for any single body of christians, I take great pleasure in believing, that they are held substantially by a large proportion of the members of all Protestant communions, whether adopting the distinctive names of Lutherans, Calvinists,* Episcopalians, or Arminians. There is no general principle, indeed, taken in this discourse, for which there may not be produced the authority of persons of each of these churches, and those too among the most illustrious for learning and piety.

After these remarks, I need scarcely observe, that, when the phrase, “rational christianity," is used in the following discourse, it is by no means to be considered as applicable merely to a compa

*I am permitted, I fear, to claim the authority of those christians, who are known by the name of High Calvinists, or by the kindred name of Hopkinsians, for but few of the principles, which I have advanced. Except in our own country, however, the number, I believe, is small, of those, who make the chief peculiarity of Calvin a fundamental article of faith. I subjoin a quotation on this point from the Rev. Robert Hall; who will, I presume, be universally admitted to be the most distinguished ornament of what is called the orthodox or evangelical party in Great Britain. In speaking of the evangelical clergy, he remarks: "we cannot dismiss this part of the subject, without remarking their exemplary moderation on those intricate points, which unhappily divide the christian church; the questions, we mean, in relation to predestination and freewill, on which, equally remote from Pelagian heresy and Antinomian licentiousness, they freely tolerate and indulge a diversity of opinion, embracing Calvinists and Arminians with little distinction; provided the Calvinism of the former be practical and moderate, and the Arminianism of the latter be evangelical and devout. The greater part of them, we believe, lean to the doctrine of general redemption, and love to represent the gospel as bearing a friendly aspect towards the eternal happiness of all to whom it is addressed; but they are much less anxious to establish a polemical accuracy, than to win souls to Christ.' Strictures on a work entitled "Zeal without Innovation." p. 35. Lond. 1809.

par

ratively small number of christians, who hold ticular opinions on the metaphysical nature of our Lord. Such an appropriation of that phrase I conceive to be entirely unjust; and to breathe something of the same narrowness of spirit, which these christians are not backward to censure in others.

But neither bigotry nor liberality are exclusively of any sect; and all men ought to guard against the tendency, which the pride of spiritual superiority produces, to think that our own opinions are identified with the conclusions of reason, the dictates of conscience, and the commands of God,

The term "apology," in the title of this discourse, is used in its original sense as nearly synonymous with "defence" or "vindication." AПoaoria, the learned reader will recollect, is employed by St. Peter in the text.

FEB. 9, 1815.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

T

A.

HE general principle of the conformity of christianity to the conclusions of enlightened reason will hardly be disputed by intelligent christians. It is a ground, which has always been taken by the most able and judicious defenders of the gospel. It was very fully surveyed and illustrated about

the middle of the last century, by Dr. Doddridge, Dr. Benson, Dr. Randolph, and Dr. Leland, in the controversy occasioned by the deistical tract entitled Christianity not founded on Argument.

B.

"Reason is natural revelation, whereby the Eternal Father of Light and Fountain of all knowledge communicates to mankind that portion of truth, which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties. Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries, communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches the truth of by the testimony and proofs it gives that they come from God. So that he, that takes away reason to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both; and does much the same, as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope."

Locke's Essay, B. iv. c. 19.

C.

"To those especially, who seek for conviction in certain inward feelings, which the warmth of their imaginations represents to them as divine, I would recommend the serious consideration of this important fact; that the foundation, which they lay for the Bible, is no other than what the Mahometan is accustomed to lay for the Koran. If you ask a Mahometan, why he ascribes divine authority to the Koran, his answer is: because, when I read it, sensations are excited, which could not have been produced by any work, that came not from God.***But do we not immediately perceive, when the Mahometan thus argues from inward sensations, that he is merely raising a phantom of his own imagination ?***The christian, who thus argues, may answer, indeed, and answer with truth, that his sensations are produced by a work, which is really divine, while the sensations excited in the Mahometan are produced by a work, which is only thought so. But this very truth will involve the person, who thus uses it, in a glaring absurdity. In the first place he appeals to a criterion, which puts the Bible on a level with the Koran: and then to obviate this objection, he endeavours to show the superiority of his own appeal, by presupposing the fact, which he had undertaken to prove.”—Prof. Marsh's Lectures. P. II. L. III. p. 51–52. American edition.

D.

I am anxious, that the principles, which have been advanced under this head of the discourse, should be taken with the explanations and limitations, which I have endeavoured studiously to annex to them. I would particularly beg it to be observed, that it is by no means denied, that the objects, to which the truths of revelation relate, may contain many things not fully comprehensible by reason. Indeed there is perhaps no object pre

sented to us either by nature or revelation, which the human mind can be said entirely and perfectly to comprehend in all its relations and properties. The humblest flower, that springs up under our feet, contains that, which the most exalted philosophy can only teach us to wonder at and admire. Still, however, so far as a true philosopher asserts any thing with regard to its existence, structure, growth, or any of its properties, powers, or connections, he perfectly understands what he asserts, and employs language only in such a sense as may be intelligible to others. In like manner, all truth, intended to be conveyed to the human mind, must be intelligible in itself, and conveyed in language intelligible by those to whom it is addressed. The truths of revelation form no exception. They are expressed in words, which are the signs of human ideas, and which, therefore, can only be employed to convey the ideas, which men have annexed to them. We may, of course, form ideas of all the propositions contained in the scriptures. But of that which is unintelligible, the mind can take no cognizance, can have no belief, can give to it no assent. We may make the form of a proposition with respect to it; but it cannot have the reality of one. It is nothing-nothing but idle words. We need not scruple to say, that to believe a proposition, which either includes a contradiction, or else has no assignable, no intelligible meaning whatever, is a thing which is in its nature impossible. The scriptures undoubtedly can contain no such proposition.

It is evidently very consistent with these remarks, to believe, that revelation may indulge us with only very limited and imperfect views of many interesting truths. We now see through a glass, darkly. But these intimations, we are to remember, are all that revelation designs to give us, because they are probably all we are now capable of understanding, or all which can fitly be made known to us in a state of probation. We are not permitted to consider them merely as food for our conjectures, or materials from which we are to construct our own precarious systems. I do not mean, that we are bound, or that we are able wholly to repress the curiosity, which they so naturally excite; but we are to beware how we place our conjectures on a level with the truths which the gospel unfolds. When treating of truths, as the doctrines of scripture, and the fundamentals of christian faith, we are to stop where the scriptures stop. We are not to be wise above what is written.

Let us take, as an example, what the scriptures declare as to the efficacy of the death of our Saviour. There is perhaps no proposition on this subject, in which so many christians would agree, as that of Paley ;* "that our Lord's death and sufferings are spoken of in the scriptures in reference to human salvation, as the death and sufferings of no other being are spoken of; and that the full meaning of these passages cannot be satisfied

*Paley's Works, Vol. IV. Sermon XXIII. passim.

without supposing, that these sufferings and death had a real and essential effect in procuring that salvation." It is not my purpose to inquire into the accuracy or completeness of this statement. Granting that it is a correct representation of what the scriptures teach on this subject, and of all that they clearly teach, it would follow, from what is remarked in the preceding paragraph, that we are not at liberty to declare from our own conjectures, or from a very few and obscure texts of scripture, in what the efficacy of our Lord's death consists, or why so great a sacrifice was necessary for the remission of sins. These are the secret things, which belong unto the Lord our God; and it is those things only which are revealed, which belong unto

us.

In the application to the interpretation of the Bible of these principles with regard to the office of reason, which I have now endeavoured to illustrate, there is need, I confess, of great caution; but also of great fidelity. They can never lead us to reject a single article clearly revealed there, as an article of christian faith. They can never teach us to say, that the scriptures err; but they may and will sometimes lead us to suspend our belief in the correctness of our own researches into the scriptures, or to say, that we do not at once understand a particular passage, or that some interpretation different from the obvious and literal one is the true meaning. If then, in the study of the scriptures, we should find any thing apparently self-contradictory and unintelligible, we ought to suppose the defect to be in us, not in them. A longer study will show us, that the difficulty was only apparent. But if this apparent contradiction should still remain after all our inquiries, it is surely better to suppose, that we misunderstand the scriptures, than that they are unworthy of God.

Every Protestant of every sect acknowledges these truths, and acts upon them with more or less consistency. On what grounds, for example, do we all reject the doctrine of transubstantiation? The Catholic may produce to us the words of our Saviour; this is my body: and again; except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. It is not to be denied, that the plain and literal meaning of all this is, that we do eat and drink in the Eucharist the actual body and blood of our Lord; or as the Catholic has it, the body and blood of Almighty God himself. But all Protestants, with united voice, exclaim, that this interpretation is impossible; that it includes every kind of absurdity and contradiction, and that the reason, which God has given us, authorizes us to say, that no evidence could render such a doctrine credible. We proceed then to show, from other passages of scripture, as well as from its general strain and spirit, that the language of our Saviour in this case is merely a figure of speech authorized by the genius and idiom of the languages of the east.

The zeal of some christians, in vindicating the scriptures from the reproach of containing any doctrine inconsistent with reason, has undoubtedly sometimes led them to serious errors. But while we steadily discountenance