which God hears to the creatures, the approbation he gives to order, which constitutes their, perfection and happiness. This approbation, and this good will always subsist; from whence it follows, that God cannot approve of disorder, which renders the same creatures miserable. In that case, justice in God will be a constant will to bring back his creatures to happiness, and that by restoring them to order, which is inseparable from it.

This is essentially rigorous justice, or what appears to us as such by its effects, though in its principle, it is only goodness, directed by wisdom. Here we behold the unity of the divine attributes, all which seem to centre in goodness. From whence we may conclude, that the supreme Being is invariably the same; that the principle, by which he consents to the pains his creatures endure, is in no respect different from that by which he renders them happy.

A question offers itself very naturally in this place, viz. what must be the immediate cause of pain? whether it is inflicted by the Deity himself, or is merely the natural effect of disorder?

I answer, that disorder is essentially the cause of pain, and would alone >suffice to render men compleatly miserable. However it is possible, that the means which divine wisdom employs to redress the disorder that is introduced among men, may occasion a more violent degree of pain.

This may be illustrated by a comparison. Every disorder that disturbs the economy of the humnam body, is accompanied with pain; and is alone sufficient to make a man suffer; but the means employed for removing this disorder, are generally a great addition to his sufferings. The distemper is only cured by things of a contrary nature, which attack the cause of it. The combat becomes more and more violent, in proportion as the cause is more inveterate. It would be superfluous to carry the comparison further, and still more so, to make the application of it to this subject: the thing speaks of itself.

If we now come to view the difficulty in question, we shall find it intirely removed. It is asked whether God could not dispense with inflicting punishment? We have shewn that pain is an unavoidable consequence of disorder, and is not a punishment inflicted. But grant that these are likewise inflicted punishments, we have shewn that these punishments tend only to restore man to happiness, by reinstating him in order.

If this is not satisfactory, I ask in my turn, whether God can desist from the constant will he has to bring back men to their first end, and to restore all his works to their original state when he saw that they were good!

In this case I would say, that God may desist from being good, since he can disown the wisdom of his works; or rather, I would say, that God can contradict himself; for if he saw, that the works of his wisdom were very good in their original state, he would disown the approbation he had given to them if he did not restore them to it.

Here we see all those ideas of justice, which men have formed to : themselves, vanish alway: ideas which they have built →upon false -premises or groundless suppositions.

They have represented the Deity as a prince, who being personally offended by a great number of his subjects, has a right to punish them all with great rigour. This prince, though justly provoked, may, if he pleases, depart from his rights: he may be led by his clemency to have mercy on the guilty, or to shew favour to whom he pleases, whilst the rest, who are treated according to justice, cannot complain of this distinction.

This comparison which they have made between a weak limited man and the self-sufficient Being, has occasioned their mistake. The former may be hurt, and personally offended by men like himself: the offence concerns him; and in that respect he may be guided by clemency and dispense with punishing them. But if it is once owned, that the self-sufficient Being cannot be offended, to speak accurately, by the injustice of men; if it is true that the injustice only hurts themselves; that pain, which they call punishment, is an unavoidable consequence of it; the comparison and the conclusions which have been drawn from it, fall both to the ground. Such a low and narrow idea of the supreme Being, could only lead to false conséquences: and these have greater influence than is imagined upon the sentiments and practice of men: such an idea of justice leads them to conclude tacitly, that they may dispense with being just. For if justice is an arbitrary thing; if God can depart from it by shewing favour to whom he pleases, every one may flatter himself that he will be of that number. And if for this purpose God needs only consult his clemency, a clemency which is unlimited, to what men could he refuse that which depends only on his will! From hence it clearly appears, that our being ignorant of the cause, leads us into mistakes about the effect of it.

BISHOP WATSON'S THOUGHTS OF THE EFFECTS OF LEARNING UPON CHRISTIANITY.

It would be a miracle, greater than any we are instructed (in the

Scriptures) to believe, if there remained no difficulties (in revelation); if a being with but five scanty inlets to knowledge, separated 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 dissolute but enlightened age; the restraints of our religion are but ill suited to the profligacy of our manners; and men are soon induced to believe that system to be false which they wish to find so; that knowledge moreover which spurns with contempt the illusions of fanaticism, and the tyranny of superstition is ofren unhappily misemployed in magnifying every little difficulty attending the proof of the truth of Christianity into an irrefragable argument of its falsehood, The Christian religion has nothing to apprehend from the strictest investigation of the most learned of its adversaries; it suffers only from the misconceptions of VOL. IV.

C

sciolists and silly pretenders to superior 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 subversive of Christianity 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 dominion over God's heritage, of all the silly out-works which the pride, the superstition, and the knavery of mankind have erected around the citadel of our faith; but the citadel of 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, and cleared from the rubbish of human bulwarks."

SIR,

ON OATHS.-TO MR. WRIGHT.

See vol. II. p. 337 and 380. and vol. III. p. 353

WHEN I read your letter, it was with that care and solicitude, connected with that diffidence of my own judgment, which a man ought to have who has often been wrong and frequently mistaken, and imbibed error instead of truth. Being resolved, at the same time, that if I found your arguments so sufficiently conclusive as to convince me that your view of the subject was in strict conformity to the mind and will of God, to make such concessions and acknowledgments, as divine truth justly claims of every opposer of the sacred injunctions of Jehovah ; attending at the same time to the advice given by the poet, though with some little variation from his words,

"Pause where I must, be candid where I can,

But vindicate the words of God to man."

