28. We join with you then in desiring a religion founded on reason, and every way agreeable thereto. But one question still remains to be asked, what do you mean by _reason_? I suppose you mean the eternal reason, or, the nature of things: The nature of God, and the nature of man, with the relations necessarily subsisting between them. Why, this is the very religion _we_ preach: a religion evidently founded on, and every way agreeable to eternal reason, to the essential nature of things. Its foundation stands on the nature of God and the nature of man, together with their mutual relations. And it is every way suitable thereto: to the nature of God; for it begins in knowing him; and where but in the true knowledge of God, can you conceive true religion to begin? It goes on in loving him, and all mankind, (for you cannot but imitate whom you love:) It ends in serving him; in doing his will; in obeying him whom we know and love. 29. It is every way suited to the nature of man; for it begins in a man’s knowing himself; knowing himself to be what he really is, foolish, vicious, miserable. It goes on to point out the remedy for this, to make him truly wise, virtuous, and happy; as every thinking mind (perhaps from some implicit remembrance of what it originally was) longs to be. It finishes all, by restoring the due relations between God and man; by uniting for ever the tender Father, and the grateful, obedient Son; the great Lord of all, and the faithful servant, doing not his own will, but the will of him that sent him. 30. But perhaps by reason you mean, the faculty of reasoning, of inferring one thing from another. There are many, it is confessed, (particularly those who are stiled mystic divines) that utterly decry the use of reason, thus understood, in religion: nay, that condemn all reasoning concerning the things of God, as utterly destructive of true religion. But we can in no wise agree with this. We find no authority for it in holy writ. So far from it, that we find there both our Lord and his apostles continually reasoning with their opposers. Neither do we know, in all the productions of antient and modern times, such a chain of reasoning or argumentation, so close, so solid, so regularly connected, as the epistle to the _Hebrews_. And the strongest reasoner whom we have ever observed, (excepting only _Jesus_ of _Nazareth_) was that _Paul_ of _Tarsus_; the same who has left that plain direction for all christians, _In malice_, or wickedness, _be ye children; but in understanding_, or reason, _be ye men_.