"That great and good man Dr. Tillotson says, 'That all the precepts of Christianity are reasonable and wise, requiring such duties as are suitable to the light of nature, and do approve themselves to the best reason of mankind; such as have their foundation in the nature of God, and are an imitation of the divine excellencies; such as tend to the perfection of human nature, and to raise the minds of men to the highest pitch of goodness and virtue. They command nothing that is unnecessary, they omit nothing that may tend to the glory of God, or the welfare of men, nor do they restrain us in anything, but what is contrary to the regular inclinations of nature, or to our reason, and true interest; they forbid us nothing but what is base and unworthy to serve our humors and passions, to make ourselves fools and beasts. In a word, nothing but what tends to our private harm, or prejudice, or to public disorder and confusion.' "The late Dean of Canterbury, in a sermon preached in defence of Christianity, says, * 'What can be a more powerful incentive to obedience, than for a rational creature clearly to discern the equity, the necessity, the benefit, the decency and beauty of every action he is called to do, and thence to be duly sensible how gracious a master he serves; one that is so far from loading him with fruitless, arbitrary, and tyrannical impositions, that each command abstracted from his command who issues it, is able to recommend itself; and nothing required but what every wise man would choose of his accord: and cannot, without being his own enemy, wish to be exempted from?' And this character of Christianity he makes to be essential to its being from God, and therefore must make it the same with natural religion, which has this character impressed on it. "'There was none of the doctrines of our Saviour (says the late Archbishop of York) ** calculated for the gratification of men's idle curiosities, the busying and amusing them with airy and useless speculations; much less were they intended for an exercise of our credulity, or a trial how far we could bring our reason to submit to our faith; but as on the one hand they were plain and simple, and such as by their agreeable-ness to the rational faculties of mankind, did highly recommend themselves to our belief; so on the other hand they had an immediate relation to practice, and were the general principles and foundation, on which all human and divine virtues were naturally to be superstructed.' * Boyle's Lect., p. 26, ** Sermon before the Queen on Christmas Day, 1724.