For argument's sake, we will admit that our reason, without any help from a divine revelation, is adequate to teach us the duties of morality, so far as may be needful to regulate all our conduct in this world, and to direct all the exercises of our affections aright as to time. Still something further is essential. When I admit this sufficiency of reason in regard to moral duty; I do not admit by any means that it can be proved.--But if it could be proved, still the wonderful discoveries of the Gospel respecting a Mediator and a world to come, and many other important points, would be not only most desirable, but essentially necessary. And therefore, the Gospel is indeed glorious and excellent. Reason, then, separate from Revelation, cannot inform us concerning some of the most necessary and essential things in Religion. It cannot tell us whether any pardon of sin can be dispensed to us. It cannot inform us, either what the recompence of Virtue will be, or the punishment of Vice. It cannot ascertain the degree of goodness which will be remunerated; if any is to be at all:--or what kinds and degrees of Vice shall be punished. It cannot point out to us, what sins, of which we have been guilty, will be forgiven; or whether any will be; of if they will be, upon what grounds. Neither can it look forward into another state of being, and tell us the duration in which we shall exist; or in which Virtue will be remunerated; or in which Vice will be frowned upon:--or indeed whether there shall be any future state at all; or whether there will be a future retribution, if a future state. It may conjecture on these most important and essential subjects. But it can go no farther than mere conjecture; and as to some of them, hardly so far. Its light here is so feeble, that it scarcely glimmers. It cannot therefore relieve us under the pains and anguish of a guilty conscience. It hath no motives and arguments of weight sufficient to induce us to break off all our sins by repentance, and our transgressions by turning unto the Lord. It spreads not before us, and endless good to engage us to love and fear God, or endless punishment to deter us from sin.--In the world we often behold vice prospered, and Virtue depressed. The wicked often flourish, in the course of human events; and upon them fortune smiles propitiously: while the worthy and the good experience the bitterness of calamity, and adversity takes them by her cold hand. In cases of this nature, reason would utterly fail in administering sufficient succour.--But Religion composes the mind under all the vicissitudes of human life. Nay, it opens to us rich consolation.--And one eminent branch of its excellence is that it instructs us fully, clearly, and plainly as to just notions of God, of the manner in which he will be worshipped, of his readiness to forgive us on our repentance and amendment through an atonement made for sin. It teaches us, also, the nature of this atonement.