Conversation of the Pilgrims and Human-Reason.

Man made answer, We come from the Valley of Destruction, and are going towards the heavenly Jerusalem, and shall be glad of thy company, if thou wilt go along with us.

HUMAN-REASON. I am designed for the same place myself, and would gladly accept of any good company; but I suppose you intend to go the same way as yonder shepherds shewed you, who know no more of it than the man in the moon, but only it is their livelihood to tell a parcel of strange stories to strangers and travellers, making them believe they are servants to the King, and that it is their office to entertain pilgrims, and give them directions for the way: they pretend also to give them a prospect of the heavenly Jerusalem, through a perspective glass, and to shew them one of the mouths of hell; whereas they are a pack of mere jugglers and religious cheats, amusing the credulous and unwary travellers with fiction, and romantic stories of heaven and hell, and using enchantments to delude them in their way thither, casting a mist before their eyes when they pretend to give them a glimpse of the glories of that place; for that it is a deceitful glass through which they look, and presents you not with the true appearance of things, as I can prove at large, if you will be pleased to hear me out; nay, I can demonstrate before your eyes, without the help of any glass, the situation and beauty of the Celestial City, and shew you the nearest and readiest road thither, as plain as that two and three make five.

SPIRITUAL. Thou art as blind as a beetle thyself, and wilt thou pretend to direct us in the way to a place which thou never sawest nor knewest? Go, get thee into thy den again, and go not about to seduce poor harmless pilgrims; for we will not hearken to any insinuating discourse, but keep on our way, as the shepherds directed us.

TENDER. Nay, pray let me hear what the man can say for himself, for he seems to be a smart man and no fool, and therefore I would fain hear his reasons.

SPIRITUAL. Your curiosity is dangerous, and may cost you dear; therefore, pray be persuaded to turn away your heart from hearing of vanity and delusions; you have run well hitherto, do not halt so near your journey's end.

I cannot be satisfied in my mind, said Tender-Conscience, unless I hear this man's arguments, for he seems to have some thing extraordinary in his very face, and more in his words.

ZEALOUS. To the empty are empty things: if this man be so obstinate that he will tarry and hear this fellow prate, let him

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tarry alone: why should we lose time for his folly? Let us hasten forward to run the race that is set before us.

SPIRITUAL. No, brother, let us rather bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the royal law of Christ our King. Let us pity his infirmity, as Paul exhorts us in the like case: "Brethren, (says he,) if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted," Gal. iv. 1, 2. And another apostle saith, "Brethren, if any of you err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way, shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." Now, therefore, since this our brother is tempted with a vain curiosity to hear the arguments of Human-Reason, let us stay a while, and I will undertake to confute him, which will be more to our brother's profit than if he had never heard him speak.

Go to then, (said he, turning to Human-Reason,) let me hear what thou hast to argue against the way we are going.

Then Human-Reason putting on a grave and serious countenance, spoke as follows: Gentlemen, it is not manly to fall into a passion, and abuse a stranger before you have just cause given you, especially when you are ignorant of, or may mistake, his quality. I am sprung of a right noble and illustrious family, and as ancient as any in the world, by my father's side. Understanding is my father, who is a prince and courtier, and of near kin to the royal family of heaven; therefore, as you are gentlemen, I hope you will use me with that respect which is due to my birth and extraction, and not run me down with reproachful names and scurrilous language.

SPIRITUAL. I cry you mercy, Sir; I know your father very well, and honour his noble birth and illustrious quality: but give me leave to tell you, your mother is but of mean and obscure quality, and a notorious strumpet; and therefore you must excuse us if we esteem no better of you than a bastard, or at best, a very degenerate son; a mongrel breed, partaking more of your mother's vices than your father's virtues, who surely was much overseen when he suffered himself to be debauched by such a common drab as she. Her name was Sense, the daughter of Animal-Life, an old doting sot, that minded nothing else but eating, drinking, and sleeping, his birth-rlace being nothing better than a dunghill; this was your goodly grandfather by your mother's side. Now he used to prostitute your mother, when she was voung, to all comers and goers; and,

and Human-Reason.

ainong the rest, the prince your father fell in love with her once upon a time, and lay with her, and begat you: so that you have no such reason to glory in your high birth, but rather to be ashamed of your father's infirmity, in committing folly with such an adultress as your mother. Besides, what signifies your being his son, unless you were also endued with his princely virtues? And he himself lost those virtues after he had defiled himself by copulation with your mother. For he was once quick-sighted as an eagle, but now his eyes are dim; in this you resemble him to the life, for you are purblind. He was active and sincere, but now dull and treacherous; in this also you are like him, for you are heavy and slow in all your operations, and as uncertain and wavering as the weathercock. I could take notice of a great many more ill features and qualities in you, but that it would be too tedious and irksome to the company. ZEALOUS. Aye, aye, it is not worth the while to lose so much time in talking to this impostor, when we are on a journey.

WEARY. No, indeed, brother Spiritual-Man, no more it is; and were you half so tired as I, you would not stand reckoning up this fellow's genealogy, nor making comparisons betwixt him and his father: I long to be at my journey's end; come, let us be jogging.

