PREFACE,

BY THE REV. ROBERT ROBINSON.

THAT spirit of inquiry which produced the Reformation, operated in France, as in other countries, and gave being to an endless variety of different sentiments of religion. All the reformers, however, agreed in one grand article, that is, in substituting the authority of the holy Scriptures in the place of the infallibility of the Bishop of Rome.

The elevation of an obscure book, (for such, to the shame of Popery, the Bible had been,) to the dignity of a supreme judge, whose decisions were final, and from which there lay no appeal, naturally excited the attention of some who were capable, and of many who thought themselves so, to examine the authenticity of so extraordinary a book. At the Reformation, the infallibility of the Pope was the popular inquiry; and, after it, the infallibility of Jesus Christ came under consideration. Curiosity and conscience concurred to search, and several circumstances justified the inquiry. Many spurious books had been propagated in the world: the Jewish nation, and the Romish church, paid as much regard to tradition as to the holy Scriptures: Protestants derived different, and even contrary doctrines, from the same Scriptures; the authenticity of some books of both Testaments had never been universally acknowledged, and the points in litigation were of the last importance. These considerations excited the industry of a multitude of critics. One examined the chronology of the Bible, another the geography of it, a third its natural philosophy, a fourth its history; one tried its purity by the rules of grammar, another measured its style by the laws of rhetoric; and a most severe scrutiny the book underwent.

"The first class believe the existence of a Supreme Being, who made the world, but who does not at all concern himself in the management of it.

"The second consists of those who believe, not only the being, but also the providence of God with respect to the natural world; but who, not allowing any difference between moral good and evil, deny that God takes any no tice of the morally good or evil actions of men; these things depending, as they imagine, on the arbitrary constitution of human laws.

"The third sort, having right apprehensions concerning the natural attributes of God, and his all-governing Providence, and some notion of his moral perfections also, yet being prejudiced against the notion of the immortality of the human soul, believe that men perish entirely at death, and that one generation shall perpetually succeed another, without any future restoration, or renovation of things.

"The fourth consists of those who believe the existence of a Supreme Being, together with his providence in the government of the world, as also the obligations of natural religion: but so far only as these things are discoverable by the light of nature alone, without believing any divine revelation. These last are the only true Deists!"

The rise of the Deists, along with that of other sects and parties among the reformed churches, seemed to confirm one argument of the Roman Catholics against the Reformation When the Reformers had pleaded for the sufficiency of revelation, and for the private right of judging of its meaning, the divines of the church of Rome had always replied, that unanimity in the faith is the test of the true church of Christ; that the church of Rome had always enjoyed such a unity: that the allowance of liberty of conscience would produce innumerable opinions; that people of the same sentiments would associate for the support and propagation of their pretended faith; and that, consequently, religious parties would counteract one another, to the entire subversion of Christianity itself. Hence they No sooner had Charles IX. published the inferred the absurdity of that principle on first edict of pacification in France, in 1562, which Protestantism stood, and the absolute than there appeared at Lyons, along with necessity of a living infallible judge of religi many other sects, a party who called them-ous truths. The event above-mentioned seemselves DEISTS. The edict provided, that no person should be prosecuted on account of matters of conscience, and this sect claimed the benefit of it.

Nothing came to pass in this inquiry but what might have been expected. Some defended the book by solid, and some by silly arguments; while others reprobated it, as void of any rational proof at all. There are prerequisites essential to the investigation of truth, and it is hardly credible, that, all who examined, or who pretended to examine, the divinity of the Christian canon, possessed them.

Deists differ so much from one another, that it is hard to define the term Deism, and to say precisely what the word stands for. Dr. Samuel Clarke takes the denomination in the most extensive signification, and distinguishes Deists into four classes.

ed to confirm this reasoning.

When these ideas entered the mind of a man of fruitful genius in the church of Rome, they operated in the most eccentric manner imaginable. A popular orator, or, who did ten times more mischief, a court-chaplain, would collect a few real improprieties among Protestants, subjoin a thousand more irregularities of his own invention, mere creatures of his superstitious fancy, paint them in co

lours the most frightful, exhibit them to pub-signed; and all who refused to sign them they lic view under images the most tragical, as- disowned, and persecuted out of their commucribe them all to that horrid monster-the nities. 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 at Lyons, at this first appearance of the Deists, not only wrote against them; but, we are 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!

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 not 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 great-lently against it, have been obliged to adopt er 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.

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 supposed, 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

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 vio

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.

