is a natural Thing between the Greeks and Barbarians.”63 Plato is justly chargeable with Injustice, in patronizing Lying, where in he follows the general Sense of the Heathens, which was, that a Lye is not bad, if it be expedient, and not pernicious in the Affairs of Men. So, in his Third and Fifth de Republicà, Plato would have Governours, “To make use of frequent Lying and Deceit for the Benefit of the Subjects; this must be granted to publick Governours, but not be touch’d by private Men.” If the Platonists human Justice is so bad, it is reasonable to suppose, that in their Divine, or super-human Virtue, they were not very good.
Aristotle pretended not to an Institution of Divine Virtue.
4. Aristotle pretendeth not to an Institution of Divine Virtue, or to institute a Divine-Good Man. For, altho’ he acknowledges a Divine Virtue, yet it is in so slender a Degree, that he denies, that there can be any Friendship between God and Man; the Happiness that he insisteth on, is but the Civil; as the Virtue that he insisteth on, is but the Civil and Military;64 his Ethicks are but a Branch of worldly Politicks; his active Virtue consisteth in that Mean, which the worldly Man’s Prudence determineth; and what can living well signify, in a Civil Worldly Mans Institution of Virtue, but to live without Vice, or Crime, in the Notion of the Civil World? Therefore it is not to be wonder’d at, that Aristotle, differently from the Sense of other Philosophers, patronizeth Revenge;65 or that Cicero agrees with him in this Point, (for this must be acknowledg’d, notwithstanding what a learned Bishop hath said to the contrary;66) for the former of these did not pretend to be a Religionist, and the latter of them, altho’ a Philosopher, yet was not of any Philosophick Institution, and was so uncertain an Admirer of Philosophy, that sometimes he preferreth that one little Book of the XII Tables, before the Libraries of all the Philosophers, both for Utility and weight of Authority. The Lawyers, not without Reason, prefer their Institution to their Civil Virtue, before the Philosopher’s Institutions to their Divine Virtue; which yet must be acknowledg’d, to have a limited agreeableness to the truly Divine moral Virtue; but so that, in the whole, the Disagreement is far greater than the Agreement.
The Agenda of Christianity not agreeable to the Reason of the Philosophick Pagans.
5. Whence we may make a Judgment of this Saying of the same learned Bishop; “All the Agenda of Christianity are so far from being opposite, that they are most agreeable to Human Reason, as ’tis cultivated and heighten’d to its utmost Improvement by Philosophy.”67 If this Saying be converted thus, All the Philosophers improv’d Reason (which is their Divine Virtue) is so far from being opposite, that it is most agreeable to the Agenda of Christianity, it will be a monstrous Proposition. For nothing can be more opposite to the Agenda of Christianity, than a great part of the Philosophers Divine Virtue; therefore the Agenda of Christianity are not so suitable to the Philosophers Reason, as is pretended. That this Saying may have any Appearance of Truth, it must be limited to the particular Agenda of Christianity; for these general Agenda of Christianity (which are also in part the general Agenda of Judaism) are directly and expressly opposite to the Philosophers improv’d Reason. “To have no other Gods but me; to worship the Lord thy God, and to serve him alone; to seek the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness; to take the Kingdom, enter into it, and buy it at any rate; to put off the Heathen Old Man, and to put on the New Man, in the (Christian) New Birth, in the New Covenant; to come out of the mundane Society, and the state of Sin and of Death, to pass into the state of Life, to incorporate with the Divine Family, and become a Citizen of the Holy Empire; not to adhere to, but to abandon the Kingdom of Darkness, and to manage an Holy War against its Powers, Interest, and Adherents; to live to him that died for us and rose again; to live for God and his Service, and to make it our daily Care and Prayer, that his Name may be hallow’d, and his Kingdom come.” All which Fundamental Agenda of the Christian Institution, and such like, are altogether alien from, and opposite to, the