SPIRITUAL. Have patience, my brethren, whilst this man and I discourse the point farther, for the sake of Tender-Conscience, who seems to be staggered at his first words, and has an itching desire to hear what he can say for himself; perhaps he will have a better opinion of the man, if we should refuse to converse with him; he might think that we were ashamed or afraid to stand the brunt of his boasted demonstrations, and so would conclude the truth is on his side: therefore, for his sake, have patience a while, and I doubt not I shall convince this man of his error, and make him hold his peace, if not recant his ill-grounded opinions, to the glory of God, and the edification of us all, especially of poor wavering Tender-Conscience.

Then they all agreed to tarry and hear out the dispute between them so Spiritual-Man bid Human-Reason wave an further preambles about his birth and family, and fall upon the point in hand, making as quick a dispatch as he could of this

matter.

HUMAN. Well then, I tell you in short, you are out of your way, and if you will follow my directions I will shew you a far nearer and more secure road to the heavenly country. I believe and know that there is a God, as well as you, and worship him,

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day and night; but I take not up this belief, nor practise his worship, on other men's credits. I do not blindly pin my faith to other men's sleeves, nor worship God according to the traditions of men, as you do but I lay a sure foundation of my faith. I behold and contemplate this wonderful and glorious fabric of the world, and, by a regular deduction, I trace the footsteps of an eternal Divinity; whilst climbing up the chain of inferior and second causes, I at length fasten on the uppermost link, and clearly see the first and supreme cause, source, and spring of all things visible and invisible. Thus as common bodily objects are the first and lowermost of the chain of causes, so my senses are the first and lowest key to my faith; whilst, by a chain of rational inferences, I join the first and last things together, and make my senses, reason, and faith, to be all proportionally subservient to the adoration I pay the eternal Godhead. Thus I observe a due order, in letting that which is natural first take place, and then afterwards that which is spiritual; whereas you take a quite contrary course, and so do all that hearken to those blind guides, the shepherds on yonder mountain. For they teach you to begin at the wrong end, and lay aside the service of our sense and reason (which are the essential properties of our nature) to believe, by implicit blind faith, the doctrines and opinions of such a number of men, pretending they were divinely inspired; and not only so, but to believe doctrines that are diametrically opposite to your reason, and the common sense and experience of the whole world. As, for example, they teach, and you must believe, that one can be three, and three can be one, contrary to the first principles of natural reason; that God is man, and man is God; that a virgin could conceive a son, and, after child-birth, remain a virgin; with many more opinions of the like nature, inconsistent with themselves, and with other fundamental principles of nature.

TENDER. If all be true that this man says, then, for aught I see, we are guilty of downright Popery: for I have heard many wise and learned men say, That the great secret of that religion is to make its proselytes believe, by a blind implicit faith, things directly contrary to common sense and reason; and if we are guilty of the same error, wherein do we differ from the Papists ? For my part, I am wonderfully taken with this man's discourse, he speaks home to the purpose: and I cannot see what can be objected against it, or how he can be answered.

SPIRITUAL. Be not carried away with every wind of false doctrine but let your heart be established in truth. Be not

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credulous, but examine well his discourse, and you shall find it all sophistry and deceit, as I shall make apparent, if you will give me the hearing.

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In the first place, therefore, he goes upon a wrong ground, in supposing our reason to be perfect in exercising itself upon its proper objects. Before the fall of Adam indeed it was so but now it is imperfect and frail. It was then one entire shining diamond, but now it is shattered into pieces; we only retain some fragments or sparkles of the original jewel; we can boast of nothing but some broken remnants of reason, escaped from that fatal shipwreck of human nature, which still float and down in a sea of uncertainties. We grope in the dark, and can hardly discern the things that are familiar with us. Our notions of things natural are liable to a thousand mistakes, our inferences loose and incoherent, and all our faculties turned upside down. Our discourse commonly is rather rhetoric than reason, and has either a smatch of the serpent's subtle sophistry, or the woman's soft and insinuating eloquence. These generally supply the place of true masculine reason, while the sophist does but mimic the philosopher, and both they and the orator act the divine, as this man has done in his specious and formal accusation of the shepherds, and vindication of his own way. For,

In the second place, Suppose we grant his ground to be good, and that reason is perfect in its exercising itself on its proper objects; yet its inferences from thence are but the efforts of his eloquence and sophistry, while he would endeavour to persuade us that divine and supernatural things are the objects of natural reason also. It is just the same thing as if he would go about to convince us, that we may hear with our noses, and see with our ears; we may as well do this, as discern divine and supernatural things by natural and human reason. God hath endowed us with different faculties, suitable and proportionable to the different objects that engage them. We discover sensible things by our senses, rational things by our reason, things intellectual by our understanding; but divine and celestial things he has reserved for the exercise of our faith, which is a kind of a divine and superior sense in the soul. Our reason and understanding may at sometimes snatch a glimpse, but cannot take a steady and adequate prospect of things so far above their reach and sphere. Thus, by the help of natural reason, I may know there is a God, the first cause and origin of all things; but his essence, attributes, and will, are hidden within the vail of inaccessible light, and cannot be discerned by us but by faith in