SERMON I.

COL. ii. 8.

BEWARE LEST ANY MAN SPOIL YOU THROUGH

PHILOSOPHY.

age

THIS apostolic admonition is peculiarly applicable to the age in which we live. It has been called-the age of philosophy-the of reason: if by reason and philosophy, irreligion be understood, it undoubtedly merits the appellation; for there never was an age since the death of Christ, never one since the commencement of the history of the world, in which atheism and infidelity have been more generally professed. Nature and reason have been proclaimed as gods, festivals have been instituted in honour of ab. stract ideas, and all revealed religion has been scoffingly rejected as a system of statecraft and priestcraft, as a gross imposition on the understanding of mankind.

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This impious fever of the mind, this paralysis of human intellect, originated in a neighbouring nation; its contagion has been industriously introduced, and is rapidly spreading in our own; it becomes us all in our several stations to endeavour to stop its progress; for of this we may all be well assured, that when religion shall have lost its hold on men's consciences, government will lose its authority over their persons, and a state of barbarous anarchy will ensue.

I know it has been made a question both in ancient and modern times-whether a society of atheists could subsist. This is no question with me; I think it could not. Many speculative opinions, in every system of religion, are of little consequence to the safety of the community, and, in all well-regulated states, they are left to the free discussion of those, who think themselves interested, as advocates for truth, in defending or opposing them; but atheism seems to be irreconcileably hostile, not only to the peace; but to the very existence of civil society. If there be no God, there can be no punishment for any crime, except what is denounced against it by the laws of the land, or what is connected with

it by the laws of nature; and these are restraints incapable of controlling the selfish and licentious passions of human kind. He who removes from the mind of man the hopes and fears of futurity, opens the flood-gates of immorality, and lets in a deluge of vices and crimes, destructive alike of the dignity of human nature, and of the tranquillity of the world. There never yet hath existed, and there never can exist, a nation without religion. If Christianity be abolished, Paganism, Mahometanism, some religious imposture or other must be introduced in its stead, or civil society must be given up. But in the opinion of Bacon, (a philosopher with whom our modern philosophers cannot be compared) "there hath not in any age been discovered any philosophy, opinion, religion, law, or discipline, which so greatly exalts the common, and lessens individual interest, as the Christian religion doth;" so that I know not which most to admire and deplore, their wickedness as men, or their weakness as statesmen, who have attempted to govern mankind without religion, and to establish society on the ruins of Christianity.

The time, usually allotted to discourses from

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this place, will not allow me to refute at length. the atheistic tenets, or to answer the deistic objections which have been so recently propagated to the downfall of one nation, and to the danger of all; I will, however, crave your patience, whilst I state some arguments of importance, in opposition to the principles of those philosophers, who have been the authors of this mischief in a foreign country, and of their admirers in our

own.

Nature and reason, they tell us, are their gods. Let them not impose upon themselves and others by the use of words, the meaning of which they do not understand. What is nature? What is reason? These terms ought to be defined, for there is cause to suspect, that men who introduce, or who adopt, such impiety of expression, are rather ignorant of what atheism is, than that they are, what they affect to be thought, atheists on conviction. By nature then we may understand, the order and constitution of things composing the universe-and by reason, that faculty of the human mind by which we are able to discover truth. And can it be thought, that this system of things, consisting of an infinity of parts fitted.