erein moral virtue, or good
consists, and what the obligation to it is from its own native beauty
and excellency.'"

One more example of Tindal's style will show how skilfully and cogently
he forced, the great authorities of his day to bear Witness to the truth
of his leading proposition, the natural antiquity of all the reasonable
precepts of the Bible:--

"The most accurate Dr. Barrow gives this character of the Christian
religion, 'That its precepts are no other than such as physicians
prescribe for the health of our bodies; as politicians would allow to be
needful for the peace of the state; as Epicurean philosophers recommend
for the tranquillity of our minds, and pleasures of our lives; such
as reason dictates, and daily shows conducive to our welfare in all
respects; which consequently, were there no law enacting them, we should
in wisdom choose to observe, and voluntarily impose them on ourselves;
confessing them to be fit matters of law, and most advantageous and
requisite to the good, general and particular, of mankind.'

"That great and good man Dr. Tillotson says, 'That all the precepts
of Christianity are reasonable and wise, requiring such duties as are
suitable to the light of nature, and do approve themselves to the best
reason of mankind; such as have their foundation in the nature of God,
and are an imitation of the divine excellencies; such as tend to the
perfection of human nature, and to raise the minds of men to the highest
pitch of goodness and virtue. They command nothing that is unnecessary,
they omit nothing that may tend to the glory of God, or the welfare of
men, nor do they restrain us in anything, but what is contrary to the
regular inclinations of nature, or to our reason, and true interest;
they forbid us nothing but what is base and unworthy to serve our humors
and passions, to make ourselves fools and beasts. In a word, nothing but
what tends to our private harm, or prejudice, or to public disorder and
confusion.'

"The late Dean of Canterbury, in a sermon preached in defence of
Christianity, says, * 'What can be a more powerful incentive to
obedience, than for a rational creature clearly to discern the equity,
the necessity, the benefit, the decency and beauty of every action
he is called to do, and thence to be duly sensible how gracious a
master he serves; one that is so far from loading him with fruitless,
arbitrary, and tyrannical impositions, that each command abstracted
from