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Nottingham, King, Barrington, Lyttelton, with an hundred other laymen, who were surely as eminent for their literary attainments in every kind of science as either Bolingbroke or Voltaire, were professed believers of Christianity. I am quite aware that the truth of Chriftianity cannot be established by authorities; but neither can its falsehood be so established. Arguments ad verecundiam have little weight with those who know how to use any others, but they have weight with the lazy and the ignorant on both fides of the question. But though I have here suggested to young men a ready answer to fuch of their profligate acquaintance as may wish to work upon their prejudices in favour of infidelity; yet I hope they will not content themselves with being prejudiced even in favour of Christianity: they will find in this Collection, fuch folid arguments in support of its truth, as cannot fail to confirm them, on the most rational grounds, in the belief of the Gofpel Dispensation. They may wonder, perhaps, if religion be so useful a thing as is here represented, that their parents should have feldom or never conversed with them on the fubject. If this should be the fact, I can only say, that it is a neglect, of all others, the most to be regretted. And indeed our mode of education, as to religious knowledge, is very defective; the child is instructed in its catechism before it is able to comprehend its meaning, and that is usually all the domestic inftruction which it ever receives. But whatever may be the negligence of parents in teaching their children Christianity, or how forcibly foever the maxims and customs of the world may conspire in confirming men in infidelity, it is the duty of those to whom the Education of youth is intrusted, not to defpair: their diligence will have its use; it will prevent a bad matter from becoming worse; and if this foolishness of preaching, into which I have been betrayed on this occafion, has but the effect of making even one young man of fortune examine into the truth of the Christian Religion, who would not otherwise have done it, I shall not repent the having been instant out of season.

Discite, O Miseri, et causas cognofcite rerum
Quid fumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur: ordo
Quis datus; quem te Deus efsse

Juffit.

These were questions which even the Heathen Moralifts thought it a shame for a man never to have confidered. How much more cenfurable are those amongst ourselves who waste their days in

folly folly or vice, without ever reflecting upon the providential difpensation under which they live, without having any fublimer piety, any purer morality, any better hopes of futurity than the Heathens had?

In recommending this Collection to the careful perusal of the younger Clergy, I would not be understood to vouch for the truth of every opinion which is contained in it; by no means; there is no certainty of truth but in the word of God. Their Bible is the only fure foundation upon which they ought to build every article of the faith which they profess, every point of doctrine which they teach. All other foundations, whether they be the decifions of councils, the confeffions of churches, the prescripts of popes, or the expositions of private men, ought to be confidered by them as sandy and unsafe, as in no wise fit to be ultimately relied on. Nor, on the other hand, are they to be fastidiously rejected, as of no use; for though the Bible be the one infallible rule by which we must measure the truth or falsehood of every religious opinion, yet all men are not equally fitted to apply this rule; and the wisest men want on many occasions all the helps of human learning to enable them to understand its precise nature, and to define its certain extent. These helps are great and numerous; they have been supplied in every age, since the death of Christ, by the united labours of learned men in every country where his religion has been received. Great Britain has not been backward in her endeavours to establish the truth, and to illustrate the doctrines of Christianity: she has not abounded fo much in systematic Divines as Germany and Holland have done; yet the most difficult points of Theology have been as well difcuffed by our English Divines, as by those of any other nation. In proof of this, I might mention the works of Pearson, Mede, Barrow, Burnet, Chillingworth, Stillingfleet, Clarke, Tillotson, Taylor, Benson, Jortin, Secker, and an hundred others; but the fermons preached at Boyle's Lecture, and the Collection of Tracts against Popery, render every other argument in support of the observation wholly unnecessary. The freedom of inquiry too, which has subsisted in this country during the present century, has eventually been of great service to the cause of Chriftianity. It must be acknowledged that the works of our Deistical writers have made some few converts to infidelity at home, and that they have furnished the Esprits forts of France, and the Frey-Geisters of Germany, with every material objection to our religion, which they have of late years displayed with much affectation of originality: but at the same time, we must needs allow, that

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that these works have stimulated fome distinguished characters amongst the Laity, and many amongst the Clergy, to exert their talents in removing such difficulties in the Chriftian system, as would otherwise be likely to perplex the unlearned, to shipwreck the faith of the unstable, and to induce a reluctant scepticism into the minds of the most serious and best intentioned. Some difficulties still remain; and it would be a miracle greater than any we are instructed to believe, if there remained none; if a being with but five scanty inlets of knowledge, feparated but yesterday from his mother Earth, and to-day sinking again into her bosom, could fathom the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of Him which is, which was, and which is to come, the Lord God Almighty, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and

ever.

