Alas! the most insurmountable, as well as the most usual, obstacle to our belief, arises from our passions and our appetites: for faith being (as above observed) not less an act of the will, than of the understanding, we oftener disbelieve for want of inclination than want of evidence. That the authority of Revelation should be well founded, is certainly for the interest of good men; and, still more so, for that of the bad, because it is the only system which can give them any assurance of pardon. If any one by profligacy or extravagance contracts a debt, repentance may hinder him from increasing it, but can never pay it off for him. He will still continue to be accountable for it, unless it be discharged by himself, or by some other in his stead. This very discharge Christianity holds forth on our repentance. It is, therefore, well worth every man's while to believe Christianity, if he can; as he will find it the surest preservative against all vicious habits and their attendant evils, under distresses and disappointments the best resource, and at all times the firmest basis on which contemplation, an act so essential to the constitution of the human mind, can repose.

Finally let it be remembered, that even in mathematics there are many propositions, which, though on a cursory view they appear to the most acute understandings, uninstructed in that science, to be certainly false, are found, on a closer scruti ny, to be capable of the strictest demonstration; and that, therefore it is at least as possible, with respect to the Christian religion, for them to be mistaken, who have made few and superficial in

quiries into the subject, as for those great masters of reason and erudition-Bacon, Newton, Milton, Hale, Locke and Boyle-to have been deceived in their belief; a belief to which they inflexibly adhered, after the most diligent researches into the authenticity of its records, the completion of its prophecies, the sublimity of its doctrines, the purity of its precepts, and the subtilty and sophistry of its adversaries; and which they have testified to the world by their writings, without any other motive than their regard for truth and the benefit of mankind.

Should the few foregoing pages be so fortunate as to persuade any unhappy sceptic to place some confidence in these great opinions, and to distrust his own; to convince him that Christianity may not be altogether artifice and error, and to prevail upon him to examine, before he rejects it-their purpose will be abundantly answered, and their compiler will have the satisfaction of reflecting that he has not lived in vain.

VII.

THE

INWARD WITNESS

ΤΟ

CHRISTIANITY;

ABRIDGED FROM

DR WATTS'

THREE SERMONS UPON THAT SUBJECT.

"He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself."-1 John v. 10.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE

OF

DR. ISAAC WATTS.

THE last Tract (founded upon WATTS' three Sermons on the Inward Witness to Christianity) is obviously, from its very nature, addressed to believers. But is it too much to entertain a fear that, through the impious industry with which Deism has of late circulated its obsolete quibbles, doubts may have been occasionally excited in the breasts even of the pious and the good? These doubts it is surely? desirable to prevent, or to remove. At all events, we know where it is written, "Precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little. And who can tell whether, under the blessing of the Almighty, this delightful picture of peace and joy, reflected from the bosom of the sincere Christian, may not, in a blessed moment, woo the eye, and win the heart of some unhappy person, whom Infidelity has long kept a stranger to both one and the other!

Dr WATTS, who was born in 1674, underwent, in 1712, a violent attack of fever, which so shattered his frame, that he was obliged to intermit his ministerial labours among the Dissenters for four years. In consequence of this, Sir THOMAS ABNEY generously took him to his own house, where he spent the remaining thirty-six years of his life: And it would be difficult (says Dr AIKEN) to produce an instance of a connexion of friendship be