The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Christian Philosophy
• Preface
• Introduction
• An Explication of the Text. Gal. VI. 7.
• Section I
• Proposition I
• Proposition Ii
• Proposition Iii
• Proposition Iv
• Proposition V
• Proposition Vi
• Proposition Vii
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Section Ii
• Introduction
• Proposition I
• Proposition Ii
• Proposition Iii
• Proposition Iv
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Section Iii
• Introduction
• Proposition I
• Proposition Ii
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Corolary Iii
• Proposition Iii
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Corolary Iii
• Corolary Iv
• Section Iv
• A Preliminary Proposition
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Proposition I
• Proposition Ii
• Proposition Iii
• Query I
• Query Ii
• Query Iii
• Query Iv
• Query V
• Query Vi
• Query Vii
• Query Viii
• Query Ix
• Proposition Iv
• Proposition V
• Proposition Vi
• I.: Virtue Or Holiness Is the Condition of Eternal Happiness; Without It We Cannot Have a Right to It, Or Be Made Sharers of It.
• II.: Holiness Or Virtue Is Absolutely Necessary to Qualify For Future Happiness.
• III.: Further, the Scripture Specifies to Us the Exercises From Which the Future Happiness of the Virtuous Flow.
• IV.: That According to the Scripture Account of the State of the Virtuous In the Life to Come, It Is a State of Unchangeable, Immortal Glory and Happiness.
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Corolary Iii
• Corolary Iv
• Corolary V
• Conclusion

Corolary II

And by consequence it is a doctrine which divine revelation cannot contradict. There can be no doctrine in a divine revelation in consistent with this immutable truth. Nay, revelation must place the whole of religion in living agreeably to this doctrine. It may add a particular kind of evidence to this truth, distinct from what it intrinsically carries with it, very proper to engage men to attend to its intrinsick evidence. But it cannot substitute any thing in the room of natural religion; for natural religion must remain the same, while the nature of things remains unchanged; while moral creatures are moral creatures; or a moral constitution is a moral constitution. The practice of virtue is therefore the whole of human duty, and the sure road to eternal happiness, whether there be any such thing as a divine revelation or not. And they are led into a fatal mistake by revelation; i.e. they sadly pervert divine revelation, who understand it as commuting the practice of virtue for any thing else; or as substituting any other thing in its room: for revelation cannot misrepresent the nature of things; it cannot contradict the very principles upon which its own evidence must depend. But it is plain from the nature of things, that there is a God, and that virtue alone is acceptable to him:<466> and this principle being removed, divine revelation is a term without any meaning.