A Consider the wonderful prophecies which apply so exactly to the person of Jesus Christ, that it is impossible not to recognise Him without being wilfully ence, without study, with- | other things concerning the out repute while his ene-establishment of Christianmies were men who passed ity; and the abolition of for the most learned and Judaism. wise of their time. strange mode of proceeding accomplishment of those for a man who intended to establish a new religion. Consider, also, the persons who were chosen by Jesus Christ as His Apostles: men without learning or study, who found themselves at once made able to confute the most skilful philosophers; and strong enough to withstand all the monarchs and tyrants; who set themselves in opposition to the Christian religion which they preached. Consider that miraculous succession of prophets; who followed one another for two thousand years, and who all foretold, in different ways, even the minutest circumstances relating to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; the mission of His Apostles; the promulgation of the Gospel; the conversion of the Gentiles; and many blind. Consider the state of the Jewish nation both before and since the coming of Jesus Christ; its flourishing state before His coming and its most miserable condition since their rejection of Him; for to this day they continue without any character of their religion; without a temple, without sacrifices, dispersed all over the earth, the scorn and derision of every nation. Consider the perpetuity of Christianity: which has always subsisted from the beginning of the world, either among the saints under the Old Testament, who lived in expectation of Christ Jesus to come; or among those who have did come. gion has this mark of perpetuity, which is the principal character of the true. received Him, and believed | other uncommon, supernaon Him, since He actually tural, and divine things, No other reli- which beam forth from every part of it: and let any one judge, after all this, if it be possible to doubt, that Christianity is the only true religion, and if there ever was any other that could bear a comparison with it. Lastly, consider the holiness of this religion; its doctrines, which explain even the greatest contrarieties in man; and all the CHAPTER III. THE TRUE RELIGION PROVED BY THE CONTRARIETIES WHICH ARE DISCOVERABLE IN MAN, AND BY ORIGINAL SIN. THE greatness and the | gether with the reason both misery of man are both so of one and the other. It conspicuous, that the true must also account for those religion must necessarily astonishing contrarieties teach, that he contains in which we find within us. himself some noble prin- If there be but one principle of greatness, and, at ciple, or efficient cause of the same time, some pro- all things, and but one end found source of misery. of all things; true religion For true religion will search must teach us to make Him our nature to the bottom, so alone the object of our woras perfectly to understand ship and love. But since all that is great, and all we find ourselves unable that is miserable in it, to- to worship Him whom we know not, and to love any thing but ourselves; the same religion, which enjoins these duties, must also acquaint us with this inability, and teach us how it is to be overcome. give satisfaction concerning them. Shall it be the doctrine of those philosophers, who set before us no other good than what we may find in ourselves? Is this the sovereign good? Have these men discovered the remedy of our evils? Is the proper cure, for man's presumption, to equal him with God? And those who have levelled us with the beasts and offer us earthly gratifications, as our only felicity, have they revealed the remedy for our lusts? 'Lift up your eyes to God,' say some; 'behold Him who has stamped you with His image, and has made you for His worship. You may make yourselves like Him; wisdom, if you follow her directions, will equal you to Him." While others cry Again, in order to render man happy, it ought to teach us that there is a God, whom we are under obligation to love; that our true felicity consists in being devoted to Him, and our only misery, in being separated from Him. It ought to shew us that we are full of darkness, which prevents us from knowing and loving Him; and that thus our duty obliging us to love God, and our concupiscence turning us from Him, we are full of unrighteousness. It ought to discover to us the cause of our opposition to God, and our own happiness; the re-out, "Cast down your eyes medies against it, and the means of obtaining them. Let men consider all the religions in the world, with regard to these points, and see whether any one, except Christianity, can to the ground, base worms as you are, and look at the beasts, your companions." What then is to be the fate of man! must he be equal to God, or to the beasts? How frightful a disparity is this! What, scence, which attaches you then are we to be? What to earth; and all they did religion shall instruct us at once to correct our pride and our concupiscence? What religion shall disclose to us our happiness, and our duty; the infirmities which lead us from them, the cure for those infirmities, and the means of obtaining it? Let us hear the answer of the wisdom of God, as it speaks to us in the Christian religion. was to cherish either one or the other. If they likened you to God, it was only to gratify your pride, by making you think that your nature resembled the divine: and as for those who saw the extravagance of such pretensions, they only led you to a contrary precipice; by tempting you to believe that your nature was like that of the beasts, It is in vain, O men! to that you might be led to seek from yourselves the place all your happiness in remedy for your miseries. the sensual delights of irAll your knowledge can rational creatures! This reach no further than this was not the way to con—that you can neither find | vince you of your transhappiness nor truth in yourselves. Philosophers have promised them to you, but they promised what they could not perform. They knew neither your real condition, nor your real good. How could they point out the remedy for your diseases, who did not even know what they were? Your greatest evils are pride, which alienates you from God; and concupi gressions. Do not there- the majesty of God. He was not in this darkness which blinds him, or under this mortality, and these miseries, which distress him. But he could not enjoy that glory long without falling into presumption: he wanted to make himself the centre of his happiness, independent of My aid. He withdrew himself from My dominion, and as he pretended to an equality with Me, from a desire to find his happiness in himself, I abandoned him to himself; and causing the creatures that were his subjects to revolt against him, I made them his enemies. Man is therefore now become like unto the beasts, and removed so far from Me, that he scarcely retains any feeble glimmer of the Author of his being, so much has all his knowledge been either lost or confused. His senses now, being not the servants, but often the masters of his reason, have led him away in the pur surrounded, either tempt or afflict him, and exercise a kind of sovereignty over him; either subduing him by their strength, or seducing him by their charms, which is the most imperious and fatal dominion of the two. Such is the present state and condition of men! Still a feeble instinct remains of the felicity of their primitive nature; while they are plunged in the miseries of their own blindness and lust, which is now, their second nature. From the principles which I have here laid open, we may discern the cause of all those contrarieties, which have astonished and divided mankind. Observe all those emotions of greatness and glory, which the sense of so many miseries is not able to extinguish ; and consider, whether they can proceed from a less powerful cause than original nature. Know then, proud mortal, what a paradox thou suit of pleasure all the creatures with which he is art to thyself! Let thy |