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Revelation: THE NECESSITY OF REVELATION
127. Christian Religion. Necessity of Revelation. I suppose
it will be acknowledged by the deists that the Christian religion is the
most rational and pure religion, that is or ever was established in any
society of men whatsoever, and that they will except only themselves, as
serving God in a manner more according to his will than the Christian
manner. But can any believe that God has so wholly thrown away mankind,
that he has not so ordered it, that there ever yet has been any service
or obedience paid to him in society, but what is odious to him and very
dissonant to his will? That there never yet has been a society of men
that have rightly paid respect to their Creator, the Supreme Being? Yea,
so there have been, if any, not above twenty or thirty from the
beginning of the world that ever gave the true sort of service to God?
For I believe it will not be pretended that there were ever more than
that number of deists in the world that have lived pure and moral lives,
according to the dictates of religion.
It
is easily proved that the highest end and happiness of man is to view
God’s excellency, to love him, and receive expressions of his love.
Therefore, his greatest business is to meditate and use means to
understand God’s glory and express suitably his love to God. This love,
including all those other affections which depend upon, and are
necessarily connected with it, we express in worship. The highest end of
society among men, therefore, must be to assist and join with each other
in this employment. But how comes it to pass, that this end of society
was never yet obtained among deists? Where was ever any social worship
statedly performed by deists. And if there should be a society of deists
that were disposed socially to express their love to God and honor him,
which was would they go about to do it. They have nothing from God to
direct them. Doubtless there would be innumerable jangles and perpetual
dissentions about it, unless they were disposed to fall in with the
Christian model. We may be convinced, therefore, that revelation is
necessary to right social worship.
128. Christian Religion. The Uniqueness of the Christian
Religion. There never was any religion but that which we profess,
and those formed from it, that pretended to inform us of the nature of
God, told us that there is but one God, gave an account of God’s works
(how the world came into being), and how God governs it. [No other
religion] discovered God’s great designs, what is his will and how he
should be served. Or declared the reward of obedience and punishment of
disobedience, the nature of man’s happiness, and the end for which he
was made. [What other religion] gave us good moral rules, told us what
will become of the world hereafter, explained how we came to be sinful
and miserable, and how we may escape sin and misery and be redeemed? Or
gave an account of the great revolutions of the world, the successions
of God’s works in the universe, and where his true worshippers have been
and what has befallen them? Or informed us how the world came to
apostatize from the true worship of God. Christianity is the only
religion that ever pretended that there should a time come when it
should be the religion of the world in general.
129. Christian Religion. Concerning the Messiah and Judaism.
The Jewish religion, as at present professed, most certainly differs
from what reason evidently declares to be the essence of religion. It
does not state aright the highest end and happiness of man, his chief
business and greatest misery, and the true worship of God. Undoubtedly
the Messiah was to come to advance the best interest and true happiness
of mankind, which certainly consist in what the gospel declares our
Jesus advanced, and not in what the Jews expect the Messiah will do. The
Messiah undoubtedly was to be our king, in our highest and most
important concerns. He was to be our deliverer from our greatest evils
and enemies, which all must confess to be such concerns as the gospel
says Christ was exercised in. It is also certain that if this is the
chief business of the Messiah, he cannot effect it by an external,
earthly government. The saving of us from sin, the making of us holy and
spiritually happy, and bringing of us into favor with God, is not to be
advanced by such means. I will say further that it is evident it could
be done no otherwise than by satisfying God and interceding with him, by
giving precepts, promises, and threatenings, by immediately changing the
heart, and by restoring and conquering the invisible spirits that are
hurtful to our spirits.
Not
only may revelation be argued from the necessity we have of it, by
reason of the darkness we have contracted by the fall, but seeing that
man is created for that end for which he certainly was created, it would
be a strange thing that there should be no mutual communication between
him and his God.
132. Christian Religion. Necessity of Revelation. I am
convinced of the necessity of a revelation by considering how negligent,
dull, and careless about a future happiness, I should be, if I was left
to discover that happiness by unassisted reason: especially if there
were no revelation at all about what is pleasing to God, how he accepts
our services, after what manner he loves his servants, [and] how he will
pardon sin, etc.
977. Necessity of Revelation. The ancient heathens seem
universally to have had the opinion, either by the light of nature or
from tradition from the first fathers of mankind, that the gods did
reveal themselves to mankind and that there was a necessity for such a
revelation. To this purpose are those words of Cicero, de divinations,
p. 206, “Deliberation, says Socrates, is proper for us, but concerning
things which are obscure and uncertain, we ought to consult Apollo, whom
the Athenians consult publicly, concerning matters of great importance.”
And in another place, Cicero says thus: “ There is an ancient opinion
drawn even from the heroical times that there is among men a certain
divination which the Greeks call prophecy (or inspiration), that is
[prediction] and knowledge of future things.” Barrow’s Works,
vol. ii, p. 99…. The insufficiency of the light of nature cannot be
better described than in the words of Cicero: “If we had come into the
world,” says he, “in such circumstances as that we could clearly and
distinctly have discerned nature herself and have been able in the
course of our lives to have followed her true and uncorrupted
directions, this alone might have been sufficient, and there would have
been little need of teaching and instruction. But now nature has given
us only some small sparks of right reason, which we do so quickly
extinguish with corrupt opinions and evil practices, that the true light
of nature nowhere appears. As soon as we are brought into the world,
immediately we dwell in the midst of all wickedness and are surrounded
with a number of most perverse and foolish opinions, so that we seem to
such in error with our nurse’s milk. Afterwards, when we return to our
parents, we are committed to tutors. Then we are further stocked with
such variety of errors that truth becomes perfectly overwhelmed with
falsehood, and the most natural sentiments of our minds are entirely
stifled with confirmed follies. But when after all this we enter upon
the business of the world and make the multitude conspiring everywhere
in wickedness, our great guide and example, then our very nature itself,
is wholly transformed, as it were, into corrupt opinions.” A livelier
description of the present corrupt state of human nature is not easily
to be met with. Clarke’s Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion,
p. 125.
The
wisest of the heathens were never backward to confess their ignorance
and great blindness (in moral and divine things), and that truth was hid
from them, as it were, in an unfathomable depth. Nay, that even those
things which of themselves were of all others the most manifest (that is
whenever made known would appear obvious and evident), their natural
understanding was, of itself, as unqualified to find out and apprehend
as the eyes of bats to behold the light of the sun, as Aristotle owns.
1229. Necessity of Revelation. As we see that in this world
the greatest prosperity does not always attend virtue, nor the greatest
adversity always attend vice, but that it very often happens
contrariwise. So the inward perturbation and remorse which arises from
vice and the pleasures of reflection and self-approbation are by no
means of themselves proper and sufficient sanctions of the law of
nature. “Punishment annexed to this law ought to be proportionable to
the violations of the law. Remorse of conscience is not always in
proportion to the heinousness of crimes. For an old habitual sinner
feels less remorse after the committal of the most enormous crimes than
the raw, unpracticed sinner does after transgressions of a much more
venial nature. So that the punishment grows less as the crime to which
it is applied grows greater. Nature, left to itself, runs almost
unavoidably into habits of wickedness, and as fast as it does so, it
rids itself of its remorses, which ought still to be growing stronger
and keener as habit tempts it to greater enormities. From hence it
appears that some greater punishment, not diminishable by the decay of
the moral sense, ought to be expected in order to prevent our falling
into the grossest crimes or to make examples of us if we do.” Deism
Revealed, vol. i, p. 124.
“The happiness of particular nations and earthly societies bears a most
minute proportion to that of God’s universal kingdom, and yet it is
confessed that the peace and pleasure which naturally attend the
practice of virtue and the remorse which attend vice, are not sanctions
of the law of nature sufficient for the defense and preservation of
earthly societies and kingdoms. But human laws, enforced with the
sanctions of civil punishments, must be added. If the laws of nature
were sufficiently clear (as the deists say they are), those of society
need never, in cases purely moral, tell us our duty. And if they were
sufficiently enforced, society would have no occasion to institute other
enforcements of much greater cogency in order to their being observed.
Nay, if the law of nature were, in several respects of clearness,
authority and obligation, perfect and sufficient, society itself would
be altogether needless. Men would observe justice and practice
beneficence towards one another without adventitious obligations. A
lover of liberty would not care to enter into society to become subject
to magistrates, to support expensive contributions, to tie himself up to
burdensome forms, and stoop to the will of others, if he found he could
live independent and converse and traffic safely with mankind in a state
of nature. The arguments drawn from the supposed sufficiency of reason
and nature, to invalidate the NECESSITY
OF REVELATION, prove with the same force, be it more or less,
that society is unnecessary. If the laws of nature be able to effect
their own end and that end is moral instruction and obligation, then
indeed there can be no sort of occasion for other laws, neither divine
or human. However, it will be worthwhile to consider whether the evil
dispositions and vices of men do not force them into society, and again,
whether civil society, considered in itself, is at all able to remedy
the evils they seek to shelter themselves from. If a law should come
forth, although from a known authority and conceived in the plainest
terms, forbidding murder under the penalty of all that severity which
men are by nature disposed to exercise upon themselves after doing such
an action, and [then] enjoining beneficence by a promise of all those
rewards which men, after doing good offices, are enabled by nature to
confer on themselves, it would be looked upon as a burlesque upon laws.”
Deism Revealed, vol. i, p. 128-129.
1230. Necessity of Revelation. “It is very clear that natural
religion has a necessary dependence on revelation and on that part of
Christianity which may be called supernatural. For natural religion, in
any sense, is but a name without a well-grounded hope of immortality,
which no man ever had or, for aught we can tell, ever could have, if
some superior being had not revealed it to him.
That man who does not believe in his own immortality, can never conceive
himself to be anything else than a better kind of brute, concerned only
in present and sensible things, given up to appetite and passion, and
after a few years existence in vanity and vexation, perishing forever in
the dreadful gulf of annihilation. Yet to believe in the immortality of
the soul and to be convinced we shall account hereafter for our actions
to Almighty God by any law, is to all men (for all have sinned), a most
shocking article of faith if an atonement for sin is not also to be
believed in. Because it affords us no other prospect but that of a
judgment wherein as we must plead guilty and stand self-convicted, so
there is nothing to prevent our being condemned by Almighty God to a
punishment of which we know not the limits, either in point of severity
or duration. Now the doctrine of an atonement carries us directly to
that of Christ’s incarnation and a personal distinction in God. So that
the mere light of nature, in our present circumstances, can afford us
either no religion, or such a one as can serve no other purpose but that
of driving a rational and thinking mind to despair.” Deism Revealed,
vol. i, p. 172-173, edit. 2.
God
must be considered not only as merciful but as just also and capable of
inflicting punishments as well as dispensing rewards. If the subjects
know they are forgiven, the penalties of the law are of no effect. Mercy
shown publicly to all can hardly fail of encouraging all to transgress,
should they be tempted to it.
And
if there are any degrees of wickedness so great that the light of nature
gives us no ground to expect pardon, how shall we know what those
degrees are? Does the light of nature plainly point out the limits?
God
is supreme monarch of the whole universe. It belongs to him to see
justice done, to render to every man according to his deeds, in order to
support the dignity of his laws on which the happiness of all the free
and intelligent creation depends, and which if anyone might transgress
with impunity on merely repenting, I cannot see how his kingdom can be
preserved. Everyone will repent sometime or another if he thinks he is
to be pardoned and thereby exempt from intolerable punishments, by which
means it will come to pass that no one shall suffer. So the penal laws
of God will be in vain, although the world shall be filled with
wickedness, and by no temptation so much as by this very expectation of
impunity on repentance, deferred as long as the delinquent pleases.
Let
us know whether the law of nature promises pardon for sin, whether for
all sins or only for some, and if only some, what those sins are, and
whether absolutely or on certain condition, and if the latter, what
those conditions are. These are points well worth inquiring after.
Besides, God’s assistance is necessary to true repentance. Before a
sinner can begin to be the object of God’s favor, he must cease to be
what he was before and commence a new man. None but the Creator can make
a new man or a new creature. There is a degree of strength necessary to
a true repentance such as no man is master of. Deism Revealed,
vol. i, pp. 239-244.
Mere repentance can make no satisfaction to justice for injuries and
offenses past. It can only put a man in the way of his duty for time to
come, which he owes to God and which therefore can clear no scores with
him. As to the reformation of a transgressor, together with his
disposition to lead a new life for the time to come, it may be rendered
very precarious by the supposed easiness of obtaining pardon. Man is
frail, and in hopes of being pardoned again, he may again transgress
unless his reason tells him he cannot be forgiven a second or third
offense.
Although he who murders a man repents and for the time to come carefully
avoids the least approach to such action again, yet in his latter
behavior, he only does what it was always his duty to do and no more,
but makes no atonement to his poor neighbor, whom he has deprived of
life, nor to the community from which he has cut away a member, nor to
God whose creature and image he has defaced. The deists can never show,
on their principles, that the murderer or any other criminal can make
the least atonement or reparation for either the offenses he commits
against God or the wrongs he does to man in cases where restitution is
out of the question. They say the observation of the natural law alone
can render men acceptable in the sight of God and propose it as the only
rule by which they are to act and consequently be judged. It is by this
that according to the deistical hypothesis, all men must stand issue
before Almighty God and be acquitted for the observation, or condemned
for the transgression, of it. Now I appeal to experience and to the
heart and conscience of every man, whether he does not live in the daily
transgression, be it higher or lower instances, of those laws which he
believes God requires the observation of at his hands, and whether after
the most sincere repentance and the most thorough reformation he can
make of his life and conduct, he finds not enough of evil dispositions
and lapses to lament in himself and put him in mind that he is one of
those debtors, who having nothing to pay in towards former accounts, is
still adding to and increasing debt. Thus I think it appears pretty
plainly that if all men have sufficient means of knowing their duty, as
the deist insist they have, and if every man transgresses the rules of
his duty as his conscience cannot but inform him he does, [then] the
whole race of mankind is lost forever….
1297. The Necessity of Revealed Religion. Mankind need means
of certainty, clearness, and satisfaction in things that concern their
welfare, in proportion to the importance of those things: such as
whether there be a future state of happiness and misery, what that state
is; what the will of God is, what are the things which please him, what
those things which will displease him and make us the objects of his
anger and hatred, whether there be any reconciliation after we have
offended, and how it may be obtained. We see that God takes care of
mankind and all other creatures that usually they may not be without
necessary means, by foresight or something equivalent, for their own
preservation and comfortable existence, and that, in things of
infinitely less importance.
But
it is exceedingly apparent that without a revelation mankind must be
forever in the most awful doubt with respect to those things. And not
only those things — but if they are not led by revelation and direct
teaching into a right way of using their reason, in arguing from effects
to causes, etc., they would forever remain in the most woeful doubt and
uncertainty concerning the nature and the very being of God.
This appears not only by the state of the heathen world, wise and
unwise, learned and unlearned, polite nations and barbarous, ages after
ages before the light of Christianity came abroad in the world, but also
by what appears among those who in these late ages have renounced divine
revelation, even the wisest and greatest of them, and such as are of the
strongest and most acute abilities. By the account which Dr. Leland
gives of the deistical writers of the last and present ages, Hobbes
denied any distinction between soul and body, he denied a future state,
and he held that we are obliged to obey an infidel magistrate in matters
of religion, that thought is free, but when it comes to public
confession of faith, the private reason must submit to the public. He
owned the being of a God, but says we know no more of him but that he
exists, and he held that God is corporeal: that by the law of nature all
men have a right to all things, and over all persons, and that no way is
so reasonable as for any man to anticipate, i.e. by force and
wiles, to master all the persons of others that he can, so long as he
sees no other power great enough to endanger him, and that antecedent to
civil laws, all actions are indifferent, nothing being good or evil in
itself.
Toland was of opinion that there is no other god but the universe,
therein agreeing with Spinoza.
The
Earl of Shaftesbury casts reflections on the doctrine of future rewards
and punishments, as if it were of disservice to the interests of virtue.
The
author of Christianity Not Founded in Argument *45*
represents even natural religion as not founded in argument any more
than revealed, and pretends that all attempts to prove the principles of
natural religion by reason (and even the being of a God), have done more
harm than good, and takes a great deal of pains to destroy all certainty
of reason. He represents it as perpetually fluctuating, and never
capable of coming to any certainty in anything, as though truth and
falsehood were equally to be proved by it. He absolutely declares
against instructing children in religious or moral principles as a
wicked attempt to prepossess their tender minds.
Chubb shows himself no friend to the doctrine of a particular
providence. He plainly intimates that he looks upon God as having
nothing now to do with the good or evil that is done among mankind, and
that men’s state and circumstances in the world are things which
entirely depend on second causes, and in which providence doth not
interpose at all. He endeavors to show that no proof can be brought for
a future state from the present unequal distribution of things. He
discardeth all hope of divine assistance in the practice of that which
is good. He insists that prayer to God is no part of natural religion.
He represents it as absolutely doubtful whether the soul be material or
immaterial, or whether it be distinct from the body; and if it be,
whether it be equally perishable with the body and shall die with it, or
shall subsist after the dissolution of the body. These are points, he
says, which he cannot possibly determine, because he has nothing to
ground such determination upon, and at the same time declares that if
the soul be perishable with the body, there can surely be no place for
argument with regard to a future state of existence to men or a future
retribution. It is easy to see that he inclines most to think the soul
is material. He absolutely discards the proof of a future state from the
present unequal distributions of divine providence.
He
signifies that if there be a future retribution, it is most probable
that only those shall be called to an account who have been greatly
subservient to the public good or hurt of mankind. And as he supposes
but few will be called to an account, so it is only for some particular
actions — and that they will not be called to an account for foolishly
using the names and terms by which the deity is characterized. The only
offense against God is, he thinks, the want of a just sense of his
kindness and the not making a public profession of gratitude to him. And
whether this will make a part of the grand inquest, he declares himself
unable certainly to judge, but he plainly intimates that he thinks it
will not, since among men it has been looked upon to be a mark of
greatness of soul to despise and overlook such ingratitude rather than
to show any resentment at it. The only thing, therefore, for which he
supposes men will be accountable is their injuries and benefits one to
another, and those only when done to the public. He afterwards sets
himself to show that things would be as well ordered in the world
without the expectation of a future judgment as with it, and that the
belief of it is no great advantage to society.
Mr.
Hume declares that the knowledge of the relation of cause and effect is
of the highest importance and necessity, and that all our reasonings
concerning matters of fact and experience, and concerning the existence
of any being, are founded upon it. Yet he sets himself to show that
there is no real connection between cause and effect, and that there can
be no certain nor even probable reasoning from the one to the other. He
endeavors to subvert all proofs of a particular providence, of a future
state, and of an intelligent cause of the universe. He speaks of the
doctrine of the being of a God as uncertain and useless. He opposes the
arguments from God’s distributive justice for a future state, and denies
that we have any evidence of any further degrees of justice in God than
we see exercised in this present state.
Lord Bolingbroke insists that we must not ascribe to God any moral
perfections distinct from his physical, especially holiness, justice,
and goodness; that he has not those attributes according to the ideas we
conceive of them, nor anything equivalent to those qualities as they are
in us, and that to pretend to deduce moral obligations from those
attributes, or to talk of imitating God in his moral attributes, is
enthusiasm and blasphemy; that God made the world and established the
laws of this system at the beginning, but that he doth not now concern
himself in the affairs of men, or if he doth, that his providence only
extends to collective bodies but hath no regard to individuals, to their
action or events that befall them; that the soul is not a distinct
substance from the body; that the whole man is dissolved at death; that
the doctrine of future rewards and punishments is a fiction that hath no
real foundation in nature and reason, and that to pretend to argue for
future retribution from the apprehended unequal distribution of this
present state is absurd and blasphemous; that the sanctions of the law
of nature and reason relate not to men individually, but collectively
considered; that self-love is the only original spring from which our
moral duties and affections flow; that polygamy is founded on the law of
nature; that there is no such thing as natural shame or modesty. He
intimates adultery not to be contrary to the law of nature, if it can be
acted secretly. He seems to think that the law of nature forbids no
incest but that of the highest kind, viz., the conjunction
between fathers and daughters, sons and mothers. He insists that the
ground of the obligation of the law of nature is not in being the work
and appointment of God, but its being conducive to human happiness. He
holds that the laws of nature in general, and the particulars of moral
duty derived from them, are very uncertain, and in which men have always
been very apt to mistake and make wrong conclusions.
These things from Dr. Leland’s view of deistical writers.
I
think a little sober reflection on those things which appear among the
deists, in weighing them together with the nature of things, may
convince us that a general renunciation of divine revelation, after
nations have enjoyed it, would soon bring those nations to be more
absurd, brutish, and monstrous in their notions and practices than the
heathens were before the Gospel came among them.
For: 1. These nations had many things among them derived originally from
revelation, by tradition from their ancestors, the ancient founders of
nations, or from the Jews, which led them to embrace many truths
contained in the Scripture. And they valued such traditions. It was not
in general their humor to despise such an original of doctrines or to
contemn them, supposing they had their first foundation in divine
revelation, but rather valued any doctrines highly on this account and
had no notion of setting them aside in order to the drawing of
everything from the fountain of their own reason. By this means, they
had a great deal more of truth in matters of religion and morality than
ever human reason would have discovered without those helps. But now the
humor of the deists is to reject everything that they have had from
supposed revelation, or any tradition whatsoever, and to receive nothing
but what they can clearly see, and draw out the demonstrable evidence
of, from the fountain of their own unassisted reason.
2.
The heathens, by tradition, received and believed many great truths of
vast importance that were incomprehensible, and that was no objection
with them against receiving them (that they were above their
comprehension). But now, it is a maxim with the free thinkers that
nothing is to be believed but what can be comprehended, and this leads
them to reject all the principles of natural religion (as it is called),
as well as revealed. For there is nothing pertaining to any doctrine of
natural religion, not any perfection of God, nor his very existence from
eternity, but what has many things incomprehensible.
3.
The heathens of old, in their reasoning, did not proceed in that
exceeding haughtiness and dependence on their own mere singular
understanding, disdaining all dependence on teaching, as our deists do,
which tends to lead one to reject almost all important truth out of an
affectation of thinking freely and independently and singularly. Some of
the heathen protested their great need of teaching, and of divine
teaching.
4.
The heathens did not proceed with that enmity against moral and divine
truth, having not been so irritated by it. They were willing to pick up
some scraps of this truth which comes from revelation, and which our
deists reject all in a lump. (See a further reason under the next
number, viz., M 1298.) |
