what is the consequence of this false discretion? Why plainly this-that an opening is thus made for a series of experiments on religion. The fanatic holds such language on those grand peculiarities of our faith, as equally to offend against morality and common sense; the Unitarian prunes them down to the standard of his own perverse and conceited reason, and dispirits as it were the life and vigour of religion, omitting one great fundamental doctrine after another, till he makes it nothing else but a mere dead skeleton of speculations and opinions; while we, in the endeavour to maintain a steady course of enquiry between the opposite errors, or from a scrupulous timidity about surmountable difficulties, are accused of being indifferent to every thing but our temporal interests-Such are the blessed effects of our fastidious reserve in this age of gross misconstruction and audacious innovation.

It remains only for the Author to add, that for the sake of retrenching many of those superfluities which are incidental to, and pardonable in a letter, he has thrown his thoughts into a more connected and didactic form; and that he has interwoven the substance of some digressions in Notes, which however would not have swelled to what may be deemed a disproportionate size, did not his opinions occasionally rest upon authorities, taken from such works as every one has not the opportunity of seeing.

Introductory Observations.

CHAPTER FIRST.

IT requires no great effort of sagacity to discover, that after the voice of reason has been long stifled between craft and credulity, the fruits of her speech are sometimes observed to be rashness and precipitation. At the Reformation, though one of the greatest periods of human improvement, there were yet those who, in the very days of that auspicious æra, seemed disgusted with every thing of what they were in possession, and who evinced an eagerness to throw down all that was ancient and venerable, for no other reason, than that it was old and established, and associated with the other parts of their institutions; whilst in this factious enmity to received opinions, and blind and headlong predilection for the mischiefs of false reform, it never once disturbed their heads, whether or not they were tearing up by the roots some of the best and happiest principles of our nature. This spirit indeed for innovation and change, and not for real reform, has descended to modern times, unimpaired, and unadulterated.

Whoever, for instance, has examined with attention and impartiality the disputes in the last century concerning the nature and end of the Holy Eucharist, will perceive but little resemblance in the theological controversialists of that time, with all their real or fancied skill in philosophy, to our first Reformers, whose zeal for the purity of the common religion,

(and it was such as must endear their memories to every true Protestant) while it testified the highest reverence for the substance of the system which they sought to amend, bespoke at the same time a most decided antipathy to all hasty, crude, and unqualified alterations.'

Now unquestionably, nothing can be well imagined less burdensome, or more simple than the external rites and ordinances of Christianity. And it is this beautiful simplicity with which they are characterized, that has induced, I must suppose, many good and learned men to assert, that the Sacrament ought to be considered as a bare memorial, or a mere positive rite.

I am persuaded, however, if they could have foreseen the mischievous

1 Dr. Heylin, in his Introduction to the Life of Archbishop Laud, has thus justly described the views of our Reformers. "Nothing that was Apostolick or accounted Primitive, did fare the worse for being Popish; I mean for having been made use of in times of Popery, it being none of their designs to create a new Church, but to reform the old. Such superstitions and corruptions as had been contracted in that Church by long tract of time, being pared away, that which was good and commendable did remain as formerly. It was not their intent to dig up a foundation of such precious stones, because some superstructures of straw and stubble had been raised upon it." p. 3--4.-Similar to these sentiments are those of Laud himself. "In the mean time, I would have them ever remember, that we live in a Church reformed, not in one made new. Now all reformation, that is good and orderly, takes away nothing from the old, but that which is faulty and erroneous. If any thing be good, it leaves that standing."-See Wharton's Life of Archbishop Laud, p. 113.-Let the reader look into Wilson's History and Antiquity of Dissenting Churches, and he will be struck with the most marked contrast to this enlightened and liberal mode of reasoning in the conduct of the earliest dissenters, who held, "that the constitution of the hierarchy was too bad to be mended, that the very pillars of it were rotten, that the structure ought to be raised anew, and that they were resolved to lay a new foundation, though it were at the hazard of all that was dear to them in the world." Their chief error," he says, "seems to have been the uncharitableness in unchurching the whole christian world but themselves."

