circumstance perfectly accounts for the gross ignorance and conceit, the bigotry, and strong prejudice of such characters. They will not use their reason in religious affairs, lest they should deprive themselves of the pleasures of ignorance; they will not think, lest they should become rational, intelligent, and wise. 4th. But as this doctrine is supposed to be founded on scripture, to scripture let us appeal. Those passages where the term spirit occurs, are to be understood as referring either to the inspiration of the prophets or apostles, and others who actually possessed spiritual gifts, or as descriptive of the dispositions of the mind, or spirit of man. Common sense may direct any one to ascertain when the one or the other is intended. Thus any one may in a moment perceive that when Jesus said to his disciples, " Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of (Luke ix. 55), he referred not to any thing like inspiration, but to the disposition of their minds. The disposition of their minds was to destroy the people in the village, but the disposition of Jesus was to save them. Christians are exhorted to let the same mind, or disposition, or spirit, be in them that was in Jesus. (Phillip ii. 5). Whoever reads this passage must see that the apostle is exhorting them to humility or a humble spirit; and he quotes Jesus as an example of this humility. In like manner the tera spirit of love, means a loving disposition; spirit of fear, means a fearful disposition; spirit of bondage, means slavery of mind. In this way must we understand many passages in the New Testament, to make sense of them, and among the rest, the passage from Romans quoted at the beginning of this communication. Finally, if those who waste their time and strength in looking for some influence on their minds, which they never can feel, would pay the same attention to the mani fest and plain declarations of God, they would find themselves profited. A proper attention to the scriptures would infuse into their minds the dispositions there inculcated; such as love, joy, peace, meekness, temperance, patience, goodness, &c. and thus they would shew that the spirit and disposition which was in Jesus, actuate their conduct, and are in them also. Your's, &c. Leicester, Nov. 29, 1813. D. C. (15) ORIGINAL LETTER OF THE LATE W. HUNTINGTON. To the Editor of the Freethinking Christians' Magazine. SIR, WHILST the memory of Mr. Huntington is lamented by thousands, and whatever has belonged to him is esteemed as sacred as the monkish relics of antiquity, it may not be unentertaining to your readers to be presented with the following original letter of that gentleman, extracted from the Monthly Repository. The composition itself bears all the marks of originality; and it is only necessary to read it to be convinced that it comes from the pen of an eminent classic and divine. I am, &c. Z. Rev'd Father in the Lord,-grace, mercy & peace be with thee, If God permit and you approve I will onour your pulpit next Thursday evening-onour it I say with the person of the vilest sinner that ever liv'd-and in possession of a Hope that can never die. If you want to know my peddigree-I am by Birth a Beggar, by practice a devil, by trade a coal-hever, by profession-and possession a sinner saved, by principul a stiff decenter, and one of God's own making, for it was he alone that call'd, ordained me, & sent me out-and he has bin my bishop, my tuter, my provider and my defence ever since-else I had bin kill'd or starv'd long ago-If you o your people are fond of the origginal languages-of eloquince-orra tory-or grammar, I am the man that can disapoint them all. Bư if apostolic ignorance will sute them-they will go nigh to gleen a few scraps of that sort-but my degrees will promis nothing further than that. But to inform my Rev'd Father a little about my irregularities-I am in my prayers very short-in my sermons short also-anless the master attends the feast. If so and the cruse gets a spring of oyl in it-then I generally drop all thoughts of working by the day-nor can I give it up until I have emtied the whole content-tho I know I shall get no more without much knocking and a deal of calling at mercies door. This I call liberality-and am vain enough to think that it is furvant charity-and that charity which if applyed covers a multitude of sins-and no wonder when we hold forth freely the blood and righteousness of him that cleanseth from all the guilt of sin-and the robe that covers all the remains of sin. Rev'd father, God bless you-abundant happyness, comfort and sucksess attend bouth you and your family and your flock, while I remain, tho unknown, affectionately yours, WM. HUNTINGTON, The Rev'd Mr. Parsons, Claverton Street, Bath. ON THE BOOK OF GENESIS. THE HE annals of literature do not perhaps afford an instance of a relation so much disputed, and which has given rise to so many different opinions, as the earlier chapters of Genesis, containing the account of the creation, and what has commonly but improperly been termed the fall of man. Were not the writing possessed of all the signs of authenticity, and distinguished in its general features by the sublime simplicity of truth, it must inevitably have fallen amid the discord of opinion, and been crushed by the rude and undistinguishing hands of self-named saints, hypocritical divines, and ignorant commentators. It is not our intention to attempt at any length the rescuing the relation from these philistines, but simply, while wo comment upon one or two passages, to enter our protest generally against the absurd and cruel usage they have extended to the records of religion, and to direct our readers' attention and enquiries towards the most rational and better founded explanations which have been given by many modern authors of the passages in questions. The" beginning of evils," to the unfortunate chapters under consideration, may, it appears,* be traced back to the Jewish ages, and if discoverable in that ample treasure of religious commentary, vying even with modern