lours the most frightful, exhibit them to pub lic view under images the most tragical, as cribe them all to that horrid monster-the right of private judgment, and by these means endeavour to establish the old system, that destroyed men's lives, on the ruins of that new one, which benevolently proposed to save them. The weaker Protestants were intimidated by this vile bombast; and the wiser, who had been educated Papists, that is to say, whose tender minds had been perverted with a bad philosophy, and a worse divinity, were hard pressed with this idle argument. The famous Peter Viret, who was pastor of the reformed church Lyons, at this first appearance of the I, not only wrote against them; but, sorry to say, he did more, he joined with the archbishop's vicar in persecuting them. What a motley figure! The voice of Jacob, and the hands of Esau! we not signed; and all who refused to sign them they disowned, and persecuted out of their communities, Having done these things, not according to the pattern showed by their divine Master, in his plain and peaceful sermon on the Mount of Olives, Heb. viii. 5, but according to the arcana imperii of "the woman who sitteth on seven mountains and who reigneth over the kings of the earth," Rev. xvii. 9. 18, they boasted of enjoying as good a uniformity as that of which the Catholic church vaunted. If they, who first prosecuted these unrighteous measures in the Protestant churches, could have foreseen the dismal consequences of them, surely they must have lain in sackcloth and ashes, to lament their anti-christian zeal, which, by importing exotics from Rome, by planting them in reformed churches, and by flattering the magistracy into the dirty work of cultivating them, spoiled the growth of reason and religion, and cherished, under their deleterious shade, nothing but that unprofitable weed, implicit faith. Some of the more candid Protestants contented themselves with making two observations, which they thought were sufficient to answer the objections of Rome on this article. Let a dispassionate spectator cast his eye on First, they said, it is not true that there are the Christian world, and, when he has seen no religious controversies in the church of the rigorous measures that have been used to Rome; there are two hundred and thirty- establish, as it is called, the faith of the Reforseven contrarieties of doctrine among the Ro-mers, let him turn his eye to the church of mish divines. Secondly, if it were true, the quiet of the members of that church would prove their unity in the faith. A negative unanimity, that is, a freedom from religious differences, may proceed from ignorance, negligence, or fear: the two first resemble the quiet of night, where all are asleep; or the stillness of a church-yard, where all are dead; and the last the taciturnity of a slave under a tyrant's rod. These observations were not impertinent, for although none of our disputes are managed without humbling marks of human infirmity, yet, on a cool balance of accounts, it will appear, that the moral good produced by liberty of conscience is far greater than the moral evil suffered. Peevish tempers, and puerile mistakes mix with free inquiry, but without inquiry fair and free we should have no religion at all. Had the Protestants done only that with the writings of Moses and Paul, which they did with the writings of Homer and Tacitus, had they fetched them out of dusty holes in libraries, exposed them to public view, and left them to shift for themselves, their authenticity, we presume, would have shined with inimitable lustre; for fewer objections have lain against the book, than against the methods that have been used to enforce it. But that fatal notion of uniformity, this absurd dogma, unity in the faith is the test of a true church, misled those worthy men, and they adopted the spirit of persecution, that child of the "mother of abominations," Rev. xvii. 5, whom folly had produced, and whom cruelty had hitherto maintained. Rome on the one hand, and to sectaries on the other, and attend to the consequences of these measures among both. Catholics laugh at Protestant arguments against the infallibility of the Bishop of Rome. See, say they, mutant clypeos, the reformed have destroyed one Pope to create a hundred. Calvin is infallible at Geneva, Luther in Germany, in England Cranmer, and in Scotland Knox! How wise the doctrine of infallibility! how just and necessary the practice of the Inquisition! The pretended Protestants have tried in vain to govern churches without severity; they themselves, who have exclaimed the most violently against it, have been obliged to adopt it. Sectaries, on the other hand, avail themselves of these practices, and, not distinguishing between Christianity itself and the professors of it, charge that on the laws of our prince, which is chargeable only on the inadvertency of his subjects. Other times, other manners! Whether the reproaches of the Papists, the increase of learning, piety, and experience, or whatever else have meliorated the reformed churches, the French Protestants rarely persecute; and when they do, it is plain, they do that as a body in a synod, which not one of them would dare to avow as a private divine. Dangerous distinction! Should an upright man vote for a measure which he would blush to enforce! Should he not endeavour to abrogate canons, which, for the soul of him, he has not impiety enough to execute? Shall Protestants renounce that merchandise of Rome, which consists of ***odours, and ointments, and chariots, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and continue that more scandalous traffic which consists of "slaves and souls of men?" Rev. xviii. 