Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life — John Shaqi
Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian lifeMasham, Damaris, Lady
Religion
Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life
Masham, Damaris, Lady
Christian life -- Anglican authors
Miseries of a Life to the last degree Brutish, did from the visible
wretchedness and inconveniences thereof, gladly obey such whom they
believed were (as they told them they were) Divinely sent to teach
then a happier way of living. And in the Vertues which these their
first Lawgivers taught them, their Successors easily retain'd them;
continuing still to maintain in them a perswasion of their Divine
Extraction, and Authority. From the which it will be found that this
instance of the _Peruvian_ Morality makes for the need of Revelation
to inforce Natural Religion, and not against it. But how far
Revelation is needful to assist Natural Light, will be the best seen
in reflecting a little upon what we receive from each of these Guides
that God has given us. And if it shall appear from thence that
Natural Religion has need of Revelation to support it; and that the
Revelation which we have by Jesus Christ is exquisitely adapted to the
end of inforcing Natural Religion; this will both be the highest
confirmation possible, that to inforce Natural Religion or Morality,
was the design of Christianity; and will also shew that to the want of
their being in earnest Christians, is to be attributed the immorality
of such who, professing Christianity, live immoral Lives. The
consequence from whence must be, That to reclaim a Vicious People, it
should be consider'd, as the most effectual means of doing so, how to
make Men really, and in earnest Christians.
To see what light we receive from Nature to direct our Actions, and
how far we are Naturally able to obey that Light; Men must be
consider'd purely as in the state of Nature, _viz._ as having no
extrinsick Law to direct them, but indu'd only with a faculty of
comparing their distant Ideas by intermediate Ones, and Thence of
deducing, or infering one thing from another; whereby our Knowledge
immediately received from _Sense_, or _Reflection_, is inlarg'd to a
view of Truths remote, or future, in an Application of which Faculty
of the mind to a consideration of our own Existence and Nature,
together with the beauty and order of the Universe, so far as it falls
under our view, we may come to the knowledge of a _First Cause_; and
that this must be an _Intelligent Being, Wise_ and _Powerful_, beyond
what we are able to conceive. And as we delight in our selves, and
receive pleasure from the objects which surround us, sufficient to
indear to us the possession and injoyment of Life, we cannot from
thence but infer, that this _Wise_ and _Powerful Being_ is also most
_Good_, since he has made us out of nothing to give us a Being wherein
we find such Happiness, as makes us very unwilling to part therewith.
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