Catholicism, orthodoxy, or Methodism, in the race of nonsense and absurdity, the rabbinical writings. It was by many of the rabbis held that the serpent was literally a speaking animal, that it walked upright, and lived with great familiarity with man. Those who dissented from this opinion maintained that the whole was mere allegory; that Adam is the intellectual and Eve the sensual part of man, that the serpent is unlawful pleasure, and the curses denounced against the offenders the natural consequence of illicit indulgence. This was the opinion adopted by the greater portion of those superstitious and bigotted sophistsgenerally known by the name of the Christian fathers, and when it was subsequently allowed that the general relation must be considered as literal, still the serpent was considered as a standing difficulty, and the knot which defied the efforts of all who would untie it, was at length cut by the bold and orthodox assertion, that this serpent was neither more nor less than that * See Geddes's preface to the translation of the historical books of the Old Testament, from which the opinions herein-mentioned are principally taken. "old serpent" the devil. And so current has this opinion since become in the world, that it is probable many of our readers remember the time when they would have thought it heresy to doubt the fact; and we ourselves can recollect the surprise with which, in the early ardour of theclogical research, we first discovered that this interpretation was in no manner authorised by the text, and that the devil, like the other gods of barbarism and of bigotry, had no existence but in the bewildered and benighted brain of his deluded followers. To Abrabanel, a Jew of the fifteenth century, it appears we are indebted for a more reasonable, indeed the only reasonable interpretation of the passage; and a more striking instance cannot perhaps be given of the vanity of priestly learning, and the perfect nullity of the plea, that deep research is indispensably necessary to the understanding of the scrip tures, than this one fact-that all the latter priests of Judaism, and the earlier priests or perverters of Christianity, were some hundreds, nay, some thousands of years before they discovered, or even suspected, that by a serpent was meant--not almonster endowed with incompatible faculties, nor a devil possessed of super-human powers, but a serpent, actually the very thing endowed with the faculties and possessed of the powers which the writer names, and which the evident sense of the passage, allowing for the eastern figure, requires that we should attribute to it. This however will always be the case, this now, at this moment, is the case, where men; because possessed only of common sense (the first and best gift of heaven) refuse to judge for themselves, and blindly accept the sophistical interpretations of those who are interested to obscure the truth, and whose evident aim and object it is not to enlighten but to govern those over whom they have usurped a dominiou. : The sense which the enlightenment of modern enquiry has affixed to the passage is, generally speaking, as foflows the garden, the tree, the man, the woman, the serpent, and the fruit, were real, and possessed severally of the various qualities of their respective kinds. When man was created, he was, like a new born infant, devoid of thought and of ideas. These were to be imprinted upon him as upon his successors, by the events and incidents of life-a garden is planted for him--his God, his master, çommands him and his companion that they shall not eat of the fruit of a given tree, which is called the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Death, the most dreadful of punishments, is to follow their disobedience. Eve beholds a serpent eating with impunity, and thence concludes the falsity of this denunciation; she remembers too the condition of knowledge, and eager to be like the God who can know good from evil, she eats and tempts her companion to eat also. They have broken the command of God; they have disregarded his instructions, whose superior knowledge, and whose superior wis dem should, for their own sakes, have commanded the most blind and implicit obedience. This is to them the certain road to misery and destruction-how are they to be deterred from pursuing their mad and dangerous career? how 'to be taught the folly of opposing the command of an all wise God, who only seeks their good-the absurdity of disobeying their Maker, who formed them but for happiness? by punishment, by temporary and partial exclusion from enjoyment; the children in intellect are to be treated as children; they are to be shewn the power as well as the justice of their father; they are, for their own interests,. for their own advantage, to be chastised as it were into obedience; to be punished that they may offend no more-they were driven from the garden which had been planted for them, and found the world beyond it, what it probably was whea first created, and what it always has remained, a rugged waste, a cheerless wild, tili cultivated by the labours, and enlivened by the society of man. They did labour, they did cultivate the earth-again the word of God came to man-it spoke in the frame of nature, but it spoke more intelligibly by the mouth of the patriarchs, and subsequently of the prophets-again that word was disregarded some other serpent was seen revelling with impunity in the enjoyment of forbidden fruit, the same error is committed, the same false reasonings are adopted-man forgets the command of his Maker in the present indulgence of his appetites-he plucks the fruit, and is again expelled from the delightful garden of peace and virtue, to labour in the rugged world of penitence, remorse, and sorrow. The soil however is not ungrateful-even here the mercy of his Maker is apparent-the punishment was designed for erring man, and it is adapted to his nature. It gradually produces a distaste for disobedience, and the consequences of vice work out and achieve the existence and the permanency of virtue. |