The Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature

4. The light of reason, no more than revelation forces acquiescence.

5.) With the additional advantage that every Christian, is bound to instruct and persuade others.

II. As containing truths not discoverable by natural reason

1. A mode of salvation for the ruined.

2. Duties unknown before.

3. Our relations to the Son and Holy Ghost.

1.) Hence the form of baptism.

2.) Pious regards to Christ, and the Holy Ghost, based on our relations to them.

4. The manner of external worship.

III. The fearful hazard of neglecting Christianity

1. Those who think natural religion sufficient, must admit that Christianity is highly important.

2. Our relations to Christ being made known, our religious regard to him is an evident obligation.

3. These relations being real, there is no reason to think that our neglect of behaving suitably to them, will not be attended with the same kind of consequences as follow the neglect of duties made known by reason.

4. If we are corrupt and depraved, and so unfit for heaven, and if we need God’s Holy Spirit to renew our nature, how can it be a slight thing whether we make use of the means for obtaining such assistance?

5. Thus, if Christianity be either true, or merely credible, it is most rash and presumptuous to treat it lightly.

REMARKS

1. The distinction between positive and moral obligations.

1.) For moral precepts we can see the reason: for positive we cannot.

2.) Moral duties are such prior to command; positive duties are such because commanded.

3.) The manner in which a duty is made known, does not make it moral or positive.

2. The ground of regarding moral duties as superior to positive.

1.) Both have the nature of moral commands.

2.) If the two conflict, we must obey the moral.

– Positive institutions are means to moral ends.

– Ends are more excellent than means.

– Obedience to positive institutions, has no value but as proceeding from moral principle.

3.) Both moral and positive duties are revealed, and so are on a level; but the moral law is also interwoven with our very nature, and so its precepts must prevail when the two interfere.

3. There is less necessity for determining their relative authority, than some suppose.

1.) Though man is disposed to outward and ritual religion, nothing can give us acceptance with God, without moral virtue.

2.) Scripture always lays stress on moral duties.

3.) It is a great weakness, though very common, to make light of positive institutions, because less important than moral.

– We are bound to obey all God’s commands.

– A precept, merely positive, admitted to be from God, creates moral obligation, in the strictest sense.

CONCLUSION

This account of Christianity shows our great obligation to study the Scriptures.

CHAPTER II

PRESUMPTIONS AGAINST A REVELATION, CONSIDERED AS MIRACULOUS

Having shown the need of revelation, we now examine the presumptions against it.

The analogy of nature is generally supposed to afford presumptions against miracles.

They are deemed to require stronger evidence than other events.

I. Analogy furnishes no presumptions against the general scheme of Christianity

1. It is no presumption against Christianity, that it is not the discovery of reason, or of experience.

2. Nor is it a presumption against Christianity, that it contains things unlike the apparent course of nature.

1.) We cannot suppose every thing, in the vast universe, to be just like what is the course of nature in this little world.

2.) Even within the present compass of our knowledge, we see many things greatly unlike.

3. If we choose to call what is unlike our known course of things, miraculous, still that does not make it improbable.

II. There is no presumption against such a revelation, as we should now call miraculous, being made, at the beginning of the world

1. There was then no course of nature, as to this world.

2. Whether man then received a revelation involves a question not of miracles, but of fact.

3. Creation was a very different exertion of power from that which rules the world, now it is made.