12, 13. In order to vie with the church of Rome in point of uniformity, and to excel it in point of truth, the reformers extracted, what they pposed, the sense of Scripture; not on plain, obvious, essential truths; but on doctrines extremely perplexed and difficult; these extracts they called Confessions of Faith, these they "If a counsel, or a work, be of God, ye cannot overthrow it," Acts v. 38, 39, is one of the surest axioms in the world; and if there be such a thing in the world as dignity, that is, propriety of character, it must be in that Christian, who, disdaining every carnal weapon, maintains the truth of his religion by placid reasoning, and by a holy life. Other influence is unscriptural, and unnatural too. We may admire the genius of a Deist, avail ourselves of his learning, and lament his abuse of both: but we may not touch his person, his property, his liberty, his character, his peace. To his own Master he standeth or falleth." Rom. xiv. 4. We beg leave to subjoin three observations in regard to deism. Deists are not so numerous as some have imagined. Real Christians have occasioned violent prejudices against Christianity. Very few Deists have taken up the argument on its true grounds; and they, who have, could not support it. a Deists are not so numerous as some have imagined. Mons. de Voltaire has thought proper to inform his countrymen, in his Additions to his General History, that "Deism, which Charles II. seemed openly to profess, became the reigning religion" in England: that "the sect is become very numerous:" and that number of eminent writers have made open profession of deism." How this agreeable French writer came to know this, who can tell, if, as he affirms a little lower, "Deists allow a diversity of opinions in others, and seldom discover their own;" and, if Deists have only a private form of worship, each worshipping God in his own house, and assisting without scruple at all public ceremonies? Surely Mons. Voltaire mistook, he meant to describe a hypocrite, and not a Deist. If a Deist be one who, having examined the religion of nature, and the religion of Scripture, gives the preference to the former, and rejects the latter, it may be affirmed, I think, that the number of Deists is very small. In a comparative view, the number is too inconsiderable to be mentioned. The rank of a Herbert, the wit of a Shaftesbury, the style of a Bolingbroke, the scurrilous buffoonery of a Woolston, along with the wisdom and piety of the Lockes, and Lelands, and Lardners, who have opposed them, have given a name to deism; but the number of its professors is trifling, and of no account. If Mons. de Voltaire meant to relate an historical fact, he ought to have enumerated the numerous professors of Christianity, and the eminent writers in defence of it, and then the numerous professors of deism would have diminished and disappeared. If he meant to give a sanction to deism on account of its numerous defenders, he is a fresh example of that weakness, to which great philosophers are sometimes subject, the weakness of sacrificing a sound logic to a silly prejudice. Two sorts of people are fond of multiplying Deists; Bigots, and Deists themselves. Deists take the liberty of associating with themselves Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, and all the ancient philosophers. They first suppose that these philosophers would have rejected revelation, had it been proposed to them, and then they speak of them as if they had actually rejected it. But, if the gospel be not a system of absurdity, adapted to credulity, the probability is greater that they would have re ceived, than that they would have rejected it; and if, as Lord Bolingbroke says, "it must be admitted, that Plato insinuates, in many places, the want, or the necessity of a divine revelation, to discover the external service God requires, and the expiation for sin, and to give stronger assurances of the rewards and punishments that await men in another world;" it becomes highly probable, that Plato would have embraced the Christian revelation; and were the testimony of Jesus Christ admissible, it is absolutely certain, that, "if the mighty works, which were done in Judea, had been done among the heathens, many heathens would have repented of Paganism in sackcloth and ashes," Matt. xi. 21, &c. To the army of philosophers they add all those Christians, who do not understand, or who do not practise, the dictates of Christianity. With this hypothetical reasoning they attack Christianity, and boast of