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 IV

It must therefore be a perversion or gross misunderstanding of revelation, to derive any hopes from it of eternal happiness without virtue; without true and sincere goodness of heart and mind. One must be an utter stranger to the course of nature or providence to object against revelation, because the promotion<467> of virtue and happiness among mankind is there ascribed to the instrumentality of Jesus Christ. But without entering into an enquiry which belongs not to our present design, we may most certainly conclude that it is mistaking revelation fundamentally, because it is destroying the very fundamentals of natural religion to hope for salvation, favour with God, and eternal felicity, without virtue. If there be no natural religion, there can be no such thing as revealed religion. But what is the very essence of natural religion? Is it not that the sincere study and practice of virtue is the sole way to the divine favour and approbation; and that as it is the only way, so it is a sure and certain way to it? In what indeed doth the belief of a God and a providence, of the reality of virtue and a future state ultimately terminate, but in this momentous truth, “That according to the constitution and government of things it being morally good, virtue is the only road to eternal happiness; nothing else can give a right to it; nothing else can qualify for it.” If this be not true, natural religion is a mere sound; and consequently it is absurd to enquire about a divine revelation. But, on the other hand, if it be true, we must carry that truth along with us in our enquiries, as the test by which we are to try pretences to revelation, and as the key for interpreting a divine revelation. And in reality it is ignorance of natural religion, or losing sight of its very first principles, which hath misled men, or suffered them to be misled into mistakes about christianity, and given rise to interpretations of scripture, which encourage vice, and subvert the very foundations of morality. For whatever may be thought obscure in it, this is its plain and uniform language, “That without holiness no man can see the Lord.” But the truth I chiefly proposed by this discourse to establish, is,<468>