A

SHORT AND CANDID INQUIRY

INTO THE

PROOFS OF CHRIST'S

DIVINITY;

IN WHICH DR. PRIESTLY'S HISTORY OF OPINIONS CONCERNING CHRIST, IS

OCCASIONALLY CONSIDERED.

IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND.

BY CHARLES H. WHARTON, D. D.

WILMINGTON:

1791.

A SHORT INQUIRY, &c.

HAVING long accustomed myself to mistrust the prejudices of early education, and to pay that deference to modern researches after truth to which they are so justly entitled, from the philosophic and inquisitive spirit of the times, I have been induced to employ this winter's retirement and relaxation from business, in taking a survey of the leading doctrines of the Christian religion. With this view, I have perused with attention, several modern writers of eminence upon religious controversies, who affect, or possess the fame of candid inquiry; and although the boldness of some of them in rejecting the most received doctrines of Christianity, startled me at first, yet reflecting that the explosion of manifest absurdities, has often the same effect upon minds bewildered in the mazes of prejudice, it served rather to whet than blunt the edge of eager investigation. It has ever been my settled opinion, that there can be no stronger symptom of a little and grovelling mind, especially in persons of education and science, than a torpid indifference to truths that interest the noblest portion of our nature, occasioned by a total effusion of the affections upon this perishable world. Persons of this cast must either disbelieve their existence in a future state of being, or be censured as unwise, in disregarding doctrines that point to a happy or miserable hereafter.

On the other hand, when a sincere and keen solicitude for the most sublime and interesting truths, engages the mind in perplexing doubts and obscure researches, until rewarded for its labours, it basks at length in the delicious blaze of security and conviction, then may we pronounce such a mind the perfection of the rational nature, and an It was this laudobject of complacency to God and men. able spirit of inquiry, this disposition to fathom the divine truths of religion, as far as weak reason is suffered to penetrate, that confirmed the esteem I have long conceived for you, and raised it to the name and dignity of friendship. Under the sanction of this endearing quality, I shall venture to send you a few pages on a subject which was started in one of our late conversations: in which you observed, that a person of leisure, and some theological knowledge, might be of service to religion, by re-calling the attention of Christians to the principal arguments which have been used in this controversy, and which cannot be unseasonable at a time when the Unitarian writers are making such efforts in America.

The task I undertake is awful and intricate, and the subject of such dignity and importance, that from the birth of Christianity, to the present day, it has furnished matter of unwearied disquisition and rapturous meditation to the inquisitive philosopher, and the pious ascetic. A subject of all others the most solemn and sublime, and of which we should endeavour to form the most definite and precise ideas; as an error concerning the object of religious worship, must lead to idolatry on the one hand, or to Atheism on the other. After the volumes that have been written to evince the divinity of Christ, it would be presumption in me to hope that any new argument to this effect, will occur in this letter. All that I can do is to concentrate to a focus, the most distinguishing rays, which the two great luminaries, Revelation and History, throw upon this subject, to bring them in review before the minds of those,