Your first remarks, which drew my attention, were as follows-" To affirm that when Christ said "Swear not at all," he meant Swear not at all in your Christian assemblies, or one among another as Christians; but you may still continue to swear when called upon by the men of the world, is certainly (as I think) a departure from the most plain and literal sense of the words: consequently, you ought to shew that in the discourse from which the words are taken, Christ is giving his disciples laws merely for the regulation of their conduct towards each other; not laws for the regulation of their conduct in their intercourse with the men of the world. But how will you be able to prove this, with 'respect to several precepts contained in the same discourse?"

Here, Sir, I wish you had given the whole of (1 will not say of mine, but of) our Lord's words, as they stand, in connection with his prohibition; particularly the reasons he has given for exclusively cautioning his disciples from requiring oaths of each other, viz "for whatsoever is more than these (i. e. yes or no) cometh of evil," or from the evil one,

May I entreat you, Sir, again to attend to what is commonly called our Lord's sermon on the Mount; you will then soon be convinced, that the whole scope and design thereof was to inculcate amongst his own disciples the maxims, laws, and regulations by which the subjects of his kingdom were to be governed respecting their walk and conversation, both among themselves, as well as their deportment in the world at large. Now the self-denying injunctions, being not only different from, but perfectly opposite to all the feelings of our corrupt and evil nature, it is impossible for any one to attend to them, unless he is born again; born from above; born of that spirit whose fruits are love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. Now a company of such, loving one. another with a pure heart fervently, would have such unreserved confidence in each other as would totally supersede the want of any other assurance amongst themselves on any subject whatever than simply “ yea, yea, nay, nay;" therefore the prohibition was designed by our Lord to detect and expose any hypocrite, who by wanting more of his brethren in any declaration they might make than simply yes or no, would be holding him out as wholly under the influence of the evil one (δε περισσον τούτων εκ του πονηρού εςιν) But respecting Christ's people's intercourse with the world, he has no where said, (as I can find) The world are to place that absolute confidence in your veracity, that they are never to tender an oath to any of you; and if they do, tell them, your simple yes or no, to any thing they want to know of you, is sufficient.

But our Lord's own example at once puts an end to this difficulty, Matt. xxvi. 63. where we may observe our Lord's silence as to all the charges brought against him, till the high priest arose and demanded of him, upon oath, whether he was the Messiah or not; when we are informed, he answered in the affirmative, referring him to the fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy in himself as a proof thereof, &c. From hence it is clear that our Lord never gave his disciples the least encouragement, either by example or precept, to expect the world would rest satisfied with their simple yes or no in particular; yea, so far from holding their persons in any peculiar respect, he foretells them, that they would be reproached, and their name cast out as evil for his sake, Luke vi. 22, &c.

Upon the whole, from the vth chapter of Matthew, &c. it appears, that our Lord intended to point out the final dissolution of the Jewish Theocracy, which formerly, by divine appointment, was the light of the world, the salt of the earth, &c.; and that, instead thereof, was to be substituted a brotherhood, who were to be sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called; and to the apostles, who where the first fruits of this church, and the representatives of the whole general assembly. He says, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." But, Sir, if I am to understand, when our Lord is forbidding the use of oaths in his church with each other, that he is prohibiting oaths in general, I am obligated to believe not only that he is come to destroy the law and the prophets, but also that the New Testament is perfectly hostile to the Old! For instance, Deut. vi. 13. "Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God

and shalt swear by his name." Chap. x. 20. "Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name," &c. In the prophets also, Psal. Ixiii. 12. "But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by him shall glory," &c. Isai. xix. 18. "In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt swear to the Lord of hosts," &c. Chap. xlv. 23. “I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear," &c. Jer. iv. 2. “O Israel, thou shalt swear the Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in him; and in him shall they glory."

From these quotations, and many more which might be produced to the same purport, I think nothing can be more convincing, than that swearing in truth and righteousness always was and will be perfectly comformable to the mind and will of God, until the restoration of all things. Now, if you think obedience, at present, to these commands is a literal departure from Christ's words, the undeniable consequence must be that he is not only forbidding Christians to obey the law and the prophets, but he is even charging the precept itself as pregnant with the most malignant consequences; for he says, "Whatsoever is more than these (i. e. yes or no) proceedeth from the evil one." And, by the same rule, the apostle James is charging those, who are acting as the law and the prophets command, with being exposed to condemnation for so doing. But admit that our Lord and the apostle James were recommending that perfect confidence becoming those in whose hearts the love of God had been shed abroad, to such there was great propriety in cautioning them against the least appearance of jealousy or suspicion against each other, in wanting any other confirmation of what they said than bare yes or no. Without this view of the subject (according to the present state of my mind) I should doubt the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, owing to an opposition of spirit in their composition. Another part of your argument against the use of oaths is, that the command for their use might be only temporary. Your words are, "Was the law which authorized and commanded oaths strictly a moral precept, or was it a law of positive institution, adapted to the time then being? If strictly a moral precept, we may suppose it to be still binding upon men, and most of all upon Christians; and if so how are they in any sense to be liberated from it? But if a law of mere positive institution, it may have ceased, unless Christ, the lawgiver of Christians, hath authorized it in the New Testament; even as the keeping of the Jewish sabbath hath ceased: for he hath redeemed his church from under the law. All positive institutions must of course have ceased with the economy to which they belonged, unless adopted by Christ the head of the Christian economy; for he is a perfect lawgiver; and hath given a complete system of laws to his disciples, sufficient to regulate every part of their conduct. If we could not maintain the harmony of the Old and New Testament without admitting that Christians may lawfully do whatever Moses authorized the Jews to do, we could not maintain that harmony at all; at any rate it would be necessary still to use the