a maxim, and save ourselves the trouble of repeating any part of what hath been said, in order to arrive at it.

Shep. I will.