numbers, while all their votaries are so few, that a child may write them. Bigots, who make Scripture, and their sense of it, the same thing, practise the same pious fraud, and turn over all those to the deistical party, who do not allow their doctrines. Hence the popular notion of the multiplicity of Deists. From the charge of deism, first, the populace ought to be freed. Too many of them live without any religion. The religion of nature is as unknown to them as the religion of Scripture. When they think of religion, their error is credulity, and their spiritual guides soon find, that the believing of too much, and not the believing of too little, is their mistake. They are wicked: but they are not Deists; for the term deism surely stands for admitting the religion of nature, as well as for the renouncing of revelation. But of both, in general, they are alike ignorant. They, who renounce popular doctrines, are not therefore Deists. The learned and pious Dr. Bekker, one of the pastors at Amsterdam, renounced the popular opinion of the power of the devil, and published a book against it in 1691. He seemed to doubt also of the eternity of hell-torments. He was reputed a Deist, and the consistory, the classes, and the synods, proceeded against him, suspended him first from the communion, and deposed him at last from the office of a minister. Yet Dr. Bekker was a fast friend of revelation, and all his crime lay in expounding some literal passages of revelation allegorically. Not the book: but the received meaning of it, he denied. The Deists ought not to claim them, who affirm, that it is not the property of the truths of revelation to square with philosophy. Mons. Voltaire takes Pomponatius for a Deist. Pomponatius denied the natural immortality of the soul; he affirmed, that it could not be proved by principles of philosophy: but he believed, and maintained the immortality of the soul on the testimony of revelation. This learned E Italian philosopher was persecuted by the monks; his book, it is said, was burnt by the Venetians; and the modern Deists have adopted him; yet Pomponatius was a believer of revelation, and, by believing the immortality of the soul on the testimony of Scripture, he discovered the most profound veneration for it, a deference exactly similar to that which trini tarians pay to its testimony concerning the nature of God. fences of it. One single rule, had it been thought worthy of that attention which it me rits, would have spared the writing of many a folio, and have freed some Christians from many a religious reverie.* Yet the author of this piece of criticism, the great Le Clerc, has been, by some of his bigotted countrymen, accounted a Deist. What Pomponatius affirmed of the immortality of the soul, Bayle affirmed of all the mysteries of the gospel; but we do not allow that Bayle was therefore a Deist. Thus he writes: "If one of the apostles, St. Paul for instance, when among the Athenians, had besought the Areopagus to permit him to enter Finally, we cannot resign those brightest orthe lists against all philosophers; had he offer-naments of the Christian church, whose sense ed to maintain a disputation upon the three and grace will not allow them to be dogmatipersons, who are but one God; and if, before cal, and who hesitate about some doctrines gehe began the disputation, he had acknowledg-nerally received by their own communities. The ed the truth of the rules laid down by Aristotle celebrated Philip Melancthon has been taxed in his logic, whether, with regard to the terms with scepticism: but far be the imputation from of opposition, or the characteristics of the him! "He was one of the wisest and best men premises of a demonstrative syllogism, &c.: of his age," says a certain historian; "he was of lastly, if, after these preliminaries were well a sweet, peaceful disposition, had a great deal settled, he had answered, that our reason is of wit, had read much, and his knowledge was too weak to ascend to the knowledge of the very extensive. The combination of such mysteries in opposition to which objections qualities, natural and acquired, is ordinarily a were proposed to him; in such a case, he foundation for diffidence. Melancthon was by 7 would have suffered as much shame, as it is no means free from doubts, and there were possible for a defeated opponent to meet with. abundance of subjects, upon which he durst The Athenian philosophers must have gained not pronounce this is so, and it cannot be othera complete victory; for he would have been wise. He lived among a sect of people, who judged and condemned agreeably to the max- to him appeared passionate, and too eager to ims, the truth of which he had acknowledged mix the arts of human policy, and the authorbefore. But had the philosophers employed ity of the secular arm, with the affairs of the those maxims in attacking him, after he had church. His tender conscience made him informed them of the foundation of his faith, afraid that this might be a mark of reprobahe might have opposed the following barrier tion. (Although he drew up the Augsburg to them; that his doctrines