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of prefenting them to the Public, along with thefe unfinished Letters of the Rev. Mr. Fletcher. Whether I fhall have the Doctor's Thanks for this my forwardnefs to ferve him, I know not, but, I can in Truth fay, I mean his Good, as well as the Good of all into whofe Hands thefe Sheets may fall, and what is well meant, he will allow, fhould be well taken. His Wifdom and Learning, I doubt not, will direct him as to the Ufe to be made of thefe Quotations from the Writings of the Evangelifts and Apofles. They may properly be confidered, (like Experiments in Natural Philofophy) as fo many Inftances, demonftrating in Fact, not only the Truth and certainty of his late Discovery, that the Perfons who could write in fuch a Manner, could not be divinely inspired, but, as I faid, that they could not have even Common Senfe. The Way will then be perfectly open for all that remains, and he may make an eafy Transition to Deifm, Atheism, or what he pleases.

JOSEPH BENSON.

Birmingham, February 25, 1790.

LETTERS

LETTERS

TO THE

REV. DR. PRIESTLEY,

BY THE LATE

REV. JOHN FLETCHER, &c.

LETTER II.*

Doctor Priestley is mistaken, whek, he afferts that the Prophets always fpoke of the Mefah as of a mere man like themfelves, and that the Jews never expected that the Meffiah could be more than a man. In oppofition to this error, this Letter proves, that our firft Parents expected a divine Meffiah, and that the divine Perfon, who appeared to the Patriarchs and to Mofes, was Jehovah the Son, or Chrift in his pre-exiftent ftate.

REV. SIR

You might have given us, at least, twenty lines of plain, uncontroverted truth in the beginning of your Hiftory, but regardless of fo decent a caution, you ftun us at once by a glaring, antichriftian paradox. In the fixteenth line of your huge Work (for we need not go by pages to reckon up your errors) (peaking of the thoughts

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* See the first Letter in the first part.

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which the Jews entertained of the Meffiah, you fay, None of their Prophets gave them an idea of any other than a man like themfelves in that illuftrious character, and no other did they ever expect.

Now Sir, in oppofition to this strange Affertion, I fhall fhew you, not only that the Prophets gave the Jews an idea of a divine perfon to ap pear in the character of the Mefliah, and that accordingly they expected fuch an one, but that even our first Parents must have formed a much higher notion of that feed of the woman which was to bruife the Serpent's head than that of a mere man "like themfelves". In proof of this, I shall not produce the expreffion of Eve upon the birth of Cain, whom it is highly probable the thought to be that feed, though according to the Hebrew it is I have gotten the man, the Jehovah. But I fhall go upon furer grounds than any particular expreffion can afford. I fhall argue from facts and from the reason of the cafe. However unwilling you may be to allow it, it is nevertheless, as we have already feen in the former part of this work, an unqueftionable truth that the Logos, the Word, who was in the beginning with GOD and was GOD, was the immediate maker of our firft Parents, of that beautiful world in which he placed them, and of all the creatures over which he fet them, nay, and of all things vifible and invifible. Now can we fuppofe that Adam, who, as he came out of the hands of his Maker, had fuch knowledge, that at first fight he gave names to all the creatures, ás they paffed in review before him, and names perfectly defcriptive of their natures; can we fuppofe (I fay) that he did not know who was his Creator and the Creator of all these Creatures he had named? Certainly we cannot. But if he knew who was his Creator, he could hardly be ignorant who would be his Redeemer. For confidering

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dering the holy and happy ftate he and his partner had been in before their fall, the ferenity of their minds, the vigour of their bodies and the beauty and fertility of the blifsful fpot where their bounteous Lord had placed them; and confidering the fad change that had now taken place, the dreadful ruin they had brought on themselves and their pofterity by their tranfgreffion; Confidering their crime itfelf with its awful retinue, fhame, the curfe, forrow, toil, death, and corruption; it was reasonable furely to think, that the repairer of the breach, the restorer of a ruined world, would be that divine Perfon, by whom it was created. Thus when we fee an exquifite piece of mechanifm capitally injured in all its parts, we reafonably conclude, that none can completely mend it, but the Maker, or an Artist who equals him in skill.

Nor was it unreasonable for our firft Parents to think, that their Redeemer would be He, whom St. Paul calls the Lord from heaven: For, He who made and married them, who gave them the gar den of Eden, and warned them not to eat of the forbidden fruit; He, who came to them walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and from whofe prefence they hid themfelves, when they heard his voice; He, who, after he had convitted them, and had paffed fentence of death upon them, fo kindly laved them from defpair, by the unexpected Prothife of a Deliverer; He who already carried his merciful condefcenfion fo far as to trip them of their fig-leaves, to make them coats of fkins, and to clothe them with needful and decent apparel; He might, in fome future period, condefcend to unite himself, fome how or other, to the woman's feed, and become the deftroyer of Death and the Serpent,

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The reasonableness of this hope is evident. # He taught our firft Parents (as it is highly probable he did) to offer in facrifice the beasts, of whofe fkins He made them coats, and thus already fhewed himfelf our Paffover, the Lamb of God, typically flain from the foundation of the world. Nor can we more reasonably account for the original notion and the univerfal cuftom of expiatory and propitiatory facrifices, than by the fuppofition, that mankind were led to this part of divine worship by a peculiar revelation, or by a pofitive command of that divine Perfon, who familiarly converfed with Adam, and who is called GOD, or LORD GOD, twenty fix times, in the second and third chapters of Genefis.

The fame Scriptures, which inform us, that No man hath feen God (the Father) at any time, but that the only begotten Son, who is in the bofom of the Father, hath declared Him, (John i. 18,) teach us nevertheless, that God appeared to several of the Patriarchs, and fometimes even in a human fhape, Hence it follows, that we must either reje&t St.. ·John's declaration above-quoted, or admit, that He, who thus appeared, is the Sox, the Locos, who was in the beginning with God and was GOD.

The truth of this conclufion will appear more clearly, if we take a view of the defign and circumftances of these ancient manifeftations, thefe preparatory and tranfient incarnations (if I may fo call them) OF THE WORD, who in a fixed period was to be really and laftingly manifested in the flesh.

Whether we confider his expoftulating with Cain, about the murder of Abel, his trying and condemning that murderer, as he had done Adam, and his fetting a mark upon the guilty vagabond, left any finding him should kill him; or, whether we take notice of the manner, in which he

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