CHAP. III.] EXTERNAL ARGUMENTS FOR DIVINE REVELATION. 27
himself in his room, and was become " the god of this world," as he is called, 2 Cor. iv. 4, and had appropriated all the religious devotion and worship of the generality of mankind unto himself; for "the things which the Gentiles sacrificed, they sacrificed to devils, and not to God," as our apostle affirms, 1 Cor. x. 20, and as may easily be evinced, and I have abundantly manifested it elsewhere.1 It is acknowledged that some few speculative men among the heathen did seek after God in that horrid darkness wherewith they were en- compassed, and laboured to reduce their conceptions and notions of his being unto what reason could apprehend of infinite perfections, and what the works of creation and providence could suggest unto them; — but as they never could come unto any certainty or consis- tency of notions in their own minds, proceeding but a little be}^ond conjecture (as is the manner of them who seek after any thing in the dark), much less with one another, to propose any thing unto the world for the use of mankind in these things by common consent ; so they could none of them either ever free themselves from the grossest practical idolatry in worshipping the devil, the head of their apostasy from God, or in the least influence the minds of the gene- rality of mankind with any due apprehensions of the divine nature. This is the subject and substance of the apostle's disputation against them, Rom. i. In this state of things, what misery and confusion the world lived in for many ages, what an endless labyrinth of foolish, slavish superstitions and idolatries it had cast itself into, I have in another discourse particularly declared.2 With respect here- unto the Scripture is well called by the apostle Peter " a light shin- ing in a dark place," 2 Pet. i. 19. It gives unto all men at once^ a perfect, clear, steady, uniform declaration of God, his being, subsist- ence, properties, authority, rule, and actings; which evidenceth itself unto the minds and consciences of all whom the god of this world hath not absolutely blinded by the power of prejudices and lusts, confirming them in an enmity unto and hatred of God himself. There is, indeed, no more required to free mankind from this hor- rible darkness, and enormous conceptions about the nature of God and the worship of idols, but a sedate, unprejudiced consideration of the revelation of these things in the books of the Scripture. We may say, therefore, to all the world, with our prophet, " When they say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead ? To the law and to the testimony : if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them," Isa. viii. 19, 20. And this, also, plainly manifests the Scrip-
1 Theologoumena, etc., lib. ii. cap. 1, sect. 11.
2 Ubi supra, lib. iii. cap. 3, de origine et progressu idololatriae.
28 THE REASON OF FAITH. [BOOK VI., PART I.
ture to be of a divine original: for if this declaration of God, this revelation of himself and his will, is incomparably the greatest and most excellent benefit that our nature is capable of in this world, more needful for and more useful unto mankind than the sun in the firmament, as to the proper end of their lives and beings ; and if none of the wisest men in the world, neither severally nor jointly, could attain unto themselves or make known unto others this knowledge of God, so that we may say with our apostle, that " in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God/' 1 Cor. i. 21 ; and whereas those who attempted any such things yet " waxed vain in their imaginations" and conjectures, so that no one person in the world dares own the regulation of his mind and understanding by their notions and conceptions absolutely, although they had all ad- vantages of wisdom and the exercise of reason above those, at least the most of them, who wrote and published the books of the Scrip- ture;— it cannot, with any pretence of reason, be questioned whe- ther they were given by inspiration from God, as they pretend and plead. There is that done in them which all the world could not do, and without the doing whereof all the world must have been eter- nally miserable; and who could do this but God? If any one shall judge that that ignorance of God which was among the heathens of old, or is among the Indians at this day, is not so miserable a mat- ter as we make it, or that there is any way to free them from it but by ad emanation of light from the Scripture, he dwells out of my present way, upon the confines of atheism, so that I shall not divert unto any converse with him. I shall only add, that whatever notions of truth concerning God and his essence there may be found in those philosophers who lived after the preaching of the gospel in the world, or are at this day to be found among the Mohammedans or other false worshippers in the world, above those of the more ancient Pagans, they all derive from the fountain of the Scripture, and were thence by various means traduced.