meaning, though I have not been able to adopt | his style, for which defect, though I print them by private subscription, for the use of my friends, on whose candour I depend, yet I do not offer to publish them to the world, for the language of Mr. Saurin. I should have been glad to have pleased every subscriber, by inserting those sermons, which were most agreeable to him, had I known which they were: but as this was impossible, I have followed my own judgment, or perhaps exposed my want of it. The first volume aims to secure the doctrine of a God, against the attacks of atheists. In the second, we mean to plead for the holy Scrip

tures against Deists. In the third, we intend to take those sermons, which treat of the doctrines of Christianity, as we humbly conceive that the New Testament is something more than a system of moral philosophy. And the last volume, we dedicate to moral subjects, because we think Christianity a holy religion, productive of moral obedience in all its true disciples. May the God of all grace bless the reading of them to the weakening of the dominion of sin, and to the advancement of the kingdom of our blessed Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

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 be a propagated in the world: the Jewish nation, and the Romish church, paid as much regard to tradition as to the holy Scriptures: Protestants derived difierent, 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.

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.

No sooner had Charles IX. published the first edict of pacification in France, in 1562, than there appeared at Lyons, along with many other sects, a party who called themselves DEISTS. The edict provided, that no person should be prosecuted on account of matters of conscience, and this sect claimed the benefit of it.

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.

D

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 notice 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 inferred the absurdity of that principle on which Protestantism stood, and the absolute necessity of a living infallible judge of religi ous truths. The event above-mentioned seemed 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 colours the most frightful, exhibit them to public view under images the most tragical, ascribe them all to that horrid monster-the right of private judgment, and by these means endervour 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 arch-bishop's vicar in persecuting them. What a motley figure! The voice of Jacob, and the hands of Esau!

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. First, they said, It is not true that there are no religious controversies in the church of Rome; there are two hundred and thirtyseven contrarieties of doctrine among the Romish 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 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 thm out of dusty holes in libraries, exposed them to publick 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 pro tuced, 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 ex

tremely perplexed and difficult; these extracts they called Confessions of Faith, these they 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.

Let a dispassionate spectator cast his eye on the Christian world, and, when he has seen the rigorous measures that have been used to establish, as it is called, the faith of the Reformers, let him turn his eye to the church of 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.

Whether the

Other times, other manners! 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," 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 De st, 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 tew Deists have taken up the argument on its true grounds; and they, who have, could not support it.

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 H. seemed openly to profess, became the reigning religion' in England: that the sect is become very numerous; and that a 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 pullic 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 received, 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, 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 Ainsterdam, 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, preceeded against him, suspended him first from the communion, and deposed him at last from the office of a minisYet 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.

ter.

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 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 Pompanatius was a believer of revelation, and, by believing the immorality of the soul on the testimony of Scripture, he discovered the most profound veneration for it, a deference exactly similar to that which trinitarians pay to its testimony concerning the nature of Gol..

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 be sought the Areopagus to permit him to enter the lists against all philosophers; had he offered to maintain a disputation upon the three persons, who are but one Gol; 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 know. ledge 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 metaphysic: 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 prov ed 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

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

by the Apostle John; yet no one of these was a Deist.

Nor ought the Deist to claim those learned critics, who allow that the Scriptures have undergone the fate of all other books, and who therefore expose and amend the errors of copyists, expunge interpolations, restore mutilate passages, and deal with the writings of St. Paul as they do with the writings of Thucydides. The chronology, the geogra phy, 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 revelatio is at the same time one of the most excellent defences of it. One single rule, had it been thought worthy of that attention which it merits, would have spared the writing of many a tolio, 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 biggotted countrymen, accounted a Deist.

The

Finally, we cannot resign those brightest ornaments of the Christian church, whose sense and grace will not allow them to be dogmatical, and who hesitate about some doctrines g nerally received by their on communities. celebrated Philip lelanethon 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 dispost.on, 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. Melanethon 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 m ght be a mark of reprobation. Although he drew up the Augsburgh Confession, yet he hated disputes in religion, and when his mother asked him how she should conduct her belef amidst so many controversies. Continue, answered he, to believe and pray as you have hitherto done, and let these wars of controver sy give you no manner of trout le.' This is the Melancthon who was suspected of deism!

Several more classes might be added to these: but these are sufficient to prove that real Deists are not by far so mumerous as reputed ones. The cause of deism, unsupported by reason, may magnify its little all: but the