we are to determine whether doctrines are sistent," and " worthy of God?" wise and holy," "self-con Secondly. You plead that we have forfeited our claim on the fulfilment of your engagement, by a statement of opinion in our second lecture, to this effect: that miracles do not enable us to infer the intellectual infallibility of the performer. This, it seems, is an unexpected heresy, and cancels all promises. You appear to be affected by the Popish tendencies of the age; and to have adopted the notion, that no faith is to be kept with heretics. On this point we remark as follows :— 1st. We are astonished at your assertion, that this idea about miracles deprives us of any "common medium of reason" with you. Did you not "propose to discuss with us" the "evidence of the plenary inspiration of the holy Scriptures," under the,persuasion that we should take the negative side? In such discussion, would you not have argued from the miracles to the inspiration? And how did you suppose that we should reply? You were well aware that we should admit the miracles; and equally well aware that we should deny the plenary inspiration of those that wrought them. It cannot be supposed that, at this point, you would have had no more to say; but you would have proceeded, as many able writers have already done, to seek some "common medium of reason,"-some considerations, that is, having force with both parties; by which you might hope to fasten the disputed connection between your premises and your conclusion. 2nd. We are still more astonished to hear that this sentiment puts us" a step beyond common Deism," "in undisputed possession of the field of infidelity," and even in "separation from our common humanity;" seeing that the opinion has been held by BISHOP SHERLOCK :-Who says, "Miracles cannot prove the truth of any doctrine; and men do not speak accurately when they say the doctrines are proved by the miracles; for, in truth, there is no connection between miracles and doctrines."* JOHN LOCKE:-"Even in those books which have the greatest proof of Revelation from God, and the attestation of miracles to confirm their being so, the miracles are to be judged by the doctrine, not the doctrine by the miracles."t DR. SAMUEL CLARKE ::- "We can hardly affirm, with any certainty, that any particular effect, how great or miraculous soever it may seem to us, is beyond the power of all-created beings (whom he explains further to be, subordinate intelligences, good or evil angels,') in the universe to produce." He believes the Devil to be able, by reason of his invisibility, to work true and real miracles;” and “whether such (i.e. miraculous) interposition be the immediate work of God, or of some good or evil angel, can hardly be discovered merely by the work itself." He accordingly lays down the conditions under which the miracles will prove the doctrine.‡ Sherlock's Discourses, No. 10, Hughes's edition, vol. i, p. 197, and No. 15, Vol. I, p. 278. + Lord King's Life of Locke, p. 125. Sermons at the Boyle Lecture, Prop. xiv. BISHOP FLEETWOOD :—" Spirits may perform most strange and astonishing things,-may convey men through the air, or throw a mountain two miles at a cast."* : The notions expressed by the last two writers, respecting the superhuman agency of good and evil spirits, evidently destroy, no less than the more philosophical principle of Sherlock and Locke, all power of reasoning from miracles, as such, to the divine authority and inspiration of the performers. You cannot be ignorant of the fact, that these notions prevailed among all the Fathers of both the Greek and Latin churches; that they were almost universal among Christians till very recent times; and that your own church lodges with the Bishop of the Diocese a discretionary power to license clergymen to cast out devils.t which are Nor need we remind you that, by yet another process of thought, the Society of Friends assigns to miracles the rank which you think so profane. We know," says Barclay on this subject, "that the devil can form a sound of words, and convey it to the outward ear; that he can easily deceive the outward senses, by making things appear not. Yea, do we not see that the Jugglers and Mountebanks can do as much as all that, by their legerdemain? God forbid then that the saint's faith should be founded on so fallacious a foundation as man's outward and fallible senses." And he urges, that there must be other ways of ascertaining divine truth; for as to miracles, John the Baptist and divers of the Prophets wrought none that we hear of, and yet were both immediately and extraordinarily sent." By different modes of thinking, all these (Christians?) have arrived at the sentiment in question, so that we Occupy "the field of infidelity," without being" separated from" at least deep a dye of Deism is the more remarkable, because it is advanced and a goodly portion of our humanity." That this sentiment should be of so be shown to be so, only by discussing the interpretation of the New Tesvindicated as a scriptural sentiment,—a plea which, however foolish, tament. You have proposed no explanation of the state of the Apostles' minds before the day of Pentecost. On that day they either did, or they did not, become more enlightened than before. of the Holy Spirit conferred no illumination; if they did, they were deIf they did not, the gift ficient in light before; and the miraculous powers they had possessed and exercised did not imply infallibility. We thought, indeed, that the comparative narrowness of their views before this period had been universally admitted. With respect to the appeal which in the presence of the Baptist's disciples aware that can quite our Lord makes to his miraculous acts, you are worthless," though you say we We do not regard it as Essay on Miracles, p. 99, seq., as quoted by Farmer in his Dissertation on Mira cles, chap. i,§3. .. attempt, upon the Diocese, first obtained and had under his hand and seal, . . "No minister or ministers shall, without the licence and direction of the Bishop of any pretence whatsoever, either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to and deposition from the ministry."-Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical, lxxii. devils, under pain of the imputation of imposture or cozenage, cast out any devil or Apology for the True Christian Divinity, Prop. ii. pp. 35, 36. Ibid. Prop X. P. "must" do so. These acts (the climax of which, however, was no miracle at all,- the poor have the Gospel preached to them,") fully answered the purpose for which they were appealed to, viz., to determine whether Jesus was He that should come,' or whether John was " to look for another;" for as Bishop Sherlock remarks, though miracles may not (he says "cannot) prove the truth of any doctrine," they prove the commission of the person who does them to proceed from God."* We repeat then, that we have started no topic which you did not invite; we have taken up no method of discussion which your own rules did not prescribe; we have advanced no idea for which your own Church should be unprepared. You have quitted this controversy without any justification from the unexpected nature of our sentiments, and we are persuaded that you can plead no discourtesy in our proposals respecting the mechanical arrangements. On this point we think it right to state thus publicly the overtures which we made to you, through the excellent clergyman who communicated with us as your representative. An objection having been urged by Mr. Ould to discussion through the newspapers, on the ground that they are read by "the ignorant scoffer, the sceptical, the profane," we proposed the following plan :-That for twelve or any limited number of weeks, a joint weekly pamphlet of thirty-two pages should be published, each party furnishing sixteen pages; that the first number of the series should contain a positive statement, from each party, of its fundamental principles in religion, of that which it undertook to assail, and that which it undertook to defend; and that within the limits of this programme, the replies in the subsequent numbers should confine themselves. Thus each party would have chosen its own ground, at first; and both would have disappeared from the public view together, at last. This proposal was rejected without any reason being assigned, except that there were "too many difficulties in the way;" and though all preliminaries were to be settled "by previous agreement," we were told that in the following "Courier" we should find a letter addressed to us, which we might answer in whatever way we thought proper. The public who have watched the proceedings in this matter will bear witness, with our consciences, that we were not the first to enter this controversy; that we have not been the first to leave it; and that, in its progress, we have departed from no pledge, and been guilty of no evasion. And now, Gentlemen, accept from us in conclusion, our solemn protest against the language of unmeasured insult, in which, under the cover of sanctity, the associated clergymen whom you represent, have thought proper to speak of our religion against the accusations personally addressed to us, in the presence of 3,000 people, by the Lecturers in Christ Church, of " mean subterfuges," of " sneering,' of " savage grins," of "damnable blasphemy," of "the greatest imaginable guilt," of "doing despite to the Spirit of Grace," of "the most odious of crimes against the Majesty of Heaven," and in common with all Unitarians of forming our belief, from the blindness of graceless hearts," too bad" to have been touched by any spirit of God," and against the * Discourses, No. 10, Hughes's edition, vol. i, p. 197. is it seems CONTROVERSY AT LIVERPOOL. visible glee, fierce as Tertullian's, with which "the faithful" are reminded that ere long, we must and shall bow our proud knees, whether we like it or not, to the object of their peculiar worship; so that they are sure of their triumph in heaven, however questionable it may be on earth. You began the controversy by ascribing to us one shade of "infidelity;" you end it by ascribing to us a blacker. Beneath "the lowest deep," there a lower still." We have sat quietly under all this, bearing the rude friction upon everything that is most dear to us, assured that if anything in heaven or earth be certain, it is this;-that no spirit of God ever spake thus, or thus administered the poison of human passions, falsely labelled as the medicine of a divine love. What is the difference between your religion and ours, that this high tone (than which, to a pure moral taste, nothing surely can be lower) should be assumed against us? We believe, no less than you, in an infallible Revelation (though had we the misfortune to doubt it, we might be, in the sight of God, neither worse nor better than yourselves); you in a Revelation of an unintelligible Creed to the understanding; we in a Revelation of moral perfection, and the spirit of duty to the heart; you in a Revelation of the metaphysics of Deity; we in a Revelation of the character and providence of the Infinite Father; you in a Redemption which saves the few, shall restore to all at length the image and the immortality of God: and leaves with Hell the triumph after all; we in a Redemption which we do reserve, as a sort, as much higher than your cold, dogmatical, of Christianity, might have been spared. persons are Earth and of men. We believe in a spiritual and moral Revelation, most awakening, most sanctifying, inost holy; which words, being the signs of hard and definite ideas, could never express, and which is therefore pourtrayed in a mind divinely finished for the purpose, acting awhile on publicly transferred to Heaven. All men may see that such a Revelation corresponds well with the medium which conveys it: but a set of scholastic propositions, like Articles and Creeds, might as well have been written on the sky; and many a bitter doubt and bitterer controversy We believe, Gentlemen, that the minds of serious and considerate secret faith of the individual heart; that they will not long be forced to live on the dry husks of Creeds which have lost the kernel of true life; of the aggressions of Churches upon the private and nor accept mere puzzles as divine mysteries. It is at the peril of all and the abyss of God confidently measured by thrusting out the footreligion that its illimitable truths are embalmed in definite formulas, rule of ecclesiastical wisdom. injury be thus turned from the contemplation of the affections, to the small criticism of the intellect: and the acute and polished dividingknife of dialectics, when applied to cut theology into propositions, is apt That all professing ministers of the Gospel may speedily turn from weary to leave scarce a shred of faith. The things most holy cannot without (E) |