were not within the Confession, yet he hated disputes in religion, cognizance of reason; that they had been re- and when his mother asked him how she vealed by heaven; and that mankind must be- should conduct her belief amidst so many conlieve them, though they could not comprehend troversies, continue, answered he, to believe them. The disputation, in order for its being and pray as you have hitherto done, and let i carried on in a regular manner, must not have these wars of controversy give you no manner turned upon the following question, whether of trouble." This is the Melancthon who was these doctrines were repugnant to the rules of suspected of deisin! logic and metaphysics: but on the question, whether they had been revealed by heaven. It would have been impossible for St. Paul to have been defeated, except it could have been proved to him, that God did not require those things to be believed."* This reasoning does not appear to favour deism; it seems to place the mysteries of Christianity on their true base. Neither are those to be reputed Deists, who When some atheists appeared in the Jewish doubt, or deny, the inspiration of some books church, and attacked the knowledge and worwhich are usually accounted sacred. Luther de-ship of God, the people of God were intimidatnied the inspiration of the Epistle to St. James; ed: but, the royal Psalmist justly observes, Grotius that of the Song of Solomon; and " 'They were in great fear, where no fear was," Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, denied that Psal. liii. 5. Similar events have produced the Apocalypse was written by the Apostle similar fears in the Christian church, and to John; yet no one of these was a Deist. these honest, but ignorant fears, we ascribe the much greater part of those pious frauds with which Christians have disgraced the cause of God. Most of the fathers, most of the church of Rome, and some Protestant churches, have treated Christianity like an old crazy palace, which requires props or supporters on every side; and they have manifested great injudiciousness in the choice of supporters. The gospel stands like a stately, sturdy oak, defying the attack of every storm: but they, who had Nor ought the Deist to claim those learned critics, who allow that the Scriptures have un12 dergone the fate of all other books, and who, therefore, expose and amend the errors of copyists, expunge interpolations, restore mutilated passages, and deal with the writings of St. Paul as they do with the writings of Thucydides. The chronology, the geography, the history, the learning of the Bible, (if the expression be not improper) must necessarily submit to a critical investigation, and upright critics have self-evident rules of trial. The most severe piece of criticism on revelation is at the same time one of the most excellent de Gen. Dict. vol. x. Illustration upon the Manichees. Several more classes might be added to these: but these are sufficient to prove that real Deists are not by far so numerous as reputed ones. The cause of deism, unsupported by reason, may magnify its little all: but the cause of revelation has little to fear from the learning, less from the morality, and nothing from the number of its opponents. * Mons. Le Clerc expresses this rule thus: Multa viders emphasin habent.-Ars. Crit. tom. 1. p. 2. s. i. c. 4. This in versionibus emphatica, quæ in ipsis fontibus nullam rule of interpretation, which regards the idiom of a language, deserves more attention, it should seem, than hath been usually paid to it. pitched their tent bene.. s shade, heard a | mons, well know, that there are in the twelve rustling among the leave. trembled for the volumes many more on the same topics: but, as fate of the tree, and, to sec. 9 it, surrounded it was impossible to put them all into one voit with a plantation of oziers. To this igno- lume, I have been obliged to make the best rant timidity, and not to the base tricks of kna- choice in my power, and have arranged them very, the sordid arts of a sorry avarice, or the in the following order:barbarous pleasure of shedding human blood, we charitably attribute the greatest absurdities in the Christian church. These absurdities, however, have produced very bad effects, and they oblige us to own, that real Christians have occasioned violent prejudices against Christianity. The first sermon contains a set of rules es-sentially necessary to the investigating of truth, and a few reasons to enforce the practice of them. The second proposes an examination of the truths of Christianity, and settles rules of disputation peculiar to this controversy. The facts follow in the succeeding sermons, the birth, the ministry, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, &c. Four of the last discourses expose infidelity and recommend Christianity; and thelast of all is an exhortation to him who is supposed to have found the gospel of Christ, to hold it fast, as a system of truth, and to avoid those snares, into which Christians are liable to May our readers "have these things always in remembrance; for we have not followed cunningly