"If a counsel, or a work, be of God, ye cannot overthrow it," Acta 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

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 Two sorts of people are fond of multiplying by principles of philosophy: but he believed, Deists; Bigots, and Deists themselves. De- and maintained the immortality of the soul on ists take the liberty of associating with them- the testimony of revelation. This learned selves Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, and all Italian philosopher was persecuted by the the ancient philosophers. They first suppose monks; his book, it is said, was burnt by the that these philosophers would have rejected Venetians; and the modern Deists have adoptrevelation, had it been proposed to them, and ed him; yet Pomponatius was a believer of rethen they speak of them as if they had actu- velation, and, by believing the immortality of ally rejected it. But, if the gospel be not a the soul on the testimony of Scripture, he dissystem of absurdity, adapted to credulity, the covered the most profound veneration for it, a probability is greater that they would have re-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 merits, 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, ha been, by some of his bigotted countrymen, accounted a Deist.

and grace will not allow them to be dogmatical, and who hesitate about some doctrines generally received by their own communities. The celebrated Philip Melancthon has been taxed with scepticism: but far be the imputation from him! "He was one of the wisest and best men of his age," says a certain historian; "he was of a sweet, peaceful disposition, had a great deal of wit, had read much, and his knowledge was very extensive. The combination of such qualities, natural and acquired, is ordinarily a foundation for diffidence. Melancthon was by no means free from doubts, and there were abundance of subjects, upon which he durst not pronounce this is so, and it cannot be otherwise. He lived among a sect of people, who to him appeared passionate, and too eager to mix the arts of human policy, and the authority of the secular arm, with the affairs of the church. His tender conscience made him afraid that this might be a mark of reprobation. Although he drew up the Augsburg Confession, yet he hated disputes in religion, and when his mother asked him how she should conduct her belief amidst so many controversies, continue, answered he, to believe and pray as you have hitherto done, and let these wars of controversy give you no manner of trouble." This is the Melancthon who was suspected of deisin!

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 persons, who are but one God; and if, before he began the disputation, he had acknowledged the truth of the rules laid down by Aristotle in his logic, whether, with regard to the terms of opposition, or the characteristics of the premises of a demonstrative syllogism, &c.: lastly, if, after these preliminaries were well settled, he had answered, that our reason is too weak to ascend to the knowledge of the mysteries in opposition to which objections were proposed to him; in such a case, he would have suffered as much shame, as it is possible for a defeated opponent to meet with. The Athenian philosophers must have gained a complete victory; for he would have been judged and condemned agreeably to the maxims, the truth of which he had acknowledged before. But had the philosophers employed those maxims in attacking him, after he had informed them of the foundation of his faith, he might have opposed the following barrier to them; that his doctrines were not within the cognizance of reason; that they had been revealed by heaven; and that mankind must believe them, though they could not comprehend them. The disputation, in order for its being carried on in a regular manner, must not have turned upon the following question, whether these doctrines were repugnant to the rules of 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 doubt, or deny, the inspiration of some books which are usually accounted sacred. Luther denied the inspiration of the Epistle to St. James; Grotius that of the Song of Solomon; and Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, denied that the Apocalypse was written by the Apostle John; yet no one of these was a Deist.

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.

When some atheists appeared in the Jewish church, and attacked the knowledge and worship of God, the people of God were intimidated: but, the royal Psalmist justly observes, "They were in great fear, where no fear was," Psal. liii. 5. Similar events have produced similar fears in the Christian church, and to these honest, but ignorant fears, we ascribe the Nor ought the Deist to claim those learned much greater part of those pious frauds with critics, who allow that the Scriptures have un- which Christians have disgraced the cause of dergone the fate of all other books, and who, God. Most of the fathers, most of the church therefore, expose and amend the errors of of Rome, and some Protestant churches, have copyists, expunge interpolations, restore mu- treated Christianity like an old crazy palace, tilated passages, and deal with the writings of which requires props or supporters on every St. Paul as they do with the writings of Thu-side; and they have manifested great injudicydides. 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 the same time one of the most excellent de

*Gen Dict. vol. x. Illustration upon the Manichees

ciousness in the choice of supporters. The gospel stands like a stately, sturdy oak, defying the attack of every storm: but they, who had

* Mons. Le Clerc expresses this rule thus: Multa viders in versionibus emphatica, que in ipsis fontibus rullam emphasin habent.-Ars. Crit. tom. 1. p. 2. s. i. c. 4. This rule of interpretation, which regards the idiom of a language, deserves more attention, it should seem, than hath been usually paid to it.

pitched the tent beneath its shade, heard a | mons, well know, that there are in the twelve rustling among the leaves, trembled for the volumes many more on the same topics: but, as fate of the tree, and, to secure 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 preju- | dices against Christianity.

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 allegory; 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.

When a Frenchman undertakes to attack Christianity, the disputes of his countrymen afford him an ample supply; he borrows arms of every party of Christians, he conquers Popery with Protestant weapons, opposes the visions of quietism with the subtleties of Jansenism, the mysteries of Jansenius 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.

To establish these facts was the original design of Monsieur Saurin in the following sermons, as it is mine in endeavouring to translate them. Those who are acquainted with his ser

The first sermon contains a set of rules essentially 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 the last 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 be drawn.

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.

*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 volume. 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 comenting 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 the work will be done. Such a man, I think, resembles a light-heeled enemy, tripping over a spacious field, and scattering, as he goes, the seeds of an endless number of weeds: while the man, who adopts a contrary plan, must be forced, like the patient prying weeder, to stoop and 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 religion in a volume of sermons on the doctrines of our common Lord. I am necessitat

*Here commences Mr. Robinson's preface to the third volume of the first edition.