Philosophick Pagans Sentiments, as they are Pagans; nor is that plain Principle and summary of Piety, the Fear of God, suitable to their Reason; for they destroy’d it, which the Popular Pagans did not, by their Maxims, “Ira Deorum nulla est,”68 The Gods are never angry, yet a learned Man saith, “He knows not any Evangelical Precept or Duty belonging to a Christian’s Practice, which natural Men of best Account” (the Philosophers) “by the mere Strength of Human Reason have not taught and taken upon them to maintain as Just and Reasonable.”69 But it would be far better to say; there are not any of the particular Agenda of Christianity, the Reasonableness where of may not be illustrated, by what they have suppos’d to be Just and Reasonable: So the Christian Martyrs Contempt of Death may be shew’d to be reasonable, which yet was so unsuitable to their improv’d Reason, that it is call’d by one of them70 “mere Obstinacy”; and another of them imputeth it to “Madness and Custom.”71 The Agreement, therefore, between Christianity and Philosophy touching this Virtue, the Contempt of Death, is complicated with such Disagreement, that the Christians Virtue, of that Name, Philosophy discardeth as Vice and Folly; and the Philosophers Virtue, of that Name, Christians discard as Self-Murder, or profane Bravery.
There is, therefore, a want of Judgment and Piety in many of our Modern Elogies of the Christian Religion, and Vindications of its Morality, as in this following. “Christ Jesus taught Morality, viz. the Way of living like Men, and the fifth Chapter of Matthew is an excellent Lecture of this Kind.”72 To live like Men is a general ambiguous Expression, and to make it of a determinate Signification, it must be understood, to signify in a Sense of Disparagement, To live as mere Men; or in a Sense of Excellency, To live as more than mere Men. If in the former Sense our Saviour hath taught us, To live like Men; he was a Teacher of Morality, at the same rate with Homer, of whom Cicero complaineth, “He maketh the Gods to live like Men, whereas he ought to make Men live like the Gods.”73 So our Saviour is suppos’d, to teach Christians to live like Men; whereas his Business was, to teach Men to live like Christians. Things more Vulgar, and accommodate to the human Size, have the Name of Man call’d upon them in Scripture; but they are Things great and extraordinary, that have the Name of God call’d upon them, Job 1. 6. Psal.65. 9. 104. 16. Isa. 8. 1. Gal. 1. 7, 11. To live like Men, therefore, is far from being expressive of the Christian Godliness, which is a living according to God, and to sink it into such a Morality, is a debasing the Divinity of the Christian Religion. Whose holy Laws are Christianity, which cannot be of one Piece with the Moralities of Jews and Heathens, and, therefore, must not be call’d Morality, merely such, but the Divine, or Christian Kind of Morality, which ought to be contradistinguish’d to mere Heathen Morality. And what can be more apparent, than that our Saviour’s Beatitudes, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit, blessed are they that Mourn,” are not Rules of mere Morality, teaching to live like Men, but are Rules initiative into the Christian Sanctity, which is the Life of the regenerate Children of God? So the following Precepts, “Ye are the Salt of the Earth, the Light of the World, let your Light shine before Men, that they may glorify your Father which is in Heaven,” are not Precepts of Morality, enjoining nothing more than to live like mere Men. And, in the Progress of a Sinner’s Conversion to Godliness, such Difficulties and Conflicts usually occur, that speak it a sort of Virtue, greatly distant from, and transcendent to, ordinary Moral Virtue, which is so remote from it, that it may indispose Men to the Acquisition of it. “For Men, never much affrighted with the Danger, wherein all by Nature stand, nor inflam’d with the Love of a better Country than they enjoy, cannot address themselves to any resolute, or speedy Departure out of the Territories of Civil Moralities, within which, if Satan hold us, he maketh full reckoning of us, as of his Civil, or Natural, Subjects.”74 Therefore, to the way of removing out of Satan’s Territories to the Territories of Godliness, the Civil Moralities may, by Accident, be a
