together with future
Reward and Punishment, by enabling us to make a right estimate
concerning what will most conduce to our happiness, plainly brings
this great encouragement to our Observance of the Law of God, that it
lets us see our happiness, and our Duty, are inseparably united
therein; since whatever pleasure we voluntarily deprive our selves of
in this World from preference of Obedience to God's Commands, it
shall be recompenced to us manifold in the World that is to come: So
that now we can find our selves in no Circumstance, wherein our
Natural Desires of Happiness, or love of Pleasure, can rationally
induce us to depart from the Rule of our Duty.
The little which has been said, do, methinks, sufficiently evince the
need of Revelation both to Teach and inforce Natural Religion: But the
defectiveness of the Light of Nature to this end, is a Verity of so
great use to be establish'd, that the consideration thereof should not
be left upon such short Reflections as these; was not this Truth at
large made out in a late Treatise intitled, _The reasonableness of
Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures_.
A work which the unhappy mistakes and disputes among us concerning the
Christian Religion, makes useful to all Men; and which has been
peculiarly so to many, as the only Book wherein they have found the
insufficiency of Natural Light to Natural Religion, has been fully
shewed, although that to reconcile Men to, or establish them in the
belief of Divine Revelation, nothing was more requisite to make this
appear, in an Age wherein the prevalency of Deism has been so much and
so justly complain'd of.
But against the insufficiency of Natural Light to the ends of Natural
Religion, the World having been so many Ages without it, is, by some,
thought an Objection: For, if Supernatural Light had been so needful
as is pretended to be, how could it comport, say they, with the Wisdom
of God not to have given it to Men sooner and more universally?
To judge of all the Ends and Designs of the Divine Wisdom in the
Creation or Government of the World, is to suppose that we have a
comprehension of God's Works, adequate or commensurate thereunto;
which is not only to conceive of his Wisdom as not being infinite, but
even to circumscribe it within very narrow bounds. If the Wisdom of
God, (like his other Attributes) does infinitely surpass our reach,
his Views must, for that reason, be necessarily oftentimes, as much
beyond
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