... .. * .^iU^WLAi^ *•••**•*••••*•••»>*••?••••• »«1#» ^¦n ill .„ _j THE THEOLOGICAL MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF THE LATE REV. WILLIAM JONES, M.A. MINISTER OF NAYLAND, SUFFOLK. TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, A SHORT ACCOUNT or his LIFE AND WRITINGS BY WILLIAM STEVENS, ESO A NEW EDITION. IN SIX VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: PRINTED FOR C. AND J. RIVINGTON, st. Paul's church-yard, and waterloo-place, pall-mall. 1826. LONDON : PRINTED BY R. GILBERT, st. John's square. CONTENTS SECOND VOLUME. PAGE Remarks on the Principles and Spirit of a Work, enti tled The Confessional 1 Zoologia Ethica : A Disquisition concerning the Mo saic Distinction of Animals into clean and unclean . . 97 Additional Remarks 168 A Dissertation on the Offering up of Isaac by Abraham 177 An Enquiry into the Circumstances and moral Inten tion of the Temptation of Jesus Christ in the Wilder ness 205 Three Dissertations on Life and Death 255 Reflections on the Life, Death, and Burial of the Patri archs 301 A Disquisition concerning the Metaphorical Usage and Application of Sleep in the Scriptures 317 A free Enquiry into the Sense and Signification of the Spring ; as it is described in the Song of Solomon . . 341 An Essay on Confirmation 375 Reflections on the Growth of Heathenism among modern Christians, in a Letter to a Friend at Oxford 393 REMARKS PRINCIPLES AND SPIRIT OF A WORK, ENTITLED THE CONFESSIONAL: A SEQUEL TO THE SECOND EDITION OF A FULL ANSWER TO AN ESSAY ON SPIRIT. VOL. TI. PREFACE. The following Remarks were drawn up, in substance, soon after the publication of that work which is the subject of them. The author had then neither health nor leisure to fit them for the press ; and was under less trouble about it, when he found that the argument was undertaken by others, of whose learning and experience he had a better opinion than of his own. But a new edition of his Answer to an Es say on Spirit having been called for, they are now published as a continuation of the same controversy. The Confessional is little more than a sequel to the Essay on Spirit ; and we may judge by the excellent things which the author has pro claimed in favour of the late Bishop Clayton, and that Essay, he will not be offended with me for putting him into the same class with his fellow-labourer. I would not be thought so much as to insinuate by this publication, that the Confessional is not fairly and fully re futed in those Three Letters which have been addressed to its author by a judicious hand : notwithstanding all that sa tire, flash, and affected superiority, with which the Letter' writer is assaulted in the Occasional Remarks, which every impartial reader, who has the least knowledge of the world, will easily understand. Nor is it difficult to see, that the Confessional, and those Remarks, are the work of the same person : for men are known by the cast of their metaphors, and the temperature of their expressions, as effectually as by the turn of their features, and the form of their hand writing. But there are readers who will scarcely be at the pains to follow the argument to such a length : as there are doubtless some admirers of the Confessional, who have not had patience to attend their guide through all the multifarious doublings a 2 IV PREFACE. and turnings of his historical libel. Therefore I thought it might be of use to go at once to the roots of the argument, and attempt to shew the author's mistakes in a smaller com pass ; for if his principles are agreeable neither to Scripture, nor reason, nor the universal practice of Christians in all ages; scurrilous anecdotes, and scraps of history, pointed against the church and churchmen with all the art the author is master of, and more invectives than any. dictionary can supply him with, will never compensate for such a defect ; but in the opinion of judges who are under the same preju dices with himself. They who attend to the humours and practices of man kind, may distinguish truth from error without much read ing, by observing the motions of the restless part of the com munity on different occasions. When the Confessional comes abroad, reports are instantly spread far and wide, of a fa mous, learned, acute, unanswerable work, by an able, dig nified, candid, sagacious, masterly, incomparable writer. Pamphleteers, reviewers, and news-writers, proclaim his merits, and the coffee-houses ring with his conquests. The whole bench of bishops are insulted, and the advocates of the church sneered at as mercenaries, and held in defiance ! Such is the public entry of a work against orthodoxy and uniformity ; and such it hath been in time past. The book ealled the Rights of the Christian Church, which was intended to prove that the Christian church hath no rights at all, but is merely the creation of the civil power, was ushered in with the same popular acclamation : a circumstance described by an ingenious hand in such lively terms, as will not be un acceptable to the learned reader — Prodiit hand ita pridem e Socinistarum coeno, famosus quidem libellus, &c. — Et tamen hie ipse liber, qui tot undique absurda, tot impietates, tot de nique blasphemias continet, mirum in modum omnium liber- tinorum teritur manibus ; ab omnibus rapitur, adamatur. Hie magnified exultant et triumphant Socinistce ; palam voci- ferantur clericorum causam hoc uno libro penitus confossam jacere : nihil esse sani, nihil solidi, quod vel acutissimi theo- logi Herculeis hisce argumentis reponant *. * This passage is extracted from Hughes's Disserlatio procemialis, prefixed to hIS edition of Chrysostom de Sacerdotio. It comprehends PREFACE. V On the contrary, when a work of the other sort makes its appearance, such, for example, as the Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity ; if you hear any thing of its author, you hear, in the first place, every thing that can be said, truely or falsely, to his disadvantage. Retailers of literary intelli gence depreciate his work as not worth reading ; the news papers rail at him, under the contemptuous appellation of one William Jones; and if the Arian party do not undertake to write against his book in form, you are assured there can be no reason for their silence, but the wildness of the com position, and the weakness of the argument. Thus the book steals as it were into the world, creeping by degrees from one hand to another, as if there were treason in it, and mak ing its way slowly to a third and fourth edition, with no helps from public attestation, and against all the obstructions of clamour and ill report ; as Christianity prevailed in former times against the universal obloquy of Romans, Greeks, Jews and Barbarians. So wise and active are some men in their generation ; and they who are once aware of it, will not easily be carried away with every wind of common fame, or com mon defamation. I had some thoughts of following the author of the Con fessional in his capacity of a Critic, and exhibiting some examples of the partiality with which he makes his report of books, writers, and controversies. In this age, when the talents of so many are unhappily drowned in a sort of small reading, from which no just principles of divinity, or litera ture, can be extracted, men are guided by names more than things : whence it comes to pass, that characters are saleable commodities, and consequently very apt to be sophisticated. I was unwilling to draw out these remarks to a greater length, otherwise, I think, it might have been easy enough to shew how little submission is due to his literary decisions. How ever, that I may not seem to throw out an unsupported assertion, I shall fix upon the character of Dr. Skyes, to whose abilities he gives his testimony in very exalted lan- an authentic description and vindication of the primitive constitution ofthe Christian church; well worth the diligent perusal of younger students in divinity ; who may also read it with advantage as an ele gant piece of Latin. VI PREFACE. guage. There are a set of disputants who are distinguished as the sons of truth and liberty-worthies, whose services, under all disadvantages, have been so great an honour and, ornament to the church *. In this class of worthies we find Dr. Sykes, who undertook to hold up the credit of Arian subscription, in answer to Dr. Waterland. He is farther ornamented with the honourable titles of an acute writer — this ingenious person — the ingenious author of the Case f. We shall see how justly Dr. Sykes is celebrated for his acute- ness and ingenuity, if we venture to take a nearer view of him, 1. as a reasoner, 2. as a writer, and 3. as an historian, or relater of facts. When Dr. Waterland had charged the Arian party with fraud and prevarication in subscribing Trinitarian articles ; his adversaries endeavoured to recriminate, accusing the orthodox clergy with subscribing Calvinistical articles, al though they were well known to dissent from Calvin's doctrine. Dr. Waterland clears the orthodox, by shewing that the articles of the Church of England were purposely framed to a neutral sense; neither affirming nor denying Calvin's doctrine, that offence might be taken by neither party ; and he affirms it to have been " abundantly proved, " that the articles are not Calvinistical." Here Dr. Sykes changes the state of the question, and declares Water- land not to have been convinced of his own proofs of the Anticalvinism of the articles J. Not calvinistical is altered into anticalvinistical. The former of these terms implies neutrality, the latter opposition. Dr. Waterland" s defence rests entirely upon this plain distinction, which Dr. Sykes either did or did not understand ; and I shall not stay to enquire which part of the dilemma will consist with his acuteness and ingenuity. In another place, he sets down the words " well proved to be Anticalvinian," referring to them as if they were the genuine words of Dr. Waterland : but, in the place referred to, it is only said to be " well proved " that our articles were not drawn up by Calvin's scheme §." * Confess, p. 171.173. f Ibid. p. 186. 190. \ See Sykes' s Case of Subs. p. 31, 32. § See Waterland' s Supplement, p. 51, and Syfces's Reply, p 36, 37 . PREFACE. Vll The same mistake occurs in other places, not worth our notice. All this will appear less wonderful, when it is compared with the same author's account of the Trinity in Unity, which he calls, " Dr. Waterland's notions of three equally " supreme intelligent agent, and of one intelligent agents *." But neither Dr. Waterland, nor any other Christian, an cient or modern, orthodox or heterodox, did ever believe the Holy Trinity to be three and one in the same respect. Arians of all sizes have indeed made a common practice of imputing this absurdity to us ; though they have generally been content with making us weak enough to believe Three Gods (in the plural) to be one God (in the singular.) But Dr. Sykes is not satisfied without carrying quite out of the precincts of grammar, having invented a new transforma tion of the terms into three agent, and one agents; which if the Printer can get over without an error of the press, he will have better fortune with his types, than I have had with my pen. If we consider the Doctor as an orator, we shall find his style distinguished by a certain inharmonious repetition, which shews the writer to have laboured under the most ex treme poverty of diction, of which, the following are a few examples — so apparently so — this is just such a pretty way of reasoning as this. This gave me occasion to demand what were the criteria by which we might judge which those par ticular articles are, which leave a latitude f. As an historian, he imagined himself to have found Dr. Waterland guilty of a gross anachronism ; and while he is correcting him for it, observes, with an air of triumph, that Samuel Hubert's book " was written forty years after the " articles were made, and near forty after Cranmer was rot ten in his grave %. If it be remembered that archbishop Cranmer was a person of the first ecclesiastical character in this kingdom, a man of exact learning, great piety, and venerable in the eyes of all good men, as a martyr to the * See Waterland's Supplement, p. 33. t See p. 43. 