mined, incapable of being understood by mankind at large, give wrong and unworthy apprehensions of God, and are generally false and pernicious; that natural religion is so plain to all, even the most ignorant men, that God could not make it plainer, even if he were to convey, miraculously, the very same ideas to all men; and yet, that almost all mankind have had very unworthy notions of God, and very wrong apprehensions of natural religion; that the principles of natural religion are so clear, that men cannot possibly mistake them; and yet, that almost all men have grossly mistaken them, and imbibed a superstition worse than atheism. DR. MORGAN asserts that God may communicate his will by immediate inspiration, and yet that it can never be proved that he has thus communicated his will, and that we are not to receive any thing on the authority of revelation. -- Nearly at the same time were published numerous tracts by MR. CHUBB, in some of which he assumed the garb of Christianity, though it is not difficult to perceive that his true intention was to betray it. He declares that he hopes to share with his friends in the favour of God, in that peaceful and happy state which God has prepared for the virtuous and faithful, in some other future world; and yet, that God does not interpose in the affairs of this world at all, and has nothing to do with the good or evil done by men here; that prayer may be useful, as a positive institution, by introducing proper thoughts, affections, and actions; and yet he intimates that it must be displeasing to God, and directly improper; that a state of rewards and punishments hereafter is one of the truths which are of the highest concern to men; and yet, that the arguments for the immortality of the soul are wholly unsatisfactory and that the soul is probably matter; — that men are accountable to God for all their conduct, and will certainly be judged and dealt with according to the truth and reality of their respective cases; and yet, that men will not be judged for their impiety or ingratitude to God, nor for their injustice and unkindness to each other; but only for voluntary injuries to the public; and that even this is unnecessary and useless; that God may kindly reveal to the world, when greatly vitiated by error and ignorance, truths necessary to be known, and precepts necessary to be obeyed; and yet, that such a revelation would be, of course, uncertain and useless; that Christ's mission is, at least in his view, probably divine; and yet, that Christ, in his opinion, was of no higher character than the founder of the Christian sect (that is, another Sadoc, Cerinthus, or Herbert); — that Christ was sent into the world to acquaint mankind with the revelation of the will of God; and yet, that his birth and resurrection were ridiculous and incredible; and that his institutions and precepts were less excellent than those of other teachers and lawgivers; that the New Testament, particularly the writings of the apostles, contain excellent cautions and instructions for our right conduct; and that the New Testament yields much clearer light than any other traditionary revelation; and yet, that the New Testament has contributed to the perplexity and confusion of - mankind, and exhibits doctrines heretical, dishonourable to God, and injurious to men; and that the apostles were impostors; and that the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles resemble Jewish fables and popish legends rather than accounts of facts; that as, on the Christian scheme, Christ will be the judge of the quick and the dead, he has not on this account (that is, admitting this to be true) any disagreeable apprehension on account of what he has written; and yet he ridicules the birth and resurrection of Christ, represents his instructions as inferior to those of the heathen philosophers and lawgivers, asserts his doctrines to be dishonourable to God and injurious to mankind, and allows him not to be sinless, but merely not a gross sinner. He further declares, that the resurrection of Christ, if true, proves not the immortality of the soul; that the belief of a future state is of no advantage to society;-that all religions are alike; that it is of no consequence what religion a man embraces; and he allows not any room for dependance on God's providence, trust in him, and resignation to his will, as parts of duty, or religion. LORD BOLINGBROKE declares that power and wisdom are the only attributes of God, which can be discovered by mankind; and yet, that he is as far from denying the justice as the power of God; that his goodness is manifest; at the same time he ascribes every other perfection to God, as well as wisdom and power, and says, this is rational; that the wisdom of God is merely a natural attribute, and in no sense moral; and yet, that the wisdom of God operates in choosing what is fittest to be done; (of course, it is a moral attribute,. involving perfect moral rectitude, as well as perfect knowledge);— that God is gracious and beneficent; that whatever God has done is just and good; that such moral perfections are in God as Christians ascribe to him; yet he censures divines for ascribing these perfections to God; that we learn from our own power and wisdom, the power and wisdom of God; and yet, that it is profane to ascribe the excellencies of our nature to God, although without limit or imperfection. He undertakes to defend the righteousness of God against divines; and yet asserts that holiness and righteousness in God are like nothing in men; that they cannot be conceived of by men, nor argued about with any certainty; and that to talk of imitating God in his moral attributes is blasphemy; that God made all things; and yet, that he did not determine the existence of particular men, (of course he did not determine the existence of any man, all men being particular men) ; — that he will not presume to deny, that there have been particular providences; and yet that there is no foundation for the belief of any such providences, and that it is absurd and profane to assert or believe them; that God is just, and that justice requires that rewards and punishments be measured to particular cases, according to their circumstances, in proportion to the merit or demerit of every individual; and yet, that God does not so measure out rewards or punishments: and that, if he did, he would subvert human affairs; that he concerns not himself with the affairs of men at all; or, if he does, that he regards only collective bodies of men, not in dividuals; that he punishes none, except through the magistrate; and that there will be no state of future rewards or punishments; — that divines are deserving of censure for saying that God made man to be happy; and yet he asserts that God made man to be happy here, and that the end of the human state is happiness; that the religion of nature is clear and obvious to all mankind; and yet that it has been unknown to the greatest part of mankind; -that we know material substance, and are assured of it; and yet, that we know nothing of either matter or spirit; that there is, undeniably, something in our constitution, beyond the known properties of matter; and yet, that the soul is material and mortal; and that to say the soul is immaterial, is the same thing as to say that two and two are five ; — that self-love is the great law of our nature; and yet, that universal benevolence is the great law of our nature; that Christianity is a republication of the religion of nature, and a benevolent system; that its morals are pure; and that he is determined to seek for genuine Christianity with the simplicity of spirit with which Christ himself taught it in the gospel; and yet a great part of his works, particularly of his philosophical works, was written for no other end but to destroy Christianity. He also declares, that there is no conscience in man, except artificially; that it is more natural to believe many gods than to believe one. During the latter part of the eighteenth century flourished DAVID HUME, whose acuteness of observation, and elegant style, have secured for his writings an extensive circulation. He asserts that there is no perceptible connection between cause and effect; that the belief of such connection is merely a matter of custom; that experience can show us no such connection;- that we cannot with any reason conclude that, because an effect has taken place once, it will take place again; that it is uncertain and useless to argue from the course of nature, and infer an intelligent cause; -that we cannot, from any analogy of nature, argue the existence of an intelligent cause of all things; that there is no reason to believe that the universe proceeded from a cause; that there are no solid arguments to prove the existence of a God; that experience can furnish no argument concerning matters of fact, is in this case useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion; and that there is no relation between cause and effect; and yet, that experience is our only guide in matters of fact, and the existence of objects; — that it is universally allowed, that nothing exists without a cause ;-that every effect is so precisely determined, that no other effect could, in such circumstances, have possibly resulted from the operation of its cause; that the relation of cause is absolutely necessary to the propagation of our species, and the regulation of our conduct; that voluntary actions are necessary, and determined by a fixed connection between cause and effect; that motives are causes operating necessarily on the will; that man is a mere machine (that is, an object operated on necessarily by external causes); that there is no contingency (that is, nothing happening without a settled cause) in the universe; and - that matter and motion may be regarded as the cause of thought, (that is, the soul is a material cause, and thought its effects);-that God discovers to us only faint traces of his character; and that it would be flattery or presumption to ascribe to him any perfection which is not discovered to the full in his works, (and of course, that it would be flattery or presumption to ascribe any perfection to God); -that it is unreasonable to believe God to be wise and good; that what we believe to be a perfection in God may be a defect (that is, holiness, justice, wisdom, goodness, mercy, and truth, may be defects in God); consequently, injustice, folly, malice, and falsehood, may be excellencies in his character ;- that no reward or punishment can be rationally expected beyond what is already known by experience and observation. While Hume and Bolingbroke were propagating these sentiments in England, Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alembert, Frederick II. King of Prussia, and other distinguished writers, had confederated for the avowed purpose of annihilating the Christian religion. Their writings are too numerous to admit of extracts; but it is in the posthumous works of the King of Prussia, that we see a faithful delineation of the real tenets and opinions of the most celebrated philosophers of the continent, of the founders and legislators of the great empire of infidelity, with the philosophic monarch himself at their head. Every secret of their hearts is there laid open in their familiar and confidential correspondence with each other; and there we see that they were pretended deists, but real atheists; that, although the name of a Supreme Being was sometimes mentioned, yet it was seldom mentioned but with ridicule and contempt; and that they never conceived him to be any thing more than the intelligent principle that animates all nature, the source of life and motion, the sensorium of the universe; but in other respects totally unconnected with this earth and its inhabitants. "In consequence of this doctrine these philosophers rejected all idea of a providence and a moral governor of the world. They ascribed every effect to fate or fortune, to necessity or chance; they denied the existence of a soul distinct from the body; they conceived man to be nothing more than an organised lump of matter, a mere machine, an ingenious piece of clock-work, which, when the wheels refuse to act, stands still, and loses all power and motion for ever. They acknowledged nothing beyond the grave, no resurrection, no future existence, no future retribution; they considered death as an eternal sleep, as the total extinction of our being; and they stigmatised all opinions different from these with the names of superstition, bigotry, priestcraft, fanaticism, and idolatry." Such are the various, contradictory, and impious tenets promul gated by the most eminent champions of what is called deism,2 (and 1 Bp. Porteus's Charge in 1794. (Tracts, pp. 266, 267.) 2 Most of the preceding statements of the opposers of revelation, as well as of those which follow concerning morals, are selected from Dr. Leland's View of the Deistical Writers, where their identical expressions are given, and their fallacies are exposed with great depth of argument and learning. which have been repeated in different ways by the opposers of revelation in our age), concerning religion, the worship of God, and the expectations of mankind respecting a future state. We shall only add, that though the infidels of the present day profess to be the disciples of nature, and to receive her unerring instructions, yet they differ from each other with an almost endless variety. Having gradually receded from true Christianity to false, some are unbelievers in the nature, some in the providence, and others even in the existence of a God; but all of them are unanimous in rejecting the divine testimony, and in renouncing the God of the Bible. Let us now take a brief view, 2. Of their precepts concerning morals. LORD HERBERT declared that men are not hastily, or on small grounds to be condemned, who are led to sin by bodily constitution; that the indulgence of lust and of anger is no more to be blamed than the thirst occasioned by the dropsy, or the drowsiness produced by lethargy. MR. HOBBES asserted, that the civil or municipal law is the only foundation of right and wrong; that where there is no civil law, every man's judgment is the only standard of right and wrong;-that the sovereign is not bound by any obligation of truth or justice, and can do no wrong to his subjects; that every man has a right to all things, and may lawfully get them if he can! LORD BOLINGBROKE resolved all morality into self-love as its principal, and taught that ambition, the lust of power, sensuality, and avarice, may be lawfully gratified, if they can be safely gratified; that the sole foundation of modesty is vanity, or a wish to show ourselves superior to mere animals; that man lives only in the present world, and is only a superior animal;-that the chief end of man is to gratify the appetites and inclinations of the flesh; - that modesty is inspired by mere prejudice; and that polygamy is a part of the law or religion of nature. He also intimates that adultery is no violation of the law of nature; and that there is no wrong, except in the highest lewdness. MR. HUME (the immorality of whose principles is displayed in his Private Correspondence recently published1) maintained that selfdenial, self-mortification, and humility are not virtues, but are useless, and mischievous;-that they stupify the understanding, sour the temper, and harden the heart; that pride, self-valuation, ingenuity, eloquence, quickness of thought, easiness of expression, delicacy of taste, strength of body, and cleanliness, are virtues; and consequently, that to want honesty, to want understanding, and to want strength of body, are equally the subjects of moral disapprobation; that adultery must be practised, if men would obtain all the advantages of life;-that, if generally practised, it would in time cease to be scandalous; and that if practised secretly and frequently, it would by degrees come to be thought no crime at all!!! 1 See the "Correspondence of David Hume with several distinguished Persons." London, 1820, 4to. |