be highly useful and indeed necessary. God's spirit will assist, but not supersede their endeavours in the ministry.

If men are to be taught of God, it has been asked again, whether our own efforts will not become superfluous? I answer, by no means. I set out in this treatise with endeavouring to fix in the mind as a maxim: "He that will know whether the doctrine of Christ be true, must do his will." Moral and intellectual improvement must be as earnestly sought as if there were no promise of supernatural assistance; just as the husbandman must plough and sow diligently, though he knows that the sun and the showers are absolutely necessary to give the due increase.

Cavils, objections, and calumnious reproach will usually arise from some quarter or other, whenever religious opinions are freely and artlessly discussed, without any attempt to court the favour of sects and parties.

The path of literary life that leads along the vale of obscurity is the path of peace. Whoever ventures to bring forward the result of studies in theology is peculiarly exposed to the shafts of angry pamphleteers. All indeed are interested in the subject, and they, whose opinion is opposed, feel displeasure and express contempt. The silent divine, who takes things as he finds them, chooses the smoothest and readiest road to favour. It was this view of things which induced the celebrated Bishop Hare to write his treatise on the difficulties and discouragements

which attend the study of the Scriptures in the way of private judgment. He has the following remarkable in that treatise: "Every mean person," passage says he, "who has nothing to recommend him but his orthodoxy, and owes that perhaps wholly to his ignorance, will think (if you venture to publish an unfashionable opinion) he has a right to trample upon you with contempt, to asperse your character with virulent reflections, to run down your writings as mean and pitiful performances, and give hard names to opinions which he does not understand."

Such being the case, if a man had not learned a little Christian philosophy, he would choose to spend his time in inglorious ease, and enjoying plenty, make, according to the advice of Chesterfield, the world his bubble. But though exertion for the benefit of mankind, and distinction in consequence of it, bring many pains and penalties, often create enemies instead of friends, and injure worldly interest, yet knowledge is delightful, beneficence a duty, and every inconvenience which may arise from the diligent pursuit or diffusion of the one, and the faithful performance of the other, should be borne with alacrity.

With respect to myself, the proud and censorious spirit of the self-honoured philosopher, and self-named rational Christian, shall never disturb my complacency, so long as I find that the opinions which displease them are founded on holy writ, and maintained by the ornaments of this country and of human

nature.

As one of my chief objects is to promote among

mankind the gentler affections, to the exclusion or mitigation of all malice and revenge, I shall not risk the loss of my own good-humour, by entering into the bitterness of controversy, however folly may misunderstand, or malevolence misrepresent me. They do no despite to me; let them beware lest they do despite to the Spirit of grace.*

* Heb. x. 29.

CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY:

OR,

THE EVIDENCE AND EXCELLENCE

OF

REVEALED RELIGION.

SECTION I.

Cupimus enim investigare quid verum sit; neque id solum, sed quod cum veritate, pietatem quoque præterea erga Deum habeat conjunctam.—It is my object to inquire what is true; but not to acquiesce merely in the discovery of speculative truth; but to find out that doctrine which, together with truth, unites PIOUS AFFECTIONS to God. SADOLET.

I

INTRODUCTORY.

ENTER on the subject of this volume with unaffected diffidence. I tread on holy ground with awe. Though much of my life, devoted to letters from the earliest age, has been spent in reading the best writers on the Christian doctrine, and more in contemplation of it, yet a sense of its high importance, and of my own fallibility, has long restrained the impulse which prompted me to engage in its public discussion. Nothing but conscious rectitude of intention, cooperating with the hope of obtaining the aid of God's holy Spirit and the reader's indulgence, could animate the tremulous mind in an enterprise to which it feels and avows itself unequal. A conviction that the subject is peculiarly seasonable, has contributed to overcome reluctance. The TIMES indeed appear to me to call upon every professor of