devised fables," 2 Pet. i. 15, &c. but a sure word of prophecy, history and precept, which holy men of God spake, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Some Christians have endeavoured to support the cause of Christianity by spurious books; some by juggling tricks, called miracles; some by the imposition of superstitious ceremonies; some by the propagation of absurd doctrines; some have pretended to explain it by a wretched philosophy; others have exposed it to derision under pretence of adorning it with allego-be drawn. ry; some have pleaded for it by fines, and fires, and swords; others have incorporated it with civil interests; most have laid down false canons of interpretation, and have resembled that synod which condemned the aforementioned Dr. Bekker, because he "had explained the holy Scriptures so as to make them contrary to the Catechism, and particularly to the Articles of Faith which he had himself subscribed." Above all, the loose lives of the professors of Christianity, and particularly of some of the ministers of it, have "covered the daughter of Sion with a cloud, and have cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel." Lam. ii. 1. Involve Christianity in all these thick mists, surround it with all these phenomena, call a weak eye, or a wicked heart, to contemplate it, and, without a spirit of prophecy, the discovery may be foretold; the observer will bea philosopher come a reasoner a DEIST. These are the topics, and not the gospel itself, which most Deists have attacked: but if we agree to exonerate Christianity of all these incumbrances; what have Deists to answer? Very few of them have taken up the argument on its true grounds, and they who have could not support it. *Three times have I taken pen in hand to account to my subscribers in a preface for my choice of the sermons that compose this vo lume. But one thought hath as often confused me at the outset, and obliged me to lay it aside. I am struck with an idea of the different degrees of labour necessary to two men, one of whom should conceive the project of disuniting Christians, and the other that of cementing them together in mutual love. The first need not trouble himself with study, examination, and argument; he would not be obliged either to divest himself of his own prepossessions, or to expose those of others; he need not sit whole nights and days either to examine his own theses, or impartially to weigh those of his opponents: let him only take popular prejudices, cover them with the sacred style of Scripture, or conceal them under the impenetrable jargon of the schools; let him animate them with party spirit, call it religious zeal, and denounce judgment on all who do not believe the whole to be essential to salvation; and When a Frenchman undertakes to attack the work will be done. Such a man, I think, Christianity, the disputes of his countrymen resembles a light-heeled enemy, tripping over afford him an ample supply; he borrows arms a spacious field, and scattering, as he goes, the of every party of Christians, he conquers Po- seeds of an endless number of weeds: while the pery with Protestant weapons, opposes the vi- man, who adopts a contrary plan, must be forc sions of quietism with the subtleties of Janse-ed, like the patient prying weeder, to stoop and nism, the mysteries of Jansenias with the laws of good sense; and, having defeated absurdity, he vainly imagines he has obtained a victory over Christianity. English Deists have taken the same method, and as our country has the same excesses, they have an ample field of glory before them. Christianity has nothing to do with the errors of St. Austin, or the dreams of Madam Bourignon; but it is founded on a few facts, the evidence of which can never be disproved. The knowledge of these is a preservative against Deism toil, step by step, day after day, feeling many a pain, and fetching many a sigh, to pull the noxious produce up. According to my first proposal, this volume ought to consist of sermons on the doctrines of Christianity. My intimate friends, who first encouraged, and subscribed for this translation, thoroughly understood me: but I might have foreseen, that their partiality would procure other purchasers, unacquainted with my notions of men and things, and who probably might expect to find each his own system of To establish these facts was the original de-religion in a volume of sermons on the doc -sign of Monsieur Saurin in the following ser- trines of our common Lord. I am necessitat- mons, as it is mine in endeavouring to translate * Here commences Mr. Robinson's preface to the third -them. Those who are acquainted with his ser- volume of the first edition. ed therefore to explain myself, and to bespeak demonstration, and insensible to the most raa candid attention, while I endeavour to do so. tional and affecting persuasion. These posiVery early in life I was prepossessed in fa- tions, mere opinions and prepossessions before vour of the following positions:-Christianity examination, became demonstrative truths > is a religion of divine origin-a religion of di-after a course of