We live in a diffolute but enlightened age; the restraints of our Religion are ill fuited to the profligacy of our manners; and men are foon induced to believe that system to be false, which we wish to find so: that knowledge, moreover, which spurns with contempt the illusions of fanaticism and the tyranny of fuperftition, is often unhappily misemployed, in magnifying every little difficulty attending the proof of the truth Chriftianity, into an irrefragable argument of its falsehood. The Chriftian Religion has nothing to apprehend from the strictest investigation of the most learned of its adverfaries; it fuffers only from the misconceptions of sciolifts, and filly pretenders to fuperior wisdom: a little learning is far more dangerous to the faith of those who possess it, than ignorance itself. Some, I know, affect to believe, that as the restoration of letters was ruinous to the Romish Religion, so the further cultivation of them will be fubverfive of Chriftianity itself: of this there is no danger. It may be subversive of the Reliques of the Church of Rome by which other churches are still polluted; of persecutions, of anathemas, of ecclesiastical domination over God's heritage, of all the filly outworks which the pride, the fuperftition, the knavery of mankind have erected around the citadel of our faith; but the citadel itself is founded on a rock, the gates of hell cannot prevail against it, its master-builder is God; its beauty will be found ineffable, and its strength impregnable, when it shall be freed from the frippery of human ornaments, cleared from the rubbish of human bulwarks. It is no small part of the province of a teacher of Christianity, to diftinguish between the word of God, and the additions which men have made to it. The objections of unbelievers are frequently levelled against what is not Chriftianity, Christianity, but mere human system; and he will be beft able to defend the former, who is least studious to support the airy pretenfions of the latter. The effect of established systems in obstructing truth, is to the last degree deplorable: every one sees it in other churches, but scarcely any one suspects it in his own. Calvin, I question not, thought it almost impossible that the Scriptures could ever have been fo far perverted as to afford the Romanists any handle for their doctrine of Transubstantiation, or that the understanding of any human being could have been fo far debased, or rather so utterly annihilated, as to believe in it for a moment: yet this fame Calvin followed St. Augustine in the doctrine of absolute personal reprobation and election, inculcating it as a fundamental article of faith, with nearly the fame unchristian zeal which infatuated him when he fastened Servetus to the stake. A thousand instances of this blind attachment to system might be taken from the Ecclefiaftical History of every century; indeed the whole of it is little more than the hiftory of the struggles of different sects to overturn the systems of others, in order to build up their own; and the great lesson which every sect, and every individual of every fect, ought to learn from its perufal, is-Moderation. Want of genuine moderation towards those who differ from us in religious opinions, seems to be the most unaccountable thing in the world. Every man, who has any religion at all, feels within himself a stronger motive to judge right, than you can possibly suggest to him; and, if he judges wrong, what is that to you? To his own master he standeth or falleth; his wrong judgment may affect his own falvation, it cannot affect yours; for, in the words of Tertullian--nec alii obest aut prodest alterius religio: this you must admit, unless you think it your duty to instruct him; but instruction may be given with moderation; and confidering that the Bible is as open to him as it is to you, you ought not to be over certain that it is your duty to press your inftruction upon him; for what is, ordinarily speaking, your instruction, but an attempt to bring him over to your opinion? This principle should be received with great caution, or it may do much mischief; for it is on this principle that the Roman Catholics light up the fires of the inquisition, and compass sea and land to make a profelyte-a proselyte! to what we Protestants believe to be the delusion of Satan, the very canker of Chriftianity, the grand apostasy from the Gospel foretold by St. Paul. The Catholics however in this point act consistently; for, believing in the infallibility of their church, they have a plea for their zeal in bringing every one within its pale, which can never be urged by Protestants, with any shadow of justice and propriety.

There are many questions in Divinity, in the investigating of which the mind fluctuates with an irksome uncertainty, unable to perceive fuch a preponderance of argument as will warrant it in embracing as true, either the one side or the other. This hefitation arises, in many cases, from our not understanding the full meaning of the language, be it common or figurative, in which a doctrine is revealed. In fome, it proceeds from our attempting to apprehend definitely, what is expressed indeterminately or clearly, what God hath not thought proper clearly to reveal; in others, it is to be attributed to an indecision of temper, to which some men are peculiarly subject: but let it originate from what cause it may, it is far more tolerable than an arrogant temerity of judgment. A fufpicion of fallibility would have been an useful principle to the profeffors of Chriftianity in every age; it would have choaked the spirit of persecution in its birth, and have rendered not only the church of Rome, but every church in Christendom, more shy of affuming to itself the proud title of Orthodox, and of branding every other with the opprobrious one of Heterodox, than any of them have hitherto been. There are, you will say, doubtless, fome fundamental doctrines in Chriftianity.-Paul, the Apostle, has laid down one foundation; and he tells us, that other foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jefus-The Christ. But this propofition--Jesus is the Meffiah-includes, you will reply, feveral others, which are equally true. I acknowledge that it does fo; and it is every man's duty to search the Scriptures, that he may know what those truths are; but I do not conceive it to be any man's duty, to anathematize those who cannot fubfcribe to his catalogue of fundamental Christian verities. That man is not to be esteemed an Atheist, who acknowledges the existence of a God, the Creator of the universe, though he cannot assent to all the truths of natural religion, which other men may undertake to deduce from that principle: nor is he to be esteemed a Deist, who acknowledges that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world, though he cannot affent to all the truths of revealed religion, which other men may think themselves warranted in deducing from thence. Still you will probably rejoin, there must be many truths in the Christian religion, concerning which no one ought to hesitate, inasmuch as, without a belief in them, he cannot be reputed a Christian. - Reputed! by whom? By Jefus

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