" The direct
object, therefore, of the design is, to supply motives, and not rules;
sanctions, and not precepts. And these were what mankind stood most in
need of. The members of civilised society can, in all ordinary cases,
judge tolerably well how they ought to act: but without a future state,
or, which is the same thing, without credited evidence of that state,
they want a motive to their duty; they want at least strength of motive
sufficient to bear up against the force of passion, and the temptation
of present advantage. Their rules want authority. The most important
service that can be rendered to human life, and that consequently which
one might expect beforehand would be the great end and office of a
revelation from God, is to convey to the world authorised assurances of
the reality of a future existence. And although in doing this, or by the
ministry of the same person by whom this is done, moral precepts or
examples, or illustrations of moral precepts, may be occasionally given
and be highly valuable, yet still they do not form the original purpose
of the mission.
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* Great and inestimably beneficial effects may accrue from the mission
of Christ, and especially from his death, which do not belong to
Christianity as a revelation: that is, they might have existed, and they
might have been accomplished, though we had never, in this life, been
made acquainted with them.
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