‘TIs the just Grief, and frequent Complaint of those that take to heart the Concerns of Religion, that they see it now more furiously assaulted and studiously undermin’d than ever, not only by the vicious Lives of Men, but by their licentious Discourses. I know, there have been Vices in the World, as long as there have been Men: And ‘tis an observation as old as Solomon, Eccles. 7.10. That Men are apt to look upon their own Times as worse than those that preceded them. And because I remember too, that in reciting this Complaint he disapproves it; I shall not dispute, whether other Ages have been less faulty than this we live in: But this I think I may say with as much Truth as Grief, that, among us here in England, the Times, to which our memory can reach, have been less guilty, than the present Time is, of a spreading and bold Profaneness. For, though many allow’d themselves to court Gold, and Cups, and Mistresses, little less than now they do; yet these were still acknowledg’d to be Faults even by those that committed them, and the Precepts and the Counsels of Religion were neglected or disobeyed, but not their Authority thrown off or affronted; Men retaining yet such a kind of respect for Her, as the elder Son in the Parable did for his Father, when, receiving a command from him to go and work in his Vineyard, he answer’d, I go Sir, though he went not, Mat. 21.30. But now too many of the Vicious do not only scandalously violate the Laws of Religion, but question the Truth, and despise the very Name of it. They rather choose to imitate the Rebels in the other Parable, and say of Religion what they did of their lawful King, when they insolently declar’d, that they would not have him to reign over them, Luke 19.14. They seek not to hide their sins like Adam, but think either to cover or protect all others by that greatest of all, Impiety; and, instead of cheating Conscience into silence, (as sinners, not impudent, are wont to do,) by deceitful promises of repenting hereafter of their sins, they endeavour to stifle or depose it, by maintaining, that Repentance is a weakness of mind, and Conscience ought not to be look’d on as the Vicegerent of a Deity, whose very Existence or Providence they dispute.
And that which more troubled me, and made me most apprehend the spreading of this Impiety, was, that it was propagated in a new way, that made me fear, the Arguments not only of vulgar Preachers, but even of learned Divines themselves, would be much less fit than formerly to give a check to its progress. For, till of late, the generality of our Infidels did, either as Philologers, question the Historical part of the Scriptures, and perhaps cavil at some of the Doctrines; or, if they employed Philosophical Arguments, as Pomponatius and Vaninus did, they borrow’d them from Aristotle, or the Peripatetick School. And against both these sorts of Adversaries, the learneder Champions of the Christian Religion, such as Vives, Mornay, and Grotius, had furnish’d Divines with good and proper Weapons. For, the Historical part of the Scriptures, and especially the Miracles, were strongly confirmable by competent Testimonies, and other Moral Proofs, sufficient in their kind. And Aristotle being himself a dark and dubious Writer, and his Followers being on that account divided into Sects and Parties, which for the most part had nothing to alledge but his single Authority, ‘twas not difficult to answer the Arguments drawn from the Peripatetick Philosophy; and, if that could not have been done, it had not been difficult to reject the Doctrines themselves as false or precarious. But our new Libertines take another and shorter way, (though I hope it will not be a more prosperous one,) to undermine Religion. For, not troubling themselves to examine the Historical or Doctrinal parts of Christian Theology, in such a way as Jews, Pagans, Mahometans, would do; These deny those very Principles of Natural Theology, wherein the Christian, and those other differing, Religions agree, and which are suppos’d in almost all Religions, that pretend to Revelation, namely, the Existence and Providence of a Deity, and a Future State (after this life is ended.) For, these Libertines own themselves to be so upon the account of the Epicurean, or other Mechanical, Principles of Philosophy, and therefore to press them with the Authorities wont to be employ’d by Preachers, is improper, since they are so far from paying any respect to the venerable Fathers of the Church, that they slight the generality of the Heathen Philosophers themselves, judging no Writers worthy of that name, but those that, like Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, &c. explicate things by Matter and Local Motion; and therefore ‘tis not to be expected, that they should reverence any more the Peripatetick Arguments of Scotus or Aquinas, than the Homilies of St. Augustine, or St. Chrysostom; and to give Aristotle himself the Title of The Philosopher, were enough to make some of them conclude the Ascriber were no Philosopher. And this, by the way, may excuse me for not having brought into the following Papers the Sentences of the Fathers or the Moralists, or the Authority of Aristotle, or any of the School-Philosophers, which I should have declin’d to employ, though my frequent removes from place to place, when I was writing these Papers, had not deny’d me the convenience of a Library.