BUT SECTION VII. UT for once let us fuppofe, that if unaffifted reafon has not hitherto difcovered the truths of natural religion, it will follow, that it is impoffible it ever fhould. Let us fee what the Doctor will gain by this conceffion. Great as it is, it is too fmall to do him any Ser-, vice. For, will he have the confidence to fay, that he has examined every thing neceffary to give him a full knowledge of the fentiments of the antients, and whence they were derived? That the philofophical fentiments, and religious notions of every age fince the creation, and every nation under the fun, are fo compleatly known by him, that not one of them has escaped his view? Allow that all the remains of Greek and Roman, Chinese and Arabic antiquity have been, searched by him; and that not one of these remains affords a proof that bare philofophy ever found out the truths of natural religion; yet is, it not poffible, that, fpite of this filence in antient records, fome philofopher or other, in thefe nations, might have hit on a feries of reafoning that led him to the knowledge of the truths of natural religion, but for fear of the confe-' quences which often follow the venting unauthorifed fpeculations, when oppofite to vulgar prejudices, might judge it beft to keep his thoughts to himfelf? But even tho' we fhould allow, that none of the most penetrating geniufes in thefe countries were ever capable of such abstruse speculations; yet can he, with equal certainty, af-, firm, that no country whatfoever, whofe hiftory he has no acquaintance with, ever produced philofophers who made fuch difcoveries? Does he know how matters ftand with nations he never heard of or read about? What an admirable way of reasoning would this be? The countries I 66 am acquainted with, had not reason in fuch "perfection as to discover a God, and the relation "that they, as his creatures, ftand in to him; "therefore the countries I never heard of muft "have been equally unable to make fuch difco"veries." If this argument is good in the mouth. of the Doctor, I fhould be glad of a reafon, why it would have been an unphilofophic conclufion for a barbarous American to have argued, that gun-powder could not have been the invention of mortals, fince, had that been the cafe, fome of his fage ancestors, or thefe wife nations whofe annals he was acquainted with, muft have invented it. It would be wasting of paper, and tiring the patience of the heaviest reader, to go on in expofing fuch abfurdities. A very good reafon may be affigned, why, notwithstanding men's natural ability to discover the existence of a God, from the contemplation of his works, yet, in fact, fcarce any philofopher in these nations, whofe records are extant, is faid to have made fuch a difcovery. The being and perfections of God were not unknown,. but thefe traditions which the civil magiftrate, from a fenfe of their usefulness to fociety, made it his bufinefs to fupport, preferved the knowledge of them in the heathen world. Hence, if a philofopher had feen, by fpeculative arguments, the neceffity of admitting the divine existence, he would have found it quite unneceffary, in the early ages of the world, to make public his ar guments, guments, univerfal tradition being a fufficient fupport to the truths of religion; but when once idolatry had crept in, what was before unneceffary would be now unfafe. As that very chain of reasoning which led a man to the knowledge of the divine existence, muft alfo difcover to him the unreasonableness, in many inftances, of the vulgar religion, the oppofing of which might have drawn after it no very agreeable treatment. Thus the first philofophers thought it ufelefs to argue men into a belief of what they were already perfuaded of; while their fucceffors, bolding the truth in unrighteousness, thro' a meau and daftardly principle, concealed their fentiments from mankind, left, had they published them, they might have suffered for them; and that they might fatisfy their own minds as to this difhonourable conduct, they endeavoured either to convince themselves that all religion was but a cheat, and that the arguments which had led them to it were fallacious and inconclufive; or else that it was the part of a wife man, whatever his inward fentiments might be, outwardly to conform to the religion of his country. To enquire then whether reafon ever, in fact, difcovered the divine existence, we must turn our eyes to fuch as had no traditional knowledge of God, and no prejudice against the divine exift ence. But to find fuch will be no easy task. An inftance however the Doctor may find in Fabricius's account of the writers on the truth of christianity, who, c. 20. mentions a book, entitled, "Philofophus Autodidactos, five epiftola "Abi Jaafar Ebn Taphail, de Hai Ebn Yokdhan, cujus infantis in deferta infula abjecti "exemplo oftenditur, quomodo citra inftitutioL 6 66. nem "nem humanam, ex inferiorum contemplatione "ad fuperiorum notitiam ascendere poffit ratio "humana. Arabice cum latina Pocockii ver"fione, Ox. 1701, 4to." Fabricius refers us, for an account of this curious piece, to the Bibliotheque universelle, T. 3. p. 76. and the hiftory of the works of the learned for the year 1708. p. 365. I have not time to confider the genuineness of this account; but I'm fure, if genuine, 'tis a demonftration of the falfhood of the Doctor's hypothefis; and therefore, I think, if he perfifts in his opinion, he will be forced to convince the world of its falfhood. But, perhaps, fome will ftill alledge, that if none of the Greek or Roman philofophers, who were men of more than ordinary fagacity, and, as the Doctor informs us, bent their wits in that particular way in which it was most likely to make fuch discoveries; if none of thefe ever discovered, by bare reafon, the truths of natural religion, the fame may be fafely concluded of all other philofophers. Tho', if this be alledged, I have already fufficiently obviated it, both in this and the end of the former fection; yet, for the reader's further fatisfaction, I fhall fhew in the next fection, that the Doctor's reprefentation of the antient philofophers, is not quite confiftent with truth, and that they had greater opportunities to make difcoveries in natural religion than he feems to think. SECT. SECTION VIII. § 1. WE are apt to imagine, that the antients were perfect dwarfs in natural philofophy, and unable to have made fuch discoveries, or invented fuch arts as later ages; and yet, in many inftances, a more accurate enquiry would convince us, that these inventions, of which we fo much boaft, were known to antiquity, and came to be loft by the ignorance and barbarity introduced by the Goths and Vandals. If I am not miftaken, the art of teaching those born deaf to speak is an instance of this. Vinnius, in his excellent commentary on the institutes, lib. 2. tit. 12. § 3. & 1. 3. tit. 20. § 7. laughs at Juftinian for providing for a cafe, which in fact could never happen, viz. that of a deaf man endued with fpeech; and he declares, in ftrong terms, that he thinks it abfurd for one deaf to utter an articulate found. Had that ingenious writer been acquainted with the art, which has of late been revived *, of teaching the deaf to fpeak, he would not fo rafhly have condemned the emperor, but rather imagined, that in his time that art was known. My obfervations at prefent fhall be confined to the moft antient philofophers. § 2. The philofophers of the Ionick fect, from Thales down to Socrates, employed moft of their time in enquiries of a phyfical nature. In these speculations, they must have made no *See Morhofi Polyhi. tom. 1. 1. 2. c. 3. § 13. & feq; & 1. 4. c. 1. § 6.. |