d; and such as my own charity has caused
me to commit, that of others may more easily excuse. Being naturally
inclined to scepticism in philosophy, I have no reason to impose my
opinions in a subject which is above it; but whatever they are, I submit
them with all reverence to my mother church, accounting them no farther
mine, than as they are authorised, or at least uncondemned by her. And,
indeed, to secure myself on this side, I have used the necessary
precaution of showing this paper, before it was published, to a
judicious and learned friend, a man indefatigably zealous in the service
of the church and state; and whose writings have highly deserved of
both. He was pleased to approve the body of the discourse, and I hope he
is more my friend than to do it out of complaisance: it is true he had
too good a taste to like it all; and amongst some other faults
recommended to my second view, what I have written perhaps too boldly on
St Athanasius, which he advised me wholly to omit. I am sensible enough
that I had done more prudently to have followed his opinion: but then I
could not have satisfied myself that I had done honestly not to have
written what was my own. It has always been my thought, that heathens
who never did, nor without miracle could, hear of the name of Christ,
were yet in a possibility of salvation. Neither will it enter easily
into my belief, that before the coming of our Saviour the whole world,
excepting only the Jewish nation, should lie under the inevitable
necessity of everlasting punishment, for want of that revelation, which
was confined to so small a spot of ground as that of Palestine. Among
the sons of Noah we read of one only who was accursed; and if a blessing
in the ripeness of time was reserved for Japhet (of whose progeny we
are), it seems unaccountable to me, why so many generations of the same
offspring, as preceded our Saviour in the flesh, should be all involved
in one common condemnation, and yet that their posterity should be
entitled to the hopes of salvation: as if a bill of exclusion had passed
only on the fathers, which debarred not the sons from their succession:
or that so many ages had been delivered over to hell, and so many
reserved for heaven; and that the devil had the first choice, and God
the next. Truly I am apt to think, that the revealed religion which was
taught by Noah to all his sons, might continue for some ages in the
whole posterity. That afterwards it was inclu