diligent search; and these gevine origin must needs be a perfect religion,neral principles have operated in the choice of and answer all the ends, for which it was re-the sermons, which compose this volume of the vealed, without human additions. The Chris-principal doctrines of Christianity. tian religion has undergone considerable altera But, previous to all inquiries concerning the tions since the times of Jesus Christ and his doctrines of Christianity, it is absolutely neapostles, and yet, Jesus Christ was then account-cessary to establish that of CHRISTIAN LIBERTY; ed the finisher, as well as the author of faith, for, say what we will, if this preliminary docHeb. xii. 2. The doctrines of revelation, as trine of right be disallowed, voluntary piety is they lie in the inspired writings, differ very the dream of an enthusiast; the oracles of God much from the same doctrines, as they lie in in the Christian world, like those of the Sybils creeds of human composition. The moral pre-in pagan Rome, are sounds convertible to secepts, the positive institutes, and the religious natorial sense; and the whole Christian mission, affections, which constitute the devotion of from the first prophet down to the last minismost modern Christians, form a melancholy ter, is one long muster-roll of statesmen's contrast to those, which are described by the tools, a disgrace to their species, a contradicguides, whom they profess to follow. The light tion to their profession, a dishonour to their of nature, and that of revelation; the opera-God! tions of right reason, the spirit of the first, and Christian liberty in Italy, is liberty to be a the influence of the Holy Ghost, the soul of Roman Catholic, that is, liberty to believe what the last: both proceeding from the same uni--the bishop of Rome affirms to be true, and liform Supreme Being, cannot be supposed to be-berty to perform what he commands to be destructive of each other, or, even in the least done. Christian liberty in some reformed degree, to clash together. The finest idea, that churches is liberty to renounce what the refor can be formed of the Supreme Being, is that ofmers renounced, to believe what they affirmed, an infinite intelligence always in harmony with itself: and, accordingly, the best way of proving the truth of revelation is that of showing the analogy of the plan of redemption to that of creation and providence Simplicity and maJesty characterize both nature and Scripture: simplicity reduces those benefits, which are essential to the real happiness of man, to the size of all mankind; majesty makes a rich provision for the employment and superadded felicity of a few superior geniuses, who first improve themselves, and then felicitate their inferior brethren by simplifying their own ideas, by refining and elevating those of their fellow creatures, by so establishing a social intercourse, consolidating fraternal love, and along with it all the reciprocal ties, that unite man- kind. Men's ideas of objects essential to their happiness, are neither so dissimilar nor so numerous, as inattentive spectators are apt to suppose. Variety of sentiment, which is the life of society, cannot be destructive of real religion. Mere mental errors, if they be not entirely innocent in the account of the Supreme The object of Christian liberty, that, with Governor of mankind, cannot be, however, which a man, who would examine Christianiobjects of blame and punishment among men. ty, has to do, is a system of Christian doctrine: Christianity could never be intended to destroy but, having established the doctrine of right, the natural rights, or even to diminish the na-before we proceed to exercise this right by extural privileges of mankind. That religion, Lamining the religion proposed to mankind by which allows the just claims, and secures the Jesus Christ, it is absolutely necessary to insocial happiness of all mankind, must needs bequire what we ought, on sound principles of a better religion than that, which provides for just and fair reasoning, to expect to find in it. only a part at the expense of the rest. God is I know some truths without revelation I more glorified by the good actions of his crea-have a full demonstration in nature, that there tures, expressive of homage to him, and pro is one God-that it is impossible there should ductive of universal, social good, than he is by be more than one-that he is an intelligent uncertain conjectures, or even accurate no spirit-and that he is a wise and bountiful tions, which originate in self-possession and Being. Should any religion, which pretends terminate in social disunion How clear soever to be divine, affirm that there is a plurality of all these maxims may be, a certain degree of gods; God is not an intelligent Spirit-God is ambition or avarice, ignorance or malice, pre- an unwise and an unkind being-I should have sumption or diffidence, or any other irregular a right to reject this pretended revelation. Inpassion, will render a man blind to the clearest deed, should a revealed religion allow my de VOL. I.-4 2 and to practice what they required. But we f |