Encouragements to submit our Passions and Appetites to the Government
of Reason; so without early Habits establish'd of denying our
Appetites, and restraining our Inclinations, the Truths of Religion
will operate but upon a very few, so far as they ought to do.

By Religion I understand still _Reveal'd Religion_. For tho' without
the help of Revelation, the Commands of Jesus Christ (two positive
Institutions only excepted) are, as dictates likewise of Nature,
discoverable by the Light of Reason; and are no less the Law of God to
rational Creatures than the injunctions of Revelation are; yet few
would actually discern this Law of Nature in its full extent, meerly
by the Light of Nature; or if they did, would find the inforcement
thereof a sufficient Ballance to that Natural love of present
pleasure which often opposes our compliance therewith; since before we
come to such a ripeness of understanding as to be capable by
unassisted Reason to discover from the Nature of Things the just
measures of our Actions, together with the obligations we are under to
comply therewithal; an evil indulgence of our Inclinations has
commonly establish'd Habits in us too strong to be over-rul'd by the
Force of Arguments; especially where they are not of very obvious
deduction. Whence it may justly be infer'd that the Christian Religion
is the alone Universally adapted means of making Men truly Vertuous;
the _Law of Reason, or the Eternal Rule of Rectitude_ being in the
Word of God only, to those of all capacities, plainly, and
Authoritatively deliver'd as the Law of God, duly inforc'd by Rewards
and Punishments.

Yet in that Conformity with, and necessary support which our Religion
brings to the Law of Reason, or Nature, that is to say, to Those
dictates which are the result of the determinate and unchangeable