convenience will permit, together with your compliance with the request I make in the beginning

of it,

I remain, Dear Sir,

Your most humble Servant,

DEAR SIR,

TO MR. WHITTINGHAM*.

Harborough, Jan. 16, 1728. I SHALL endeavour to conform to the directions you give me as to the management of your letters; and have accordingly sent back the first which I received. I hope you will pardon me that I keep the other a few days longer, till I have leisure to answer it more fully than my affairs will now permit me to do. The apology you make for a confusion of thought, and impropriety of expression, is so very needless that I shall take no further notice of it, than to tell you, that I rejoice in the hope of seeing those admirable talents which God has given you, employed at length in the defence of that revelation which you now scruple to admit.

I very readily acknowledge, that you have fallen on a considerable difficulty in the Christian scheme;

A reply to the former letter, containing some supposed objections against Revelation.

and as readily allow, that your main principle of reasoning is just; and that in order to get at the truth of any revelation, we must compare what is said to be revealed, with our natural ideas of the Divine perfections: and then, that if any assumed revelation represent God as a cruel, or a capricious being, we may very readily conclude it to be false; since it is impossible that we should have greater evidence of the truth of any revelation, than we have of the wisdom and goodness of the Divine Being; and as the perfections of God are the very basis on which the proof of every revelation must be built; that, therefore, any pretended revelation which is contradictory to these perfections, does, in effect, contradict itself, and subverts its own foundation.

So far then, my good friend, we are agreed. The main question then to be examined is, whether the Christian revelation does really represent God as a cruel, or a capricious being. You seem to apprehend that it does; and I am directly of the contrary opinion. I propose very carefully to consider all that you have urged for the proof of your assertion; but as this will require rather more leisure than some other circumstances will at present allow me to bestow upon it, I must beg your patience for about a fortnight: and I rather choose thus to trespass upon it than to offer any loose and indigested thoughts on so important a subject, and to so ingenious a correspondent.

At present I shall content myself with offering

pre

a remark upon a hint which you drop in the face, which appears to me of far greater importance than you, sir, seem to be aware of.

When you decline inquiring into the evidence which supports the several facts related in Scripture, it is with this insinuation, that it may, perhaps, be impossible at this distance of time to collect a fair view of the circumstances on which the proof of such facts must depend; and so you seem to take it for granted, as a first principle, that there is no external evidence in support of Christianity which can give sufficient satisfaction to an inquisitive mind; and that, therefore, by a natural consequence, you have nothing to do, but to consider it as an hypothesis; and so may be fairly excused in rejecting it without any further inquiry, if you can upon it any one unanswerable difficulty.

fix

This, sir, is a very easy way of thinking; but pardon me, sir, if I say, that I apprehend it to be a mistake of the utmost importance. I have, indeed, some right to say, that your supposition is very ill-grounded; for it has been one great business of my life, for several years, to inquire into the evidence of those facts, which you suppose incapable of any convincing evidence at all; and I do faithfully assure you, that the more I have examined them, the more reason I have found to believe them; and that I have never met with any thing in the most celebrated writings of Jews or Deists, which has been able to overturn them.

I hope you will not imagine that I say this to

persuade you to rest upon my judgment, and believe it on my word: that would be a favour which it would be as shameful for me to ask, as for you to grant; but I imagine the declaration I have made will be to you, who think so much better of my understanding than it deserves, an engagement not to throw by the examination in this indolent way, on a presumption that it is impossible to come at any satisfaction in it.

I imagine that nothing could be more proper in the present circumstance than for you to consider, with the utmost seriousness, what our most celebrated divines have said upon the subject. It is the happiness of the present age to abound with some of the most learned and judicious defences of Christianity which the world has ever seen. I would not trouble you to peruse them all but Dr. Clarke's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures, Mr. Chandler's Discourses upon the Miracles, and Mr. Butler's, which he calls the Reason of Christ and his Apostles defended, are so short and so plain, that they may easily be perused in about a fortnight, or at least a month; and I imagine that from any one of them, and much more from all, you will find arguments which no Deist can possibly answer to the satisfaction of a diligent and impartial inquirer. I am at least confident of this, that a man of your candour will readily allow, on that examination, that the arguments for Christianity are not despicably weak; but that, as on the one hand, there are some difficulties in embracing it, so there are also difficulties

in rejecting it, which a serious and prudent man will not easily get over. Now, as you, sir, are a rational creature, and certainly answerable to God for your conduct in this most important affair, it must be your concern to embrace that side of the question which, on the whole, is loaded with the least difficulty, and supported by the best evidence; and it is the principal design of this letter to remind you of this duty.

If you still urge, that you cannot yield to any evidence in a case pregnant with unanswerable difficulties, I entreat you to review that matter a little more attentively. You firmly believe the existence of a God, whom you think of as a being infinitely perfect. Now I am confident that I could propose a catalogue of difficulties relating to several of the Divine attributes, which must certainly belong to a self-existent being, which it is not in the power of human reason to solve; and which are, perhaps, beyond the understanding of any creature. I am sure they are to me far more considerable than any difficulties peculiar to Christianity; yet we believe in the existence of God, notwithstanding this mixture of obscurity and ignorance: because the difficulties of the Atheistical scheme are greater than those; and I do persuade myself, that you will readily allow on the same principle, that if the evidence of Christianity be really important, it ought, in like manner, to take place of Deism, though there may be twenty unaccountable peculiarities in the scheme.