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insert so liberally from the writings of the unbeliever, may prove our candour, but not our judgment or knowledge of human nature. Evil is learned sooner and remembered longer than good; and it would be better to let many pamphlets of the deists sink into oblivion, than to preserve and extend them, by extracting their most noxious parts, and mixing them with the productions of men of learning and piety. The refutations are often long, laboured, and tedious, while the objections are short and lively. They are therefore either not read or soon forgotten, while a flippant sarcasm attracts attention and fixes itself in the memory. It must also be allowed, that the refutations are too often unsatisfactory: and that the weakness of a fence invites new attacks, and gives fresh courage to the enemy.

I think the style and manner of some among the celebrated defenders of Christianity extremely improper. It is not respectful. It treats Jesus Christ as if he were inferior to the person who takes upon him to examine, as he phrases it, the pretensions of Jesus Christ. To speak in an authoritative, inquisitorial language of the author of that religion by which the writer himself professes to hope for salvation, can never serve the cause of Christianity. Think of a poor, frail, sinful mortal sitting a self-appointed judge, and like a lawyer in a human court of judicature, arraigning Jesus Christ, the Lord of life, just as a venal solicitor might have questioned the two thieves that were crucified with him, had they been accused at a modern police-office. The cold yet authoritative style of the tribunal has been much used in examining, as it is called, that religion which brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. You would think the learned theologist, who assumes the office of an examiner, another Pontius Pilate. He sits in the seat of judgment, and with judicial importance coldly pronounces on the words and actions of that Sa

viour, whom he owns to be the great Captain of salvation.

In such defences or examinations, Jesus Christ is spoken of in terms that must divest him of his glory, and therefore vilify him in the eyes of the gainsayers, and all unthinking people. But how, on the contrary, do the prophets represent him? Language has no terms of mágnificence adequate to his dignity.

The prophets describe JESUS CHRIST as the most august personage which it is possible to conceive. They speak of him indeed as the seed of the woman and the Son of man; but at the same time describe him of celestial race. They announce him as a being exalted above men and angels; above "all principality and power; as "the Word and the Wisdom of God; as the Heir of "all things, by whom God made the worlds; as the "Brightness of God's glory, the express Image of his "Person."

Thus speak the prophets of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Now let us hear an ingenious apologist and defender of him and his religion. A reverend author, highly estimable for his learning and ingenuity, and whom I sincerely esteem, speaking of Jesus Christ, in a book professedly written to vindicate his truth and honour, repeatedly calls him, “ a Jewish peasant," and a "peasant of Galilee." "For what are we compar"ing?" says he, (in a comparison of Jesus Christ with Mahomet) "a Galilean PEASANT, accompanied with a "few fishermen, with a conqueror at the head of his ;" and again, in the next page, army;" 66 a Jewish PEA"SANT Overthrew the religion of the world."

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Unbelievers are commonly men of the world; fascinated by its pomps and vanities.. Is it the most likely means to overcome their prejudices, and teach them to bow the knee to Jesus, thus to lower his personal dignity? Was there any occasion for it? Do not the prophets,

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as I have just now observed, exalt him above every name? Why call him PEASANT? The term I think by no means appropriate to him, supposing that it were not an injudicious degradation of his character in the eyes of unthinking worldlings and malignant unbelievThere is something peculiarly disgusting in hearing dignified ecclesiastics, living in splendor and affluence entirely in consequence of e religion of Jesus Christ, speaking of him in their defences of his religion, as a PEASANT, as a person, compared to themselves, vile and despicable. Such arguments as this appellation is meant to support, will never render service to Christianity. The representation becomes a stumbling-block and a rock of offence. I might however produce several other instances of the great writers who have afforded precedents for such degrading appellations of Jesus Christ. But neither the infidel nor the Christian will easily believe that the man who calls his Saviour a peasant, after the glorious representations of him which the prophets give, feels that awe and veneration which is due to the Son of God, the Lord of life, the Saviour and Redeemer. I forbear to specify them. One instance is sufficient to point out my meaning, and shew the reason why some ingenious apologies for Christianity are. totally ineffectual.

Dry argumentation and dull disquisition, unanimated by the spirit of piety and devotion, will never avail to convert unbelievers, and to diffuse the doctrines of Christianity. Life, death, heaven and hell, are subjects of too much importance to be treated by a sincere mind, duly impressed by them, with the coolness of a lawyer giving an opinion on a statute or case in which another's property or privileges are concerned. The spirit of piety seems to have been wanting in some of the most logical and metaphysical defenders of Christianity. They speak of Christ, when they are examining the truth of the doc

trine, with calm indifference, as if they were dull virtuosos discussing the genuineness of a medal, or the authenticity of a manuscript, valuable only as an amusing curiosity. If St. Paul had been no warmer an advocate than certain famous apologists for Christ's doctrine, he would never have prevailed with the Gentiles to relinquish their polytheism, and we of this island should, at this day, have remained in the darkness of idolatry. Without the spirit of piety, all proofs and defences of Christianity are a dead letter. The multitude will not even read them; and infidels, if they do not despise them too much to attend to them at all, will only read to find fresh matter for cavil and objection.

I may be wrong in my theory. I therefore appeal to fact. The fact is evident, that, notwithstanding all that has been written to demonstrate Christianity, by argument drawn from reasoning and history, infidelity has increased, and is every day increasing more and more. Let those who think the dry argumentative apologies irresistibly convincing, Now bring them forward, and silence the gainsayers at once. The demonstrations of a Huet, the evidences of a Clarke, the reasonings of a Locke, a Grotius, a Hartley, should be presented in the most striking manner, by public authority, and if they are really efficacious in producing conviction, we may be assured that infidelity will vanish at their appearance, like the mists of an autumnal morning, when the meridian sun breaks forth in full splendor. But the truth is, they are already very much diffused, and yet the Christian religion is said to be rapidly on the decline.

Therefore it cannot be blameable to attempt some other method of calling back the attention of erring mortals to the momentous truths of revealed revelation.

I have conceived an idea that our old English divines were great adepts in genuine Christianity, and that their method of recommending it was judicious, because I

know it was successful. There was much more piety in the last century than in the present; and there is every reason to believe that infidelity was rare. Bishop Hall appears to me to have been animated with the true spirit of Christianity; and I beg leave to convey my ownideas on the best method of diffusing that spirit, in his pleasingly pious and simple language.

"There is not," says the venerable prelate, so much "need of learning as of grace to apprehend those things "which concern our everlasting peace; neither is it our "brain that must be set to work, but our HEARTS. "However excellent the use of scholarship in all the "sacred employments of divinity; yet in the main act, "which imports salvation, skill must give place to AF"FECTION. Happy is the soul that is possest of Christ, "how poor soever in all inferior endowments. Ye are

"wide, O ye great wits, while ye spend yourselves in "curious questions and learned extravagancies. Ye shall "find one touch of Christ more worth to your souls than "all your deep and laborious disquisitions. In vain shall ye seek for this in your books, if you miss it in your BOSOMS. If you know all things, and cannot say, I “know whom I have believed, you have but knowledge "enough to know yourselves completely miserable. The "great mysteries of Godliness, which to the great clerks "of the world, are as a book clasped and sealed up, lie << open before him, (the pious and devout man) fair and 46 legible; and while those book-men know whom they "have heard of, he knows whom he hath believed."

Christianity indeed, like the sun, discovers itself by its own lustre. It shines with unborrowed light on the devout heart. It wants little external proof, but carries its own evidence to him that is regenerate and born of the Spirit. "The truth of Christianity," says a pious author, " is the Spirit of God living and working in it; " and when this Spirit is not the life of it, there the

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