4. 33. X Water!. Suppl. p. 44. et Vlll PREFACE. protestant cause, the language with which his memory is here treated is consistent neither with decency nor charity, nor indeed with common humanity. But that this same Cranmer should be rotten in his grave, whom all the world knows to have been publicly burnt to ashes at a stake, and sent to Heaven in a fiery chariot, is a discovery, of which the whole merit is due to the acute Dr, Sykes *. I do not take upon me to say, that this is the particular merit which recommended him to the author of the Confessional, for I rather suppose it to have been that of disbelieving the Creeds, which is a sufficient recommendation with him, who judges of every man's wisdom or folly, by first observing whether he is for, or against the church. In this practice he brings to my mind the character of Georgius Trapessun- tius, a scholastic doctor of eminence in the 15th century. — Aristotelis admirator summus; Platonis contemptor maxi- mus. When a critic is thus unhappily swayed by the sum mus on one side, and the maximus on the other, his ac counts are to be taken with very great abatements. If his admiration and contempt are each of them misplaced, and have exchanged their proper objects, the matter cannot then be rectified by any discountings. This spirit of partiality hath filled the Confessional with malignant ridicule and ful some panegyric, of which it is not necessary, in this place, to produce any more examples, because some of them will meet us of course in the ensuing Remarks : from which the reader may form a judgment of all the rest, as safely and surely as he may know the taste of sea-water, without being obliged to drink up the ocean. It may be proper to observe, that the Confessional is re ferred to in its original form of the first edition ; and it ought to be known, for the author's vindication, that these papers might have appeared many months ago, if politics, $c. had not taken off the Printer's attention from works of divinity. " If the reader will please to consult a Letter to the Common People, published with the last edition ofthe Catholic Doctrine ofthe Trinity, he will find some account of another acute writer, who, in this author's vapouring style, is invested with all the terrors of con troversial ability. See Confess, p. 320. REMARKS THE CONFESSIONAL. CHAPTER I. A SHORT VIEW OF THE GROUNDS OF THIS AUTHOR'S DISPUTE AGAINST THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. When a controversy is started in which the spi ritual interests of Christian people are nearly con cerned, it is their duty to inquire, as far as they are able, into the real merits of the cause ; and to con sider the question, if possible, in the same naked and simple state in which it existed in the head of an author, before it was disposed according to the rules of art, and disguised under the rhetorical furniture of a large book, comprehending an hundred dif ferent subjects wrought up into one mass. In conversation, it is not unusual to hear two per sons disputing fiercely for a long time, without gain ing an inch of ground on either side : because it is the practice of reasoners, who are deficient either in respect of a sound cause, an upright intention, or a clear head, to wander far and wide from the subject in debate. Every subject is so nearly related to other VOL. II. B 2 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. subjects, that the mind of an undesigning reasoner will sometimes slide from one to another> without being sensible of it : but an artful man will rarely fail to be shifting about to all the adjuncts and re latives within his reach, till he can fix upon such as will enable him to make a plausible appearance. He that is in wrath with another, of whom he knows no evil, will asperse his character indirectly, by railing at his connexions, his friends, his family, his ances tors, his children, or even his country itself ; all of which are but little to the purpose, and can only shew, that the accuser is equally irritated and un provided. In the accusation lately revived against our forms and doctrines by the Author of The Confessional, the real grounds of his discontent are comprehended in two short arguments : and I hope I shall be pardoned for throwing them into a logical form, because I do it merely for the sake of brevity, that I may save trouble to the reader as well as to the writer. The first of these arguments stands thus : The Church of Rome hath established false doctrine; The Church of England hath established false doc trine ; Therefore the Church of England wants reforma tion as much as the Church of Rome. That the Church of Rome hath established false doctrine, and doth stand in need of reformation, is readily allowed by all Protestants, because it hath been demonstrated for these two hundred years : but the second proposition, on which the conclusion de pends, is not true ; and the author, as we shall see presently, waves the proof of it, supposing that we shall take it upon his bare word. Where this second proposition is assumed, as by the Arians, Socinians, REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 3 and the most corrupt part of the dissenters, the con clusion will be admitted- The second argument may be expressed as follows : The Church of Rome opposes the reformation of her doctrines ; The Church of England opposes the reformation of her doctrines ; Therefore the Church of England is as obstinate as the Church of Rome. This conclusion is no better than the former, be cause the word doctrines is equivocal in the premises. In the first member of the argument, it signifies such doctrines as we know to he false; in the second, such as we can prove to be true ; though this author is no admirer of them. Every son of the Church of England hath a right to insist upon seeing a refutation of her doctrines as a first step ; without which all popular harangues upon the expediency of a reformation, either not at all de fined, or amounting to an utter abolition of the esta blishment, are but so many experiments upon his understanding, and ought to have no more influence than the flourishing of a pen in the air. When the authority of the Church is called in question, this supposition, that her doctrines are false, is always at the bottom of the dispute, though not always visible : for no Protestant, under the character of a believer, could ever think of refusing to the Church of Christ an authority to secure what the Gospel itself hath already imposed upon all Christians. Nor was the authority of the Church ever questioned with any pious design, till it was evident to all men who would but open their eyes, that the Church had invented what she had power only to receive and pre serve. If any fraud of this kind can be proved upon b 2 4 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. the Protestant Church of England, her governors, it is to be hoped, will consider of it, and correct it: but then, indefinite accusations, expressed in the most loose and general terms, are not to be admitted for legal evidence. " Certain particulars," says this Au thor, " are equally proved to want reformation among Protestants*" as among the Papists. If you should be under any concern to know what these particulars are, and should ask a question which is of the last importance, and occurs naturally, instead of any di rect answer you will meet with this evasion ; " I for bear to give instances, though there are more than one at hand f :" as if that would have been a digres sion, which is the first step in the controversy. In another place it is affirmed, that the public is grossly and notoriously wrong J : how and where, the reader is left to conjecture as well as he can. Sometimes it is suggested to the populace, that many of superior character in the Church are as much convinced of the falsehood of our doctrines as the Author himself, if they would but as freely declare their minds. What they believe, and what they deny, we are still left to find out as before ; but may suppose it to be some what not fit to be owned all at once. In the 56th page of his Preface, he takes some pains to raise the expectation of his readers, and threatens us with some great matter, which at last all vanishes in a smoke. He tells us of a certain private party, in which it was his hap to mention a glaring inconsist ency in the case of subscription to our established ar ticles of Religion, at which some respectable persons in the company expressed the utmost surprise. If it was his desire to be understood, and he really did think * Pref. p. IS. Ed. 1. + Ibid. J P. 3. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 5 this matter capable of making any remarkable im pression, he would have directed us how to find some explanation of his meaning ; yet we are not given to know any thing farther of this glaring inconsistency, than that it makes apart of 'his following work, though placed at some distance from the beginning. In a book of 354 pages, 200 of them, at least, are at some dis tance from the beginning ; so that we are still in the dark as before : for how glaring soever this incon sistency might appear in the Author's eyes, it is not bright enough to betray itself to others by its own light ; neither do I know at this moment where to find it, unless he alludes to that remarkable and no torious deviation (as he calls it) from the Athanasian maxim, which is introduced at p. 319; the injustice and futility of which criticism hath been taken no tice of upon another' occasion *; At this distance from the beginning he ventures to open his design ; declaring himself neither afraid nor ashamed to call for a review of our Trinitarian forms ; and, in the course of his work, he refers to and recommends as oracular, though a professed enemy to all impositions, the opinions of Clarke, Hoadley, Sykes, Clayton, and some others of lesser note. But these things are spoken in such general terms, and with so small an appearance of argument, that the Author himself seems to be sensible how much he hath been want ing in this part of his undertaking ; and observes, toward the end of his book, that " it may possibly be expected he should descend to particulars, and point out some of the principal objects of the reform he solicits f." In this he judges rightly : for it would * See a Letter to the Common People, published with the third edition ofthe Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity, §. X. t P. 336. 