A visible church has also a further tendency to promote natural religion, as being an instituted method of education, originally intended to be of peculiar advantage to those who conform to it. For one end of the institution was, that, by admonition and reproof, as well as instruction, by a general regular discipline, and public exercises of religion, _the body of Christ_, as the Scripture speaks, should be _edified_; _i.e._ trained up in piety and virtue for a higher and better state. This settlement, then, appearing thus beneficial, tending in the nature of the thing to answer, and, in some degree, actually answering, those ends, it is to be remembered, that the very notion of it implies positive institutions; for the visibility of the church consists in them. Take away every thing of this kind, and you lose the very notion itself. So that if the things now mentioned are advantages, the reason and importance of positive institutions in general is most obvious; since without them these advantages could not be secured to the world. And it is mere idle wantonness, to insist upon knowing the reasons, _why_ such particular ones were fixed upon rather than others. The benefit arising from this supernatural assistance, which Christianity affords to natural religion, is what some persons are very slow in apprehending. And yet it is a thing distinct in itself, and a very plain obvious one. For will any in good earnest really say, that the bulk of mankind in the heathen world were in as advantageous a situation, with regard to natural religion, as they are now among us: that it was laid before them, and enforced upon them, in a manner as distinct, and as much tending to influence their practice?