renounce it. All the pleas of duty, gratitude, and interest, are so weighty, in favour of a constant and resolute subjection to it, that one could hardly imagine, did not fact demonstrate the contrary, that any temptation of allurement, or of terror, should, with a rational creature, who believed the gospel, triumph over them.

Nor is a life of christian obedience that violent and constrained thing, which you seem to suppose. Were I to judge by these pages alone, I should imagine you had never read the New Testament, and did not know how the views of a christian are animated and raised. Oh Sir, the rational believer is in his heart and conscience persuaded, that, to all the bounties of his common providence, God has added the riches of redeeming love. He is fully persuaded, that the Son of God descended from heaven, to deliver him from everlasting ruin; that he has generously purchased him with the price of his own blood; and that (if he be conscious of a true faith in him,) Christ has taken him as his peculiar property under his guardian care, with a gracious purpose of conducting him safely through life and death, of receiving his nobler part in a very little time into the abode of holy and happy spirits, and at length of raising his body from the dust, and fixing his complete person in a state of immortal glory and felicity. Now when this is really believed, and the conviction is firm and lively, (which I hope a rational conviction may very possibly be,) what can be a more natural effect, than that an ardent love to God our Father, and to the Lord Jesus Christ, should be excited by it? And it is easy to imagine, that this love must make obedience easy: and when the mind is taken up with such sublime and delightful views, and those devotional exercises which it is so natural to ingraft upon them, it will not be so hard a matter as many seem to imagine, to conquer the irregular propensities of animal nature, or the exorbitances of passion, where only the little enjoy ments and interests of this transitory life are concerned. Or rather, many of those exorbitances will be superseded, or as the apostle justly and finely expresses it, crucified by the cross of Christ; and the affections without any painful struggle will generally flow on in an orderly and pleasant channel.

And where this is the temper and character, martyrdom may not appear so dreadful a thing, as you, Sir, have taken pains to represent it. It may rather be the habitual judgment of such a christian, that it is to be esteemed an honor and favour, which our great Lord bestows on some of his most beloved servants. To be excused from the melancholy circumstances

attending death in its natural form; to have an opportunity of turning the common lot of mortality into an occasion of manifesting heroic gratitude and fidelity to the best of masters and of friends; to die with those warm sentiments and elevated views which such a condition so naturally tends to excite and suggest, would not surely be, as you seem to insinuate, the death of a fool; (which I cannot think even that of Socrates to have been :) surely, Sir, on second thoughts you must rather judge it a consummation of the labours, cares, and sorrows inseparable from human life, to be devoutly wished for, rather than dreaded. I will on the other hand grant, that hellish acts of cruelty may be invented and practised, under which the resolution of an upright mind may faint, and even reason itself be overborne, unless God were pleased to interpose by extraordinary supports, which there is great encouragement to hope he would in such a case do but while reason remains undisturbed, I should imagine, that death in its most horrible form, when met in the cause of such a Saviour who had so graciously borne it for us, should appear more desirable than life in its most agreeable circumstances; and surely then, infinitely more desirable than life purchased by base ingratitude to him, and worn out under the sense of his just displeasure, and the sad prospect of being finally disowned by him, as an apostate and a traitor.

This, I think, to be solid reason; and I bless God, there are numberless facts which confirm it, and shew, that persons not pretending to any such immediate revelation as you assert to be necessary, have conquered the greatest difficulties on these principles, and, after having adorned the gospel by a most exemplary and holy life, have steadily and cheerfully sealed it with their blood. And every fact of this kind is so unanswerable an argument against all that you alledge here, that I do not judge it necessary to pursue this part of my reply any

farther.

With this therefore I conclude what I had to offer in vindication of the perspicuity and solidity of those arguments in proof of christianity, to which the generality of its professors among us may attain: and I hope it will be allowed, that I have fairly and candidly, as well as seriously considered what you object against it, and so have answered the first part of your pamphlet, which I take to be by far the most plausible and dangerous.

Your endeavours to prove, that christianity itself avows, that it is not built upon argument, but on a revelation to be immediately made from the Spirit of God to every christian,

by which all argument is superseded, and all possibility of doubt and error excluded, is such a direct contradiction to the whole tenour of the New Testament, that I hardly think you would be understood seriously to mean it. It is sufficient, that you have shewn, you have wit enough to give a varnish to so wild a notion. Yet lest any should be so weak, as to imagine there is any solidity in what you have so adventurously advanced on that head, I am willing plainly to discuss it with you; and at the same time to enquire into what you say, with regard to the awful sentence which the gospel passes on those who reject it: a circumstance, which you every where represent as utterly irreconcilable with a religion to be rationally proved and defended; but which, on the contrary, appears to me most wisely adapted to the rest of the scheme, and, when compared with it, an addition rather than abatement of its internal evidence. This and several other particulars in yours, I should be glad to examine; but I wave it at present, because this letter is already swelled to a pretty large size. I therefore reserve what I have farther to say to another opportunity, and I hope a few weeks more may afford it. But I chuse to send you what I have already written, without any farther delay; because I am conscious of the many hindrances, which, in a life like mine, oblige me often to postpone, much longer than I intended, the execution of attempts to do what little I can towards serving the world, by promoting the interest of christianity in it; and because I really think your piece has been already too long unanswered. If you please to offer any thing in reply to what I have here proposed, I shall give it a serious consideration: and hope that I shall, in the whole course of this controversy, endeavour to write like a christian, and then I shall not forget any other character which, I could wish to maintain. At present, Sir, I conclude with assuring you, that it is with sensible regret I have found myself obliged, for the honour of the gospel, and the preservation of men's souls, to animadvert on what you wrote, in the manner I have already done. Should you prove, which may possibly be the case, some old acquaintance and friend, I hope I have written nothing which should make me blush at any interview with you; and should you, as I rather apprehend, be an entire stranger, I am, on the common principles of that faith, which it is the great glory of my life to profess and defend, with sincere good wishes for your temporal and eternal happiness, in any thing which may conduce to either, Sir, your obedient humble Servant,

Northampton, Nov. 5, 1742.

P. DODDRIDGE.

$12,

LETTER II.

THOUGH my former Letter considered what I thought most

essential in your late Treatise, vet there are several other things in it, which however designed, have so plain a tendency to expose christianity to wspicion, and even to contempt, that on the principles which led me to animadvert upon it before, I find myself obliged to give you this second trouble.

I proceed therefore, without any farther ceremony, to consider the pains you have taken, under the second general bead of your tract, to represent the gospel as pleading guilty to the charge of not being founded on argument; or in other words not being generally capable of such rational proof, as its disciples may be able to receive.

You would seem indeed, if one may judge by your manner of introducing this topic, to think this is doing great kindness to the New Testament, as it delivers it from the absurdity of saying, "Judge, whether you have time, or not:—Judge, whether you are judges, or not :-Judge all for yourselves, and yet judge all alike." (page 35.) But I hope, Sir, before I have finished my Letter, to shew, that ail, whom we can suppose to be concerned in any demand of judging, i. e. all persons of common understanding, to whom the gospel is, or has been, faithfully and intelligently preached, can have no just plea from the want of time, or capacity, and must, on the supposition of an honest and diligent enquiry, all judge alike, i. e. all agree in receiving it as a divine revelation.

To illustrate and confirm the view you have given of the matter, you undertake to shew,-that Christ did not propose his doctrines to examination; (page 36-38.)-that his apostles had neither leisure, nor qualifications, for such a method, i. e. for the use of reasoning and argument in the propagation of the pel; (page 38-40.)—and that the very supposition of such proceeding is evidently preposterous from the nature of the

(page 41-46.) In opposition to all which, it is one of The easiest tasks one can imagine, to shew,-that Christ did ese the great doctrines he taught to examination;— that nestles did the same, urging (as their blessed Master had e. most cogent arguments in the proof of them ;—and that er method of proceeding had been preposterous, and sarily have exposed the gospel to the contempt of enable people. It seems hard, indeed, to be put upon things so conspicuous as these; and it cannot but be

some trial of temper to one who honours and loves the gospel, to see it, and its glorious founders, placed in so ridiculous a view, as that in which your assertions and arguments represent them; that is, described as wild enthusiasts, running all over the world, at the expence of their own lives, to urge men on pain of damnation to receive a religion, for which they did not pretend to give them any reason. But out of respect both to you, and the cause in which I am engaged, I will keep myself as calm as I can. And if some following pages seem to my reader unnecessary, I must beg him to distinguish between what was needful to inform him, and what was requisite to confute you.

But before I proceed to hint at the evident proof of the three propositions, which in opposition to yours I have laid down above, I beg leave to premise, that all you say on this subject seems to me founded on an artful and sophistical shifting the question. The grand matter in debate is, whether christianity is founded on rational argument; or whether the only cause, which a professor of the gospel can generally have to give for his belief of it, must be, that God has immediately revealed it to him by his spirit, and testified the truth of it to him, in a manner, which as, on the one hand, he cannot suspect, so on the other, he cannot communicate or explain? Instead of discussing this question, you put off the reader with another very different, (page 36.) Whether Christ and his apostles submitted their doctrine to examination? which is a very ambiguous manner of speaking: and when you assert that they did not, I must beg leave to ask, what you mean by their doctrine? Do you mean this general doctrine, that they were teachers sent from God? Or do you mean those particular doctrines, which in consequence of that general assertion they proceeded to teach? If you mean the former, it is indeed to your purpose; but, as I shall presently shew, is a proposition entirely and notoriously false. But if you mean the latter, which the course of your arguments seems to imply, then it is quite foreign to your purpose: for christianity may be founded on rational argument, though the first teachers of it, when they had proved their mission, should have put the credit of particular doctrines on their own authorized testimony alone, without discussing the several branches of their system, in such a manner as it would have been necessary they should have done, had they proposed it only as a theory, destitute of external proofs.

Now that our Lord Jesus Christ did not expect, that it should be believed merely on his own testimony, that he was a