6 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. not only be a dangerous but a ridiculous step, to enter on the important work of reformation, without first being sure of what is amiss. But his subject, he tells us, " leads him only to one particular, the case of subscription to human Creeds and Confessions, and other ecclesiastical forms, which are required to be assented to, as being agreeable to the word of God." Subscription is indeed but one particular circum stance of our ecclesiastical discipline, and is good, bad, or indifferent, according to its object; but the Creeds, Articles, and ecclesiastical forms of worship to which it extends, do comprehend the whole system of our faith and religion, out of which he ought to have selected the obnoxious articles, and have shewed us plainly how far they disagree with the word of God. But in doing this, he must have exposed his own set of doctrines to be seen and examined by the public ; a task neither promising nor agreeable, if we may judge by a certain shyness which hath produced those ambiguities and dodgings already mentioned. There fore, he proceeds, as before, in general terms ; ob serving, that " undoubtedly such of these" (Creeds and Confessions) " as have not this agreement with holy writ, ought not to be retained in the Church*/' So we all say ; though indeed we never heard of any Christian Creed or Confession which disagreed with the word of God in every article, as this observation supposes them to do. If any one article is unscrip- tural, that article ought to be reformed : but it will not thence follow, that the remaining thirty-eight which are scriptural should be all thrown aside in the lump, and subscription itself abolished. A political orator, might as well have argued from the inexpe- * P. 330. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 7 diency ofthe American stamp-act, to the repealing of all the English laws, and in favour of anarchy. With this foundation the writer of the Coifessional frames his conclusions, raises his exhortations, and proposes his conditions ; allowing, with a pious sort of casuistry, which he may explain at some other opportunity, that although our forms do disagree with the word of God, " nevertheless, as something is due to the ignorance and prejudices of well-meaning peo ple, it may not be expedient to discontinue the use of them all at once, provided proper endeavours are used to prepare the people for their removal at a sea sonable time, by informing them wherein their dis agreement with the Christian Scripture consists *." We thank him for this indulgence ; but are of opi nion, that this disagreement is what ought now to have been pointed out to us in the Confessional ; because we shall make but an indifferent figure, if we have it to look for when our fences are all pulled down. And certainly it hath not appeared to us as yet, though we have read Clarke's Doctrine of the Trinity, Sykes's Case of Subscription, the Free and Candid Disquisi tions, together with the Essay on Spirit, to whose old objections this Author hath added nothing but new calumnies, of which some account will be given in another place. Our Church, as he would have it believed, now is, and always hath been, an enemy to reformation. She hath had many opportunities of improvement, and never been wise enough to embrace any one of them. It may, therefore, be worth our while to consider briefly how the Church is circumstanced, and what obligations she is under to such reforming claimants, as the Author of the Confessional. * P. 336. 8 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. The Church having the oracles of truth committed to her, and being bound to provide in the best man ner she can, as well for the edification of all her children as for her own peace and security as a so ciety, extracts and recommends such articles of doc trine as she finds revealed to her in the holy Scrip ture : and in the course of her work expressly dis claims her own authority, as insufficient of itself to bind any article of faith upon the consciences of her members. These doctrines then, thus extracted and recom mended by the Church, as the witness and keeper of holy writ, either have the authority of the Scripture, or they have not. If they have, then her members are bound to receive them, not as the doctrines of the Church, but of the Scripture. And in this no man will say that the Church departs from her prin ciple, or that the principle itself is unscriptural. But on the other hand, if any doctrine so proposed by the Church has not the authority of the Scripture to support it, and the falsehood of it can plainly be proved by the same authority ; then the Church, by her own principles, is obliged to attend to all such re monstrances as are made in a proper manner, and sup ported by proper evidence ; as the remonstrances of learned, and pious, and reasonable men, will never fail to be. In several instances the Church hath ac tually submitted to do this. The invocation of saints, the doctrine of transubstantiation, the redemption of souls out of Purgatory by masses, the worship of images, which had been allowed and practised for marry ages, were objected to, as contrary to the Scrip ture ; and are now not only removed but protested against in the articles, as so many errors : which pro testation (by the way) would fall with the articles, REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 9 and we should no longer be Protestants, unless it were by accident ; at least we must be taken for such upon trust. The Church of Rome, as her conduct hath unhap pily proved, thought it more eligible to preserve her corruptions,than recede from her infallibility : but the Church of England, since the reformation, never did, nor doth now think it any reflection upon her wisdom and authority, that these errors were corrected upon her own principle, and she will without question, as she safely may, be ready to follow her own example in other cases, provided there shall appear to be as sufficient reason fox so doing as for reforming the cor ruptions above mentioned. But if any of her doctrines should be rescinded without reason, and her members released from their obligation to such things as are revealed in the Scrip ture, she would exceed her commission as dangerously by detracting from, as by adding to, the articles of the Christian faith. The Church cannot bind where God hath loosed ; and it must be equally true, that where God hath bound us, the Church can have no authority to set us free. Were she to be guilty of such weak compliances, her true children would have as just a cause of complaint against her then, as her opponents, the Arians, Dissenters, and Freethinkers pretend to have now ; and the Papists would object it to us, with great appearance of reason, that religion can have no firm footing when separated from the authority ofthe apostolical chair. 10 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. CHAPTER II. ON THE RIGHT OF PROTESTANT CHURCHES TO ESTABLISH CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. The author's observations are ushered in, and the right of Protestant Churches is prejudged, by the fol lowing reflection, — that " there never yet was any instance of a prosperous usurpation destitute of ad vocates to lay in for it a claim of right and justice *." Perhaps not ; yet right and usurpation are two differ ent things. If the claim of the Church of England is to be suspected only because it hath met with ad vocates to defend it, the Gospel itself ought to have been suspected upon the same account ever since it was published. But let us answer this reflection with another, equally true and more to the purpose ; that " there never yet was an instance of any establish ment, how just and reasonable soever, which some men have not thought it their interest to assault with weak reasonings and false accusations." When we are pleading in defence of established Confessions, om fundamental position, as he very justly allows, is this : " Every particular Church, considered as a society, has a right, as other societies have, to secure its own peace and welfare by all lawful means f." This position he would overthrow, by pretending that it proves too much ; being sufficient, if admitted, to justify all the persecutions of the Hea thens against the Christians, and even the Popish Inqui- sition%. But in this answer he is too much in haste * P. 21. + P. 22, % Ibid. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 11 to recollect the terms of his own position ; which affirms no more, than that the Church may secure its own peace and welfare by lawful means. Inquisitions and persecutions are unlawful means; therefore his consequence is not a just one. If it were, self-pre servation would be such a very bad principle, that mankind should invent someway of providing against it (if any such provision can be made when self-pre servation is given up ;) and a society, if opposed, would have nothing to do but to be ruined, by re signing itself quietly to the will of its enemies. There are no means but lawful and unlawful. The unlawful, by their own nature, are not to be made use of ; nor the lawful, because the other will thereby be justified : and so we are to do nothing but suffer from men of active spirits, who will never lay them selves under that restraint which they would impose upon others. When this writer hath in view the pro pagation of his own opinions, he is florid and copious in defence of liberty; but in this answer he hath laid an ax to the root of it ; for there can be no such thing as liberty, if societies are deprived of the be nefit of self-preservation. The use of lawful means hath been pleaded for, not to secure unlawful ordinances, but such only as are agreeable to the word of God. This, however, in his way of reasoning, makes no difference : for " the proviso, that Church-ordinances be agreeable to the word of God, will not help the Protestant Churches at all *." If this is true, all Protestant Churches are in a very woful condition : for there are but two sorts of authority, human and divine. The former is not sufficient of itself to authenticate articles of faith and * P. 23. 12 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. t doctrine ; and if the latter is not, there is no autho rity left to which they can appeal. The Protestant Churches have laid it down as a principle, that all Christians are bound by the word of God; conse quently, by what is agreeable to the word of God: and they have always imagined, that if this agreement were once allowed them, nothing could supersede the obligation of submitting- to it, but the super-pro phetical light of the Quakers, or the interposition of an infallible judge, such as they have at Rome. Every Englishman, as a member of civil society, is bound by the law of the land; therefore, we say he is bound by the same law when applied to parti cular cases, and administered in the sentence of a magistrate : otherwise, he is bound and not bound at the same time. If it should be objected, that the sentence may deviate from the law, this is foreign to the case in hand ; because we argue at present upon the proviso, that it is agreeable to the law. The erring members of the Christian Church shew themselves to be what they are, by a misapplication of the word of God ; which, St. Peter tells us, they ivho are unlearned and unstable wrest unto their own de struction *. How is the Church to provide against their errors, but by another application of it ? If not, we invest the enemies of the Church with a privilege which we deny to the Church herself, who hath at least, as good, if not a better right to it. Neither the law of God, nor the law of the land, can administer themselves : and if they are not to be applied and interpreted, then they were made, not to condemn what is wrong, or justify what is right, but only to be looked at, and contradicted, in the way of pri- * 2 Pet. iii. 16, REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 13 vate judgment. — But let us hear how he reasons in his own words. " Established confessions" (agreeable to the word of God) " being human compositions, must either be subject to examination, by the private judgment of those who profess to make the written word of God the only rule of their religion, or else the Church must claim a right of interpreting the Scriptures" (i. e. of making ordinances agreeable to the word of God) "for all her members, exclusive of the rights of private judgment *"." If established confessions, notwithstanding their agreement with the word of God, may be over-ruled by private judgment, it must follow, that the Scrip ture itself may be over-ruled upon the same prin ciple ; unless it can be proved, that the word of God is changed into the word of man, by being trans planted into an established confession. The Author supposes private judgment entitled to this prerogative, by making the written word the rule of its religion f ; and as the Church certainly does the same, so far as her confession is agreeable to the word of God, there will arise, upon the same ground, a right of public judgment to society : which judgment, if it can be controlled by the judgment of an individual, the right here mentioned will be no right, and society will be no society. Unless this right, thus defined, is allowed to the Church, we must suppose the Scripture contrary to itself in re spect of the same doctrines ; for here we shall have * P. 23. t " The Puritan would be judged by the word of God. If he would speak clearly, he means himself, but is ashamed to say so ; and he would have me believe him before a whole Church, that has read the word of God as well as he." Selden. T. T. p. 111. 3d edit. 14 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. private judgment, with the word of God in its hand, pleading against an agreement with the word of God; which is nonsense. And what will be the issue? Why, the Church cannot give us a rule of doctrine from the Scripture, because an individual is entitled to make his own use of it ; and, as a society cannot receive a rule of doctrine from the private judgment of a single person, unless it be that of the pope, we are to have no public rule at all ; consequently, that precept of the Apostle, — let us all walk by the same rule, — was unnecessary and groundless. But he will say, the written word is a rule ; mean ing, as I presume, the Scripture in its own terms. Now, to say nothing against the bulk of the Scrip ture, as improper for a Creed or Confession, it is a rule which hath been applied with equal assurance to the heresy of Arius, the novel inventions of Popery, the antichristian philosophy of Socinus, the outrage ous practices of the Anabaptists, and the absurd en thusiasm of the Quakers. That it may not be so ap plied by the teachers of this Church, the Articles are a system, in which the Scripture, as the only rule of religion, is particularly pointed against these and other errors. The rule is still the same as before ; only the articles contain an application of it to some particular and necessary cases ; without attending to which, this Church must actually be what the Papists represent it to be, a Babel of confusion ; and Christi anity itself would sink into a chaos. Experience teaches us, that without such an application the Scripture becomes no Scripture, when those men have the handling of it, whose heads are filled with the conceits of some heretical leader, and their hearts inflamed with an enthusiastic zeal of infusin°- them into others. This Author can play with it as he REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 15 pleases upon his own principles. If the Church as certains a scriptural doctrine in short by some equi valent terms of her own, he can oppose to it the Scrip ture at large in its own terms : If the Scriptures are so express as to require no interpretation, he can have recourse to different senses, leaving the written word for private exposition. Thus he hath the advantage of the Church either way. He hath the merit of setting up the pure word of God against human in ventions, and the convenience of adapting it at plea sure to other inventions of himself or his friends. If a right of determining for all her members is allowed to the Church, he supposes this must exclude the rights of private judgment. But this doth by no means follow : for the Church hath a right of deter mining, so far only as she determines agreeable to the word of God. An individual can have no rights but what are grounded upon the same agreement with the word of God ; therefore, it is absurd to set up one of these rights exclusive of the other, because they coincide, and are in effect but one and the same thing ; though always with this difference, that the judgment of society is a judgment of authority, while private judgment is no more than a judgment of dis cretion or opinion. If this latter is what the Author contends for, it cannot be excluded by the decisions of any authority upon earth : for thoughts are free ; and if they are absurd or injurious, they must be ac counted for at last to the Searcher of all hearts. It will always be impossible, in the nature of things, to exclude such private judgment from examining and determining as it pleases, against all authority, di vine as well as human. But then such private judg ment will not be authoritative, or binding to olhers, but will and must be over-ruled in this world by the 15 16 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. acts of the society to which it hath joined itself: else there can be no such thing as government or so ciety in the world. This, indeed, is the genuine consequence of our Author's principle ; for he makes private judgment not private but authoritative ; asserting, that it " pre cludes the right of the Church to establish any thing without the previous consent of all her members *." Whence it follows, that society cannot stop the pro ceedings of an individual, but an individual may stop the proceedings of society, and that all the members of society are in a state of equality : whereas the very idea of a society implies a subordination in bodies corporate as in the body natural ; and the Apostle, in the earliest state of the Christian Church, argues at large from one of these to the other, in the 12th chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians. If this plan of the Author were to take place, and men should arise speaking perverse things as Hymeneus and Philetus, to overthrow the faith of weak Christians, they must be admitted as judges in their own cause ; and have it in their power to put a negative upon all their brethren, to prevent the establishment of any such regulations as might affect the well-being of their own perverse opinions : that direction too of the Apostle to the ministers of the Church, — A man tJiat is an heretic, reject -\ ; and that other to the people, — Obey them that have the rule over you, whose faith fol low %, might be blotted out of the Scripture ; for the latter would be useless, and the former impracticable. This plan, however, will hardly consist with what the Author allows (or seems to allow) upon another occasion. " Single men," he says, " may be called * P. 23. f Tit. iii. 10. J Heb. xiii. 17. REMARKS ON THE CONCESSIONAL. 17 upon to correct and even retract their doctrines, not only without offence, but in some cases with advan tage to the common faith *." How can this be ? for the consent of these single men, who are thus to be called upon, is necessary, before any commonfaith can be established. Without some commonfaith, by what standard are their doctrines to be judged of? And without some established constitution of the Church, who shall be the persons appointed to judge them? If the commonfaith is that revealed in the Scripture, it is equally pretended to by Arians, Socinians, Quakers, Anabaptists, and other Sectaries, amongst whom there is no community of sentiment. The Church, therefore, must apply this rule, without the consent of these single men ; or all hope of advantage must be given up, and the commonfaith left to the mercy of its adversaries. Here it is pleasant to observe the dexterity of some writers, who find it convenient, as the subject varies, to take both sides of the question. They have the art of saying things in such a manner, by the help of little^ qualifying clauses, that they shall not appear to have said them at all, if they are pressed with a contradiction. We have an instance of it in this passage. The author seems to grant, that single men may be called upon to retract their doctrines with advantage to the common faith ; though, indeed, he doth not say by whom, and it is very hard to guess : however, if it is really his opinion, after what he hath said of the rights of private judgment, that indivi duals may be censured for their doctrines by any public authority of society ; his principle vanishes in a smoke of his own raising. To avoid this he hath * P. 41, 42. VOL. II. C 18 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. taken care to insert the condition, " if they see rea son :" and therefore, if they do not see reason, they are still to proceed as they please, and the common faith must at last yield to private opinion. Such is the forlorn, and defenceless state of that Church and its faith, which Christ left upon earth for the salvation of mankind ! No protection c&H be received from the temporal sword against spiritual wickedness, without incurring the penalty of perish: ing by the sivord : and as to the spiritual, which is the word of God, it cannot be used against any of fender, till his own consent shall put it into the hands of his judges! But if this consent is necessary now, I apprehend it was always necessary : and if so, the doctrine of the Apostles ought not to have been settled, and the mi nisters of Satan (as they are called) ought not to have been censured in virtue of any established rule, till all the Gentiles were come in, and their consent for mally obtained : nor even then ; for others might be born, who would in time object even to the condition of baptism in the name of the Trinity ; and then it must have been given up to them : because no con dition of communion is to be established, without the previous consent of all, who without tlmt condition would have aright to Christian communion. Had there been no such condition imposed as baptism, Heathens would have had a right to Christian communion; there fore it follows, that this condition of Baptism could not be imposed without the consent of Heathens I What wild work would this doctrine produce, if it were admitted into civil society ? It would require that nothing should be established as a condition of holding employments of trust, or enjoying any privi leges under the government, without the previous REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 19 consent of all those who have no good will to the go vernment ; and would thrust themselves into office, only for an opportunity of overturning it as fast as possible, and introducing some other ceconomy, more agreeable to their own temper and complexion. Upon the whole, this author's plan is absolutely indefensible, if the Church is a society. Therefore he should have proved, that Christ and his Apostles did not plant any Church upon earth that could properly be called a society : for if it was a society, it would have the native rights of a society : and if it had them once, it must have them still ; unless he is able to shew at what time, and by what means, they were forfeited. So the late learned Bishop Coneybeare ar gued, in what the author calls his famous subscription sermon : and, instead of confuting his position by tracing the Church up to its original, he asserts, that " every intelligent Christian," (that is, every Chris tian who is intelligent in his own conceit) " with the " Scriptures before him, is, upon Protestant prin- " ciples ;" that is, upon his principle, " and in de- " crees of this nature, a Church to himself*." And thus he goes about to prove it: "every Christian hath a right to search the Scriptures. — And if it is his duty to search, it must be also his duty" (i. e. his right) " to determine for himself; and if he finds just cause, to dissent from any, or all the establishments upon earth f." Whether he finds just cause, or not, he may determine for himself, and no man alive can hinder him. In the Convocation, General Council, or Communion of Saints, which he carries about with him, he may determine that white is black, and good is evil : but then we are to observe, that all this, by * P. 23, 24, note. t Ibid. c 2 20 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. the terms of the argument, is— -for himself: whereas, the question is, whether the act of such a person, de termining for himself in favour of heresy, sedition, or whatever else he pleases, will be so far binding to society, as to preclude the establishment of what is agreeable to the word of God. His Church in a single person is a curiosity sui generis, and may pass with some people for a mere creature of the imagination. Most certainly it is not that Church spoken of by St. Paul, which is not. one member, but many, and must be so of necessity ; be cause there are many things to be done for a Christian, which a man cannot do for himself. But this Church in a single person must baptize himself ; and if he wants to be a minister, he must ordain himself, or, as Bp. Andrews speaks, must lay his own hands upon his own head ; then he must prefer himself, and absolve himself, and marry himself, and bury himself. How ever, it seems, this was once realized, as far as it well could be, upon a very ridiculous occasion. " There wa§ a dispute at Amsterdam between Ainsworth and Broughton, whether the colour of Aaron's ephod were blue, or a sea-water green; which did not only trouble all the dyers in Amsterdam, but drew their several followers into sides and factions, and made good sport for all the world but themselves alone. By rea son of which divisions and subdivisions, they fell at last into so many fractions, that one of them, in the end, became a Church of Himself; and having none to join in opinion with him, baptized himself, and thereby got the name of a Sebaptist, which never any Sectary or Heretic had got before *." Such are the effects, when Confessions are abolished, and every * Heylin's Hist, ofthe Presb. p. 375. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 21 man proceeds according to his own private judgment, without prudence, charity, restraint, or direction. So would the Churches be multiplied amongst us ! Into this state of separation, it is the opinion of our Author, that every man must be thrown, who in virtue of his own Churchship shall determine upon the Scripture by the rule of his private judgment ; for every such disquisitor will soon discover, that all Pro testant Churches, without exception, are mistaken. " If the people," saith he, " were diligent and care ful in searching the Scriptures, every one for himself, (as all Protestants agree they ought to do) the conse quence would most probably be, that the far greater part of honest and sensible Christians should be ex cluded from the communion of every Church which has an established Confession *." From this passage it is obvious, that the Author (taking himself for one of these honest and sensible Christians) hath a quarrel against some one doctrine common to all the Confes sions in the Christian world;, and that he holds either few Christians, or none at all, to be honest and sen sible, unless they judge of the Scripture with his pre judices. Now, to say nothing against the vanity and uncharitableness of this reflection, its disagreement with truth and fact is notorious ; there being very many, at this day, who search the Scripture both di ligently and carefully, without finding in themselves any disposition to Arianism or Socinianism: and others, who, by searching the Scripture, are reclaimed from these errors : of which I could give particular examples. The Author ofthe Confessional, however, could make short work with them all, by pronouncing such Christians to be neither honest nor sensible. * P. 25. 22 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. It hath always been the custom of those who ob ject to established Confessions of Faith, to pretend the authority of the Scripture : I say, to pretend it ; for certainly it hath not been always at the bottom of their objections. This writer would have us believe, that the disagreement of honest and sensible Chris tians with the general doctrine of Protestants, is the consequence of their searching the Scripture. But ap pearances are very much against them ; because their searching the Scripture hath been represented by themselves as posterior to this disagreement. Dr. Clarke hath laid it down, as the first principle of Na tural Religion, that God is but one Person *. He dis covered this principle, either with the Scripture, or without it. If with the Scripture, then it is absurd to call it the first principle of Natural Religion : If without the Scripture, then it was impossible he should receive the doctrine of the Orthodox, how plainly soever the Scripture may have revealed it. This prin ciple being once laid down as the original suggestion of Nature, all posterior examinations ofthe Scripture can be nothing more than laboured accommodations of it to a contrary hypothesis already established in the mind of the examinant. Dr. Clarke had much learning, and was an acute reasoner : but while there are these and other flaws in his religious principles, the man who would silence us with his example and authority, is only exposing his own bigotry, and con tradicting his favourite principle of private judgment ; which appears, at last, to be no other than the judg ment of Dr. Samuel Clarke, exclusive of that of his readers. Our adversaries have written copious and florid recommendations of Scripture researches, to the * See Clarke's Script. Doctr. p. 1. §. 1. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 23 apparent renunciation of all human authority : but I have heard it observed, that if we could persuade men to study the Scripture, instead of the Religion of Nature, so admired by the Deists (as the Bishop of Clogher hath observed in his Essay on Spirit *) and which has nothing but human authority to support it ; we should remove the foundations of more than half the Arianism of the present age. We have now heard the Author's character of those Christians, who search the Scripture in such a fashion as disposes them to contradict established Confes sions. As for the rest, he declares them in few words, to be either knaves or naturals. " The adherence of such numbers to the peculiar doctrines ofthe Church from which they receive their denomination, and even to some doctrines common to the Creeds and Con fessions of all Churches which call themselves ortho dox," (a circumlocution for the doctrine of the Tri nity) " is owing to their ignorance, their indolence, their secularity, or the early prejudices of educa tion t-" As it is not in the power of all men to examine critically what they adhere to, it is happy for them when their rulers have no evil design upon their un derstandings. I speak here of those whose ignorance arises from a want of capacity or opportunity ; which must be the case with very many. There is another generation in all communities, who are weak enough to take every thing upon trust, or too much engaged with pleasure and secularity to spend any of their time in searching for reasons of the hope that is in them. If it were the fashion to believe that Socinus * P. 25. The principles of which Religion were so much ad mired by this same writer, that he undertook to confute the Trinity, by considering it in the light of Nature and Reason. See his Title. f P. 25. 24 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. and George Fox the Quaker were true Apostles, ig norance and indolence would be content with the error ; and supposing them to have a little dash of vanity, they would scoff, perhaps, at the Christians of better times for being led by the nose, and not having wisdom or spirit enough to believe as they do. But is truth to be disregarded and banished from society, because ignorant people do not know the grounds of it, or may be influenced by their betters to accept of error instead of it ? Does it follow that a man's profession is false, because his conduct is un worthy of it ? The Apostle tells us of some who hold the truth in unrighteousness *. Does he mean to re flect upon the truth, or upon those ungodly persons who hold it in an improper manner ? Let ignorance, and indolence, and secularity then, each of them in their turns, or all of them together, approve the Or thodox Confession ; this will be no reproach to the Confession itself, unless the same ignorance, and in dolence, and secularity was at the bottom of its first establishment, to blind and corrupt the fathers ofthe Reformation : and let me add, that if ignorance and secularity must have a Confession, God forbid it should be of their own making ; especially if they should happen to be possessed with the rage of pro selyting : for ignorance will fabricate false doctrine, for want of proper materials ; and secularity (using its own private judgment) will invent such a religion as shall flatter its own vices. This leads us to the consideration of another plea of right, which, according to our Author, who is seldom so gracious as to make any allowances, is per haps the best the Church has to allege. " A necessity ' Rom. i. 18. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 25 for Confessions hath been inferred, from the indispo sitions and incapacities of the people to examine and judge for themselves *." And this is a plea, to which every compassionate Christian will be inclined to give as much weight as he can. The common people being, for the most part, unlearned, and incapable of searching the Scriptures for themselves, are liable to be deceived by those who pervert the Scriptures to the ruin of themselves and others : and therefore it is thought necessary that they should be instructed ac cording to some known rule of sound doctrine ; and their safety was a principal consideration with those who were entrusted with the compiling of the rules now established. But here again he is troubled with consequences, and is terribly afraid of doing good, lest some evil should come of it. The people must be left to take their chance, and the Church must not insist upon her right, or, more properly, her duty, of providing for their spiritual necessities ; because this " argument would equally vindicate the Church of Rome, with respect to many of her impositions f." By the impositions of the Church of Rome, we under stand those novel and false opinions which distinguish Papists from Protestants, and gave occasion to the Reformation ; therefore, his consequence, in other words, will stand thus : " If we allow it to be the duty of the Church of England to instruct her people with sound doctrine, then it will be equally the duty of the Church of Rome to corrupt the people with false doctrine. If this Church establishes any Creed, the Romish Church may establish the Creed of Pope Pius V. both being equally necessary, from the indis positions and incapacities of the people." When he * P. 26. + Ibid. 26 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. was about it, he might have inferred, with as much justice, that if one mother is bound to feed her children with bread, another will be under an equal obligation to give her children a dose of poison. And so much for the indispositions of the people. He goes on to observe, that " these indispositions and incapacities in the Clergy would be but an awk ward reason for making their subscription neces sary *." They would certainly ; and, therefore, I be lieve they were never given or thought of as a reason. The oaths are not administered to teach the duty of allegiance to those who take them, but in order to know whether they intend to perform what they un derstood before. So the Articles are not offered as a catechism to the Clergy to teach them a religion, which they are supposed already to have studied : but as a test of their religious opinions, that the Church may know whether the people will be safe under their teaching ; that is, whether the sheep are committed to a wolf, or to a shepherd. These are the terms of the Scripture; and they express that peculiar sort of capacity or incapacity in the Clergy, of which the Articles are intended as a test. There may be a very great want of faith, hope, and charity, where there is no considerable defect in point of learning or natural capacity. A man may have his head filled with strange opinions, contrary to the sobriety ofthe Gos pel, and his heart inflamed with a vehement desire of making disturbances in the Church, to the scandal of religion, and the breach of brotherly love and union among Christians. The intention of the Church, in appointing Confessions from the beginning, was to detect this spirit of error : and it was always thought * P. 26. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 27 necessary that it should be detected, if possible, and the evil effects of it prevented by timely caution. J beseech you, brethren, saith the Apostle, mark them which cause divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned *. And upon another occasion he commands the Christians in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, which expression amounts to an abjuration, to withdraw themselves from every bro ther who walketh disorderly, and not after the tra dition receivedfrom us f. For securing this tradition he prescribes the following method to the Clergy : Charge some that they teach no other doctrine \. We take our Confession to be such a charge as this, prac tically applied to all the teachers of the Church : and if the Author can instruct us how to apply it in such a manner as better to secure the end of it, which is apostolical tradition, or the faith delivered to the saints, every friend to true religion will give him thanks for his advice. In the mean time, we are well assured, that no one good purpose can ever be answered by withdrawing it. But notwithstanding all that can be urged from the commands of the Scripture, or the necessities of the people, our cause is but a lost one at last ; and for this reason, " Certain it is, in so far as the Laity are allowed not to be bound by these Church Confessions, the point of right to establish them is fairly given up §." But if the Laity are bound in common with the Clergy, then this right is not fairly given up. Let us consider whether they are or not. The Laity can be allowed to be not bound only in so far as they do not subscribe the Confession of the Church. But * Rom. xvi. 17. f ~ Thess.iii 6,7. t 1 Tim. i.3. % P. 28. 28 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. if they are not bound because they do not subscribe, then it will follow, that the Clergy are bound only because they do subscribe. And to what doth this subscription bind them ? To the belief of the true God, the Maker and Preserver of all things ; of the divine authority ofthe Scripture ; of eternal salvation by Jesus Christ; ofthe benefit of the sacraments; the necessity of good works, &c. In a word, it binds them to a summary of their Christian faith. But if they had not subscribed it, they had been free from all obligation ; that is, they need not have been Christians. Either this is true, or the Laity are bound to our Church Confessions, though they do not sub scribe them. To keep the Clergy steady to their pro fession, some present obligations are added to spi ritual considerations ; but no man can imagine that the latter became void by the introduction of the former. The laws of every Christian state inflict temporal penalties on the breach of the eighth com mandment : yet the eighth commandment is of force with them or without them ; and there will be a reckoning on that account in the other world, if there is none in this. The same is true in all other cases, where the laws of God are farther secured by the hu man sanctions of emoluments on the one hand, or penalties on the other. But his reasoning implies, either that the former are made void by the latter, or, that no man is bound, unless he is bound by both ; therefore, to argue with him a little in his own way, it is not clear that the Laity are free from all obliga tion, even by the present discipline of the establish ment ; subscription being required of those Laymen, whose conduct is supposed to have any particular in fluence upon religious society ; as of graduates in the Universities, many of whom continue in lay profes- REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 29 sions as long as they live ; and of all schoolmasters, of whom the majority, I believe, are Laymen. With the Articles of Edivard VI. a Catechism was en joined * by public authority, (probably without con sulting the private judgment of the children who were to learn it) that the Laity might be brought up in the same principles as were subscribed by the Clergy. The Catechism, as it now stands in the Book of Com mon Prayer, is part of an act of parliament, and con tains, in short, the substance of what is expressed more at large in the Articles. And moreover, if the obligation of the Laity is thought of while they are children, it is not forgotten or given up so long as they live. For let us ask, Why is the Clergyman bound to those particular doctrines expressed in the Articles ? Because the contrary doctrines are not fit to be preached to the laity. Thus the public autho rity, which requires subscription, hath considered the Laity as the end, and the Clergy as the means ; and, in so doing, could never intend that the Laity should be without obligation. Had this writer considered the case, before he undertook to pronounce upon it, he might have spared his sarcasm upon the Clergy man, as being obliged to teach doctrines, which the Lay man is not obliged to believe, or to practise. The Laity are not indeed generally called upon to subscribe, nor are they generally required to swear allegiance to the government; yet they are no more allowed to be without obligation in the one case than the other. So long as the law of God is in force, they are bound in foro conscientice, without swearing or subscribing at all ; and must answer it to the supreme law-giver, if Strype's Memorials, vol. ii. p. 420. 30 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. they disturb the State with treason, or the Church with false doctrine. Our Author would have looked upon it as an in stance of great disingenuity in some zealot of the Church, had he found such an one pleading against himself, on the supposition that the Laity axenot bound; and then railing at him on a supposition that they are bound ; and all this in the same page. Yet this is his own practice ; and let the reader judge whether his words do not amount to a proof of it. " A law inducing men to profess, by a solemn act, that their religious opinions are what they really are not, is no mark of charity in any Church *." This law, as the reader will find, if he turns back to the preceding page, is the test-act ; the men he speaks of, are Lay men; the religious opinions they profess by a solemn act, are the opinions ofthe Church of England; these opinions are expressed in her Creeds and Articles : to these the Laity are bound by a solemn act ; and thus he complains of an obligation, which he supposes, at the same time, not to exist ! casting all the reproach upon the Church. But the Church does not make acts of parliament ; they are made by the State, for its own security, in common with that of the Church. Papists, on pretence of religion, will overthrow a State which is Protestant ; and Calvinists have once overthrown the State, for being episcopal. This law, he says, is no mark either of wisdom or charity ; but experience will make every body wise, if it is not their own fault; and where self-preservation is thought necessary, charity begins at home. His definition of this act is like those many other descriptions of men and things, with which they who * P. 28. REMARKS on the confessional. 31 will read his book may be better acquainted, if they desire it. The test-act is a law obliging men to pro fess that their religious opinions are what they really are ; not what they are not. When an oath is pre scribed by the law, it is not intended that men should swear falsely, or that they should prophane the Bible, by professing upon it a faith and hope which they have not. If they make this act a snare to them selves, their own infidelity, or want of conscience, is in fault, and not the wisdom or charity of the go vernment under which they live. There is no law, how just or sacred soever, which ill men cannot find ways of affronting or eluding to their own condem nation ; and his way of stating the laws would make them all equally ridiculous. For the inducement he speaks of is not in the law, but in the advantage which a wicked man hopes to get by breaking or abusing the law. If the test-act were changed into a law, re* quiring men to profess that they believe the Scrip ture to be the word of God, a bishopric, a deanry, or even an archdeaconry, might possibly induce an In fidel, who hath no religion at all, to make the usual profession. If this should appear, the Author might then argue for the repeal of it, as of a scandalous law, inducing men to profess that their religious opinions are what they are not : and a few such arguments, applied in their proper extent, would serve to un hinge all the law and order that is now in the world. The late Bishop of Winchester, as he is pleased to inform us in the same page, has so thoroughly dis cussed and cleared up this subject of the test-act, tliat there is no danger it shoidd ever be thrown into confu sion again. The late Bishop of Winchester is an au thor whose principles and reasonings the writer of the Confessional hath copied very closely in many 13 23 remarks on the confessional. respects ; and if we are but so civil as to take him for an oracle, against all the remonstrances of pri vate judgment, the consequences would be very fa vourable to himself, and save him a great deal of trouble. If any reader should be curious to know how this Bishop succeeded in discussing and clearing up every thing, I would advise him to read over Mr. Law's Third Letter to the Bishop of Bangor ; and if he is a lover of truth, reason, Christianity, and a clear style, I can promise him much instruction, not without the mixture of a little diversion. Some friends of the Church have defended the right of establishing Confessions upon the principles of utility and expedience ; which bring us back again to the principle of self-preservation, with which we be gan. For if a lawless liberty to pervert the word of God is attended with any danger to religious society, a right to provide against it by lawful means may be inferred naturally enough. Our Author represents the matter thus : " But, say some men, if there be an ex pedience in Confessions of Faith, we may infer a right to establish them, though concerning such right the Scripture should be silent *." This plea he endea vours to confute, by blackening the Clergy, as a set of men upon whom this test of orthodoxy is not found to answer so well as might be wished ; many things being written and uttered, with all freedom, by different persons, equally irreconcileable to each other, as well as to the Orthodox Confession f . Many such things are written in the Confessional, with as much freedom, and heat too, as we shall generally meet with ; therefore, if the writer of that book is a sub scribing member of the Church, I hope he will be * P. 28. f_P. 31. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 33 pleased to take his own share of his own accusation. But he cannot seriously argue, that a regulation ceases to be expedient, only because men have the assurance to break through their own engagements. At this- rate there ought to be no regulation at all ; and his objection will conclude as strongly against the Bible as against the Articles. Many things are written and uttered by different persons, equally irre concileable to each other, as well as to the orthodox Con fession ; and, by consequence, equally irreconcileable to the orthodox Scripture itself, unless it hath revealed to us contradictory propositions. Christians of dif ferent denominations, who have all received the same Scripture in common, are as irreconcileable in their treatment of the Scripture, as it is possible for the members of this establishment to be in the liberties they take with the orthodox Confession ; and the scandal is as great upon one of these as the other. Yet he exclaims, as if our Confession was quite over set by this vain objection : " What now is the utility or expedience in this affair of subscription, which will atone for the scandal brought upon Christianity by this unscriptural article of Church discipline ?" When the laws of any society are broken, a scandal is thereby brought upon its profession ; but no society ever hit upon the expedient of removing that scandal by setting their laws aside. A while ago he repre sented the test as an inducement to break through the test : so here, instead of charging the scandal upon the transgressors of the law, whose proper business it is to find some atonement for it, he casts it upon the law itself. Our blessed Saviour saith, Woe unto the world because of offences : but by our Author's rule he ought to have said, Woe unto the Gospel because of offences ; it being as equitable and proper to impute vol. n. D 34 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. all the scandal of worldly wickedness to the Gospel, which forbids it, as to father all the scandal of hete rodoxy upon the orthodox Confession. That this article of our discipline is unscriptural, doth not appear. We are not, indeed, commanded in so many words to subscribe the Articles of the Church of England : but the ministers of the Church having received the Christian faith, are commanded in the Scripture to keep that which is committedto their trust* ; therefore, if our Confession comprehends that faith which the Apostles delivered to the Church, it ought to be kept : so far as it varies from that faith, it ought to be corrected ; but to drop it in form would be to declare in fact, that its doctrines are not true ; and, consequently, that the members of this Church (whatsoever might be advanced to the con trary in a preamble) are released from their obligation to the word of God, out of which those doctrines are extracted ; which would be a very unscriptural proceeding, and have consequences fatal to Christi anity, though it may appear very promising to this gentleman, and the whole Socinian fraternity. The present method of preserving our faith by a subscrip tion, is no more contrary to any precept of the Scrip ture, than the repeating of an amen at the end of the Creed, or the Lord's Prayer. This act may indeed be rendered even sinful by the sinfulness of the matter subscribed; but if the matter subscribed is scriptural, the subscription by which we assent to.it will be so too; unless it is wrong for a man to declare that as sent with his pen, which it is his duty to declare with his lips. This part of his objection then will be something or nothing, as the doctrine of our Con fession shall appear to be true or false. * 1 Tim. vi. 20. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 35 Our Author's next attempt is to render all Confes sions of faith impracticable and ridiculous, by setting the rights and proceedings of Protestant Churches against one another : and thus he argues ,• " Let us suppose that Protestant Churches have such a right) each within its own confines ; the question is, how shall one Church exercise this right, without en croaching on the right of another*?" Here he lays down a supposition, and departs from it immediately, without having patience to make a single period con sistent. His supposition and question, if compared together, will make just as good sense as if I should say, ' ' Let us suppose that every master of a family hath a right to walk about his own house; the ques tion is, how he shall do this, without breaking into the house of his next neighbour ?" He begins with supposing their rights to be separate, and circum scribed by their own confines ; then raises a question, which is no question at all, unless their rights extend beyond their confines. There is the same perplexity in what follows : " All particular Churches are co ordinate ; they have all the same right in an equal de gree." This, we must observe, according to the state of his argument, is within their own confines ; and, in the next paragraph, he grants, as explicitly as need be, that their powers are limited by their situation, and extend not beyond their own departments. Yet he raises difficulties, as before, by supposing their rights to interfere with one another ; and declares, he " does not see how it is possible for any Church to exercise this right, where she establishes doctrines inconsist ent with those of other Churches, without abridging those Churches of their right to establish their own * P. 33. D 2 36 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. doctrines." If these latter doctrines are false doc trines, their right to establish them is already abridged upon other principles : if they are true, co-ordinate powers can be under no common obli gations to one another, but by common consent; otherwise they are not co-ordinate. He hath here confounded two cases, which ought to have been carefully distinguished; and in this confusion lies the whole merit of his argument. For Protestant .Churches may either act separately for themselves, within their own confines, as he pre tended at first to suppose ; or they may act for the whole body of Protestants at large. If they act in this latter capacity, they cannot act authoritatively, unless they act jointly, or, as he expresses it, without the unanimous consent of all the rest : but the Author must have known that this was not the case he had before him. Did the Church of England ever pre tend that preachers in France or Denmark are bound to qualify themselves by subscribing the English Confession, and confining themselves to the use of the English Liturgy ? The contrary is expressly de clared in the Preface to the book of Common Prayer — " In these our doings we condemn no other na tions, nor prescribe any thing but to our own people only." Such an extent of power is indeed assumed by the Church of Rome ; but it is an absurd usurpa tion, and was never claimed by any community of Protestants ; who well know that they cannot act for other Churches, but so far only as they can assist in a general council. One national Church, then, cannot act for another, upon this very principle, that they are co-ordinate : but it cannot hence be inferred that national Churches have no power to act separately for themselves. The REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 37 kingdoms of Europe are co-ordinate kingdoms, and, as such, cannot act for the whole, unless they act in confederacy. If it should , follow, as in the logic of the Confessional, that they cannot, upon this prin ciple, act for their own security at home, then it would appear, as perhaps the Author intended it should, that co-ordinate power is no power, and that there ought to be no such thing as authority upon earth, either civil or ecclesiastical. To prepare his readers for this loose way of think ing, he observes, that " no Church can have a right to establish any doctrines, but upon a supposition that they are true. If the doctrines established in one Church are true, the contrary doctrines established in another Church must be false; and no Church will contend for a right to establish/izfee doctrines *." He hath a strange art of throwing a cause up into the air, and contriving the matter so that it always falls upon its back ; whereas a fairer writer would some times suffer it to light upon its legs. He might have said, with as much truth, and much more ingenuity, that if the doctrines established in one Church are false, the contrary doctrines established in another Church will be true ; and every Church has a right to establish true doctrines. It is judiciously observed, by the learned and respectable writer ofthe Three Letters t, that this objection strikes as deeply at the rights of private judgment in individuals, as at the authority of separate Churches: for if the doctrines believed by one person are true, the contrary doctrines believed by another will be false ; and no person will contend for a right to believe false doctrines ; consequently, no person can have a right to believe any doctrines, * P. 34. + See Letter II. p. 72. 38 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. but with the unanimous consent of every other per son : besides, to use another of his arguments, how can any one person, more than any one Church, use his own private judgment, without encroaching on the right of another's private judgment ? If these reason ings are thus carried to their natural issue, private rights as well as public will fall before them, and re ligious persuasion can no more be supported in indi viduals than in societies. Men may be mistaken, and societies may be mistaken; but the rights of one so ciety are no more affected by the mistakes of a fo reign society, than the rights of private judgment in any one man at London is affected by the groundless determinations of another at York. If any one foreign society may be admitted as a check upon establishments here in England, why not another 1 Papists are of the human species ; not only invested with the common rights of reason and private judg ment, and as such upon a level with those at Geneva, but they also produce texts of Scripture, in their own sense, for all their innovations. As they admit doc trines contrary to our doctrines, and both cannot be true, we ought to establish nothing, lest, in contradic tion to the Pope, we should establish false doctrine. It was asserted above, that all particular Churches are co-ordinate: they have all the same right in the same degree. If these particular Churches are national Churches, subsisting under the laws of independent countries, the assertion is true ; but it is extended to an extravagant latitude in the Confessional, and com prehends under the name of Churches all the different parties ox denominations of sectaries in the same Pro testant state *. I beg leave to spend some time upon * P. 34. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 39 this position, because it is of great consequence, and will shew the depth of this writer's ecclesiastical polity. Let us ask then, in the first place, whence this co ordination of Churches in the same Protestant state is derived ? Not from the form and doctrine of the apostolical Church in the primitive ages, nor yet from the principles or practices of this Church at the Re formation. To derive it from the former of these, is to suggest that Christianity made its public entry into the kingdoms of the world under the different forms of the Anabaptists, the Calvinists, the Quakers, the Independents, the Racovians, &c. &c. That all these forms were thrown down before the magistrate, for him to pick up which he liked best, and that there was nothing but fancy to direct him in his choice. Had this been a fact, the co-ordination here spoken of had been of some authority, and Christianity it self would have done what its persecutors could never accomplish : for nothing but everlasting opposition and confusion could have arisen from the co-equality of such an heterogeneous institution. But in reality the faith and polity of the Christian church, for the two or three first centuries, had but one face all over the world ; therefore, a supposed co-ordination in fa vour of all sects, can find no precedent in this state ofthe Church. Neither can it be deduced from our Reformation of Popery : for the episcopal Church of England was a Church of Christ before the Reformation, though a corrupt one ; as a man is still a man, though he is blind and scorbutic. The co-ordinate principle, there fore, must suppose, with the Papists, that the Church of England was then annihilated, and that some new thing started up in the place of it, of the same date 40 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. and authority with all the other novel forms we have amongst us. Our adversaries ofthe Church of Rome have laboured hard to prove that this Church is, in this respect, but upon a footing with one of her own sectaries, that they may bring a scandal upon the episcopal Reformation. But it does not follow that this Church had been dead and buried, because it was reformed. A man may be cured of a leprosy without being first killed. Our Author, however, grants as much as the Papists will require. This co-ordination, he observes, must be admittedupon the genuine grounds of separation from the Church of Rome*. But these genuine grounds are no more than the imaginary grounds which he hath substituted instead ofthe true ones : for here again I must remind the reader, that the Papists have never failed to charge all the wild extravagances of some hot-headed Protestants upon the genuine principles of the Reformation. They call it, as this writer doth, a separation; and instruct their people, that all other separations, indeed all the con fusion that can be set on foot with pretence of reli gion, may be justified upon the same grounds. But in answer both to the Papists, and this gentleman, it must be remembered, that there was a time when they who called themselves Roman Catholics, came in great numbers to our churches, and had no objec tion to conformity with us as a true Church, till the Pope terrified them with an interdict, and excom municated Queen Elizabeth f . But what is more to the purpose, our Reformation can never be improved into a separation, analogous to that of the sectaries, but by allowing the supremacy of the Pope over the * P. 33. t See Strypc's Annals, or Collier's Eccl. Mist. vol. ii. p. 436. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 41 English Bishops to have been legal. Grant the va lidity of that supremacy, and then our Reformation was a separation, that is, a schism ; because it was a revolt from lawful authority. No man will say, that in case the Church of Rome had reformed its own errors without consulting the Archbishop of Canter bury, it would have been guilty of a separation. No more were we guilty of a separation in reforming our errors, without staying for the Pope's consent: for his supremacy being an usurpation, that is, a nullity, it can make no real difference between these two cases. We are now to consider how this co-ordinate prin ciple affects the establishment. It manifestly requires, as the Author proceeds to assure us, that the same liberty (of being established by public authority) should be allowed to all claimants ; whereas it is in fact al lowed to no more than one Church in the same Pro testant state. In every state some one party lias suc ceeded, &c *. There needs little more to shew the absurdity of this new co-ordinate principle, than that it requires impossibilities : for the congregational form is inconsistent with that of the Quakers ; both are inconsistent with the Presbyterian ; and all with the episcopal Church. To establish all, would be to con found all ; and the very attempt would make public authority and public religion ridiculous. All that can be done is to establish one, and tolerate the rest ; and this is done already. The Church assents to the toleration of the other forms, though none of them would assent to the toleration of the Church ; and it would indeed be as unnatural to expect it, as that the less should comprehend the greater, or that kingly * P. 34. 42 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. government should be endured under a republican usurpation. Every state will naturally establish that religion which itself professes ; nor can any other have the establishment, till something superior to the state is introduced ; that is, till the state is changed, and the government overturned. The state may have prejudices, and establish a spurious form of religion; therefore, we never plead the establishment as an ar gument of the truth of our profession. The Church of England being no favourite, in any respect, with this writer, he hath indulged his con tempt for that society, by throwing it into the lump amongst other professions, under the common title of a party; and he hath some reason : for then it may be asked, Why not one party as well as another ? Thus he sets up the right of all, that no right may be found in any ; and pleads for all, that he may overturn all, and leave nothing established in their room : for co ordinate right is co-ordinate confusion ; it is imperium in imperio, which hath always been reckoned an ab surdity, if the powers claimed are the same in kind. If I have a right over any man, and he hath also a right over me, and our principles are at the same time irreconcileable ; nothing can be settled to the world's end. Therefore, a right was originally lodged some where, or Jesus Christ must be supposed to have planted no Church upon earth. There was certainly a right, when St. Paul said, " Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God ; whose faith follow." And again, in the same chapter,—" Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves *." And if there was an original right with the Church and its rulers, * Heb. xiii. 7. 1 7. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 43 it is the duty of Christians to consider whether that right is now remaining, and where it is to be found ; or, if it is not found, it ought to be shewn very clearly when and how it came to be lost. At present, however, the terms of our subject lead us to enquire when the Church of England sunk into the character of a co-ordinate party, such as this Author now finds it. Was it a party at the Reformation, that is, a fac tion under itself? Or did the act of Reformation, as the Papists object, transmute it into a party ? If not this, was it rendered such afterwards, by the success ful usurpation of a domestic faction ? Then may good coin be rendered counterfeit, only by being trodden under foot, and Christianity itself confuted by persecution. Then was the restoration of the episcopal form, which had prevailed from the days of the Apostles, the restoration of a party ; and the re storation of the state, which rose and fell with the Church, being of the same religion, must likewise have been the restoration of a party. This discovery opens a very large field, which, if properly cultivated, will furnish us with an entire new system of ideas. A considerable branch of this system is brought out to view at p. 316 of our Author's performance ; where we are taught, by some examples of modern date, that if men write and act against the fundamental doctrines of religion, the faction which ensues is not chargeable upon those men, but upon the authority which calls them to account for it, and upon all those who presume to act under the protection of the laws for the support of our common faith. Thus when Whiston wrote against the Trinity, the faction was raised by the University of Cambridge, which ex pelled him. When Dr. Clarke made a like effort, the faction was in the orthodox. When Dr. Clayton made 10 44 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. his bloody speech * against Athanasius, the faction was in the Irish House of Lords. And, by the same rule, when the Author of the Confessional, and his friends, shout against the Church and its doctrines, and rail at the present bench of bishops in the public newspapers, doing what they are able to stir up all the spiritual malecontents of the kingdom against the Creeds, the faction is not with them, but with the Author of the Three Letters, and all others who pre sume to deliver their opinion of the Confessional with much less freedom than that writer hath treated the faith and discipline of the Church. A faction used to signify a combination of bad men against lawful authority ; but in the present system it means just the reverse. To conclude this chapter, and connect it with what follows, I shall here insert the words of Calvin, who, -with all his aversion to Popery and unscriptural im positions, hath confirmed, with much strength of reason, and in a very small compass, that claim which this writer hath taken so much pains to perplex and overthrow. " Nos consulitis, an adigendi sint ad fidem suam publice testandam, qui se in ecclesiam admitti postulant. — Non videmus cur grave sit ho- mini, qui inter ecclesiae domesticos censeri vult, Christo capiti in solidum nomen dare ; quod fieri non potest, nisi diserte subscribat sincerce pietati, et ingenue err ores damnet, quibus sinceritas religionis corrumpitur. Jamerrorum detestatio scepeex circumstantid temporum pendet ; quia prout novas turbandi rationes excogitat Satan, prudenter occurrere necesse est. Scimus quan- * I call it such, because the speaker told his audience, that Atha nasius waded to his episcopal chