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There is a manifest distinction between the powers. which God has given us by nature, and that which is ne cessary to the proper and effectual use of them. A man may have eyes, and yet be blind; ears, and be deaf; hands and feet, and be maimed or lame; all the members of the human body, and be so paralyzed as to have no use of them; and lungs which are rotten and cannot respire. The first thing he will want, therefore, is a cure. Again: it is not enough that God has given us eyes; we cannot see till he has also given us light. Our ears would not answer the purpose of hearing, if we lived in vacuo, or if the air were robbed of its elasticity. Our members, though in themselves formed for motion, would not move at our will, unless God had superadded something to which we find it difficult to give a name. And our vital organs would answer no purpose of life without the vital air for respiration. The judicious reader is left to make the application.

To conclude: the dogmas of philosophical and rational. izing divines, and the dreams of enthusiasts, though directly opposed to each other, are equally distant from the doctrine of the sacred writings. Socinians, and less consistent Trinitarians, may reject the plain testimony of Scripture, deny all intercourse with heaven, and ridicule the professions of serious Christians as the cant of hypocrisy ; while impostors and madmen impute to the Spirit of God their imaginary revelations, or absurd and unscriptural impressions: the one may renounce the truth of God, and the other may abuse it; but it stands on its own basis, and is immovable as the Rock on which the Christian church is built.

Granting that our Lord promised to his immediate followers the knowledge of evangelical truth by direct inspiration, and those miraculous powers which demonstrated that they spake the wisdom and truth of God,-we have found it equally true that he promised the Holy Spirit, for other purposes, to all his followers in all ages,-that his promises have hitherto been fulfilled, that the Scriptures are faithful records of the fulfilment, as well as of the promise, that the blessing is necessary to each individual of mankind, and that "the same Lord is rich unto all that call upon him." The miraculous powers were given for

the introduction of Christianity, and for its establishment in the world and they were not withdrawn until the important design was accomplished. The same necessity for them now no longer remains. The ordinary influences of the Spirit were originally promised for the personal salvation of each individual of mankind. That purpose is not yet universally effected; but the same necessity for them remains. The cessation of the former, therefore, by no means implies the cessation of the latter. In six days God created the heaven and the earth, and all that are in them, and rested the seventh day. But a cessation from creation by no means implies that the divine energies are not still engaged in the preservation, propagation, and improvement of the work of his hands. Nor does God's withdrawing those extraordinary powers, by which the Christian church was called into existence, argue that he will not be with his faithful servants "always, even unto the end of the world."

THE CONCLUSION.

IN examining and refuting the doctrines of modern Socinians, it can scarcely escape our observation, that the source of their destructive errors is the pride of reason. "If any man consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud," 1 Tim. vi, 3. One who is a stranger to the case might naturally suppose that a person born in a Christian country, and surrounded from his infancy by the direct or reflected light of divine revelation, would be satisfied with such a source of instruction in every thing connected with God and religion. But this is not the case with those who run the race of Socinianism. As if every man were a fool who does not light a taper of his own to seek the meridian sun, their belief of the divine testimony must be suspended, till from other sources they have demonstrated to themselves the being, attributes, and will of God. However difficult such a demonstration might be to one who has no previous knowledge of these subjects, it is not difficult to one who,

in fact, is only seeking a proof of his own ingenuity, and who therefore can easily persuade himself that he has demonstrated by reason what he has really learned from revelation. The result of his imaginary researches he calls natural religion.

Some of the principal doctrines of this natural religion are," God is," "God is one," "God is a spirit," and "God is love." As the doctrines thus adopted are all borrowed from divine revelation, from thence they ought to be illustrated. For although our novice has imagined that he has perfectly demonstrated them, he has not even perfectly understood one of them. He knows neither what God is, what is the nature of his unity, what a spirit is, nor how his love is modulated. It is easy to conceive the possibility and the propriety of receiving additional instruction from divine revelation, on subjects which as yet we have but imperfectly comprehended. But how is it possible for a man to reason conclusively from premises which he does not perfectly understand, and which, therefore, he cannot compare? Is not this to build knowledge on ignorance? The superstructure raised on such a basis is "a castle in the air." Yet this is the regular process of a philoso phical religionist. Untutored by a celestial messenger,

Into the heaven of heavens he presumes,
An earthly guest.

From his crude notions of what God is in some respects, he boldly infers what he must be in other respects. From his dark metaphysical ideas of spirit, and of the simplicity or unity of spirit, he concludes, by wholesale, that there can be no distinction in the Deity. And from his imperfect notion of the divine benevolence, as he calls it, he presumes to dictate what God must and what he must not do.

Having passed his novitiate, and, nurtured in academic groves, having become a stanch and positive philosopher, he is now prepared to make use of the book of revelation, as far as it will sanction his creed, or adorn his opinions. His adoption of the sacred code is, however, strictly guarded by this apothegm, that "as reason is a partial revelation of the being, attributes, and will of God, a subsequent and more perfect revelation cannot contradict it."

His philosophical system of "natural religion" is thus set up as an infallible test, by which every doctrine of divine revelation is to be tried. His reason is not, like that of a professed infidel, so far perverted as to deny the divine mission, as he affects to call it, of Jesus Christ. But so confident is he of the precision of every previous induction of reason, that a system promulged by divine authority is not permitted to convict him of any error in judgment. He is infallible. So complete is his information on almost every subject, and so competent has he found himself to the most abstruse ideas and reasonings, that every thing which rises above his present opinions, as well as whatever contradicts them, must be erroneous. With such a preparation for the study of a supernatural revelation of those things which "no one knows but the Spirit of God, and he to whom the Spirit hath revealed them," how is it possible but that many obvious scriptural truths must be discarded? "The wisdom of God in a mystery," is "foolishness" to one who is thus "wise in his own eyes, and prudent in his own conceit."

To get rid of the difficulties which divine revelation has thrown in his way, is now the great work of our philosophical divine. This herculean task does not discourage those who, like Dr. Priestley, have resolved not to be convinced, and aver that the doctrines of the trinity, and of the atonement, "are things which no miracles can prove." (Hist. of Cor. vol. ii, p. 861.) By what methods this is to be done, it was at one time intended here to exemplify. But the catalogue of "ways and means," drawn merely from Mr. G.'s performance, became so long and tedious that it is now omitted. The reader is, therefore, referred to the preceding pages for a sufficient number of examples of the unfair and unwarrantable means in common use among Socinians, by which the Bible is to be purged from every thing that offends their illuminated

reason.

But wherefore all these mighty efforts, in which the whole Socinian corps unite their strength, to purge from all mystery the revelation which the "great, mysterious God" has given of himself, his ways, and his will? Is Socinianism itself so clear and intelligible that no difficulty remains? Have its votaries left no mystery unex

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plored? Have they explained what God is,-what the divine Spirit is, how he exists, without beginning, and without succession,-how he fills all space without extension,-how he foresees the actions of men, and yet leaves them free?-how evil originated when as yet there was nothing but good? By no means. Nay, a Socinian is still a mystery to himself. He can explain neither how his material body thinks, nor how an immaterial, thinking substance is united with it. All this might, however, be forgiven, if he did not pretend to divest religion of all its mysteries. To be ignorant is human; but the pride of understanding was not made for man. "The foolishness of God, however, is wiser than men.' Of all the known systems of theology, the Bible, which "explains all mysteries but its own," has the fewest mysteries. Compare it with Socinianism, and it will be found that the latter, in attempting to remove the veil from the holy of holies, has hung the temple of God with cobwebs. The philosophical religion also has its mysteries: mysteries of its own creation. Mr. G. cannot get over the existence of the devil, without substituting two mysteries for one. Thus, on the one hand, he has invented or borrowed the invention of an imaginary personage, whom he calls "the angel of death," and whom he supposes to hold a contest even with an archangel, about the departed soul of Moses. (See p. 53.) On the other hand, to supply the place of the devil, he has invented an abstract evil principle, an accident without a substance, as mischievous as the devil himself. Lest it should appear that "the Word of God was with God," before his incarnation, some of Mr. G.'s brethren contrive to send the human nature of Christ up to heaven, before he opened his ministry, that he might receive his instructions and his commission. When Jesus Christ evinces his mysterious union with the divine nature, by the divine perfections which he exerted, and Mr. G. is forced to concede to him those perfections, this metaphysician contrives to abstract the divine perfections from the divine nature, and attributes them, in this ab. stracted form, to mere humanity. Here again two mysteries are substituted for one! Here is the mystery of the abstraction: a mystery ten thousand times more profound than that which should suppose that the rays of the

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