consequences since deduced from this opinion, that they would have laid it down with less latitude, and reasoned from it with more discrimination. It certainly never occurred to them, that it would afford scope to the sophister to treat the Holy Eucharist with sceptical insinuation, or the infidel to insult it with open disrespect; still less did it enter into their most distant contemplation, that it would prove so injurious to the great cause they meant to support, as eventually to be the means of extending the authority, and of illustrating the principles of the Socinian creed. Thus, while they piously intended to confirm and sanctify the faith of the Christian, and to overcome the prepossessions of the unbeliever, they only perpetuated hostile objections, and strengthened sincere but painful scruples.

Indeed, if the opinion of those persons on this subject, be pursued to its just and obvious consequences, it will go to overturn that grand and fundamental doctrine of our faith, the Divinity of Christ. For he must be little skilled in the science of Theology, who does not perceive, that by diminishing the dignity of the importance of the Lord's Supper, the truth of Christ's divine nature is virtually thereby, though not perhaps ostensibly invalidated.* Small therefore is the penetration necessary to discover, why the disciples of Socinus have been so profuse in their encomiums upon Bishop Hoadly's Plain Account of the Sacrament, and why to a defective scheme like that, has been given the name of christian faith, sufficient to salvation.

To doubt or explain away those doctrines of Christianity which are

2 It is the remark of the learned and judicious Dr. Waterland, "that, in general, discussions which had for object immediately to lessen the dignity and importance of the Lord's Supper, were in reality designed as so many attacks upon the Divinity of Christ,”

D

mysterious, or in which even the appearance of mystery is involved, as if our limited1 faculties were competent to judge of the plans of infinite wisdom, is well known to be the distinguished characteristick of Socinianism. It squares therefore with the tenets of the modern Socinian, who rejects as

3 The following observation, even of Hobbes, may be read with profit by the Socinian."We are not to labour in sifting out a philosophical truth by logic, of such mysteries as are not comprehensible, nor fall under any rule of natural science. For it is with the mysteries of our Religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick; which swallowed whole, have virtue to cure, but chewed, are, for the most part, cast up without effect." See Leviathan, chap. 32, p. 195. It is somewhat curious, that while we are accustomed to rank the Philosopher of Malmesbury among the most determined champions of infidelity, that he himself should in a grave treatise "concerning Heresy and the punishment thereof," have put forth this singular declaration." And in this time it was that a book, called Leviathan, was written in defence of the King's power, temporal and spiritual, without any word against episcopacy, or against any bishop, or against the public doctrine of the Church."-See this passage in Somers' Tracts, vol. vii. p. 380.

4 "To go about to prove by reason (exclaims one who was an earnest advocate for the more evangelical doctrine of earlier times), what is above reason, is wonderful; and to discourse of what we understand not, is doubtless a spice of madness, and the conclusions we draw from such discourses, must needs be very dangerous, we following the ignem fatuum, the uncertain light of human reason in divine matters, so totally beyond our reach; wherefore we have no other safe way to speak of divine matters, but in scripture language." See the Naked Truth, or the True State of the Primitive Church, by Herbert Croft, Bishop of Hereford, anno 1675, in Somers' Tracts, vol. vii, p. 275.

5 It has been repeatedly said, that the first Socinians called Christ, God, and offered adorations, and to this circumstance we must ascribe Voltaire's confounding so often the terms of Arian and Socinian. The fiend Persecution was abroad, when the heresy of Socinus first drew a secret congregation of disciples, and she made them hypocrites, instead of martyrs. Warned by the fate of Servetus, says Bayle, "Socin ne decouvrit ses penseés qu'en tems et lieu, et se gouverna avec tant d'adresse qu'il vêcut parmi les ennemis capitaux de ses opinions, sans en recevoir aucune injure.”—Dictionaire Critique, p. 2740. But though the judgment of the former Socinians inclined in favor of the simple humanity of Christ, yet it was reserved for their successors to consider him "as fallible and peccable as Moses, or any other Prophet." See Dr. Priestley's Letters to Dr. Price, p. 101.