An extract from the Rev. Mr. Law’s LATER WORKS.

An extract from the Case of Reason, or Natural Religion, fairly and fully stated. In answer to a book, entitled Christianity as Old as the Creation.

The Introduction, shewing the state of the Controversy.

THE infidelity which is now openly declared for, pretends to support itself upon the sufficiency, excellency, and absolute perfection of reason, or natural religion.

The author with whom I am engaged, makes no attempt to invalidate the historical evidence on which Christianity is founded; but by arguments drawn from the nature of God, and natural religion, pretends to prove that no religion can come from God, which teaches any thing more than that, which is fully manifest to all mankind by the mere light of nature.

His chief principles may be reduced to these following propositions.

1. That human reason, or natural light, is the only means of knowing all that God requires of us.

2. That reason, or natural light, is so full, sufficient, plain, and certain a rule in all religious duties, that no external divine revelation can add any thing to it, or require us to believe or practise any thing, that was not as fully known before. A revelation, if ever made, can only declare those very same things externally, which were before equally declared by the internal light of nature.

3. That this must be the case of natural and revealed religion, unless God be an arbitrary being. For if God be not an arbitrary being, but acts according to the reason and nature of things; then he can require nothing of us by revelation, but what is already required by the nature and reason of things. And therefore, as he expresses it, reason and revelation must exactly answer one another like two tallies¹.

¹ Page 60.

4. That whatever is at any time admitted as matter of religion, that is not manifest from the reason of the thing, and plainly required by the light of nature, is gross superstition.

5. That it is inconsistent with the divine perfections, to suppose, that God can by an external revelation give any religious knowledge, at any time, to any people, which was not equally given at all times, and to all people.

This is the state of the controversy. As to the railing accusations, which this author pours out, at all adventures, upon the clergy, I shall wholly pass them over; my intention being only to appeal to the reason of the reader, and to add nothing to it, but the safe, unerring light of divine revelation.