The Religion of Nature Delineated

To A. F., Esq.

I was much surprised, sir, when (some time ago) you so importunately desired my thoughts upon these questions:

Is there really any such thing as natural religion, properly and truly so called?

If there is, what is it?

How may a man qualify himself, so as to be able to judge for himself of the other religions professed in the world, to settle his own opinions in disputable matters, and then to enjoy tranquility of mind, neither disturbing others, nor being disturbed at what passes among them?

With what view you did this⁠—whether in expectation of some little degree of satisfaction, or merely to try my abilities, or (which I rather

Suppose a chain hung down out of the heavens from an unknown height, and though every link of it gravitated toward the earth, and what it hung upon was not visible, yet it did not descend, but kept its situation, and upon this a question should arise: “What supported or kept up this chain?” Would it be a sufficient answer to say that the first (or lowest) link hung upon the second (or that next above it), the second, or rather the first and second together, upon the third, and so on ad infinitum? For what holds up the whole? A chain of ten links would fall down, unless something able to bear it hindered; one of twenty, if not stayed by something of a yet greater strength, in proportion to the increase of weight; and therefore one of infinite links certainly, if not sustained by something infinitely strong, and capable to bear up an infinite weight. And thus it is in a chain of causes and effects tending, or, as it were, gravitating, towards some end. The last (or lowest) depends, or (as one may say) is suspended upon, the cause above it; this again, if it be not the first cause, is suspended as an effect upon something above it, etc. And if they should be infinite, unless (agreeably to what has been said) there is some cause upon which all hang or depend, they would be but an infinite effect without an efficient: and to assert

Who impressed it?

What a vast field for contemplation is here opened! Such regions of matter about us, in which there is not the least particle that does not carry with it an argument of God’s existence; not the least stick or straw, or other trifle that falls to the ground, but shows it; not the slightest motion produced, the least whisper of the air, but tells it.

XIV. The frame and constitution of the world, the magnificence of it, the various phenomena and kinds of beings, the uniformity observed in the productions of things, the uses and ends for which they serve, etc., do all show that there is some Almighty designer, an infinite wisdom and power at the top of all these things: such marks there are of both.208 or, God is that Being, without whom such a frame or constitution of the world, such a magnificence in it, etc., could not be. In order to prove to anyone the grandness of this fabric of the world, one needs only to bid him consider the sun, with that insupportable glory and lustre that surrounds it; to demonstrate the vast distance, magnitude, and heat of it; to represent to him the chorus of planets moving periodically, by uniform laws, in their several orbits about it, affording a regular variety of aspects, guarded some of them by secondary planets, and, as it were, emulating the state of the sun, and probably all possessed by proper inhabitants; to remind him of those surprising visits the comets make us, the large trains, or uncommon splendor, which attends them, the far country they come from, and the curiosity and horror they excite not only among us, but in the inhabitants of other planets, who also may be up to see the entry and progress of these ministers of fate; to direct his eye and contemplation through those azure fields and vast regions above him, up to the fixed stars, that radiant numberless host of

Fancy a man walking in some retired field, far from noise, and free from prejudice, to debate this matter with himself; and then judge whether such meditations as these would not be just: “I think I may be sure that neither lifeless matter, nor the vegetative tribe⁠—that stone, that flower, that tree⁠—have any reflex thoughts; nor do the sensitive animals⁠—that sheep, that ox⁠—seem to have any such thing, or but in the lowest degree, and in respect of present objects only. They do not reason, nor discourse. I may, therefore, certainly pretend to be something much above all these things. I not only apprehend and consider these external objects acting at present upon my nerves, but have ideas raised within myself of a higher order, and many: I can not only represent to myself things that are, or have been, but deduce many other from them, make excursions into futurity, and foresee much of what will be, or at least may be⁠—by strict thinking I had almost said, ‘get into another world beforehand’⁠—and, whether I shall live in some other state after death or not, I am certainly a being capable of such an expectation, and cannot but be solicitous about it; none of which things can be said of these clods, or those brutes. Can I then be designed for nothing further than just to eat, drink, sleep, walk about, and act upon this earth: that is, to have no further being than what these brutes have, so far beneath me? Can I be made capable of such great expectations, which those animals know nothing of (happier by far in this regard than I am, if we must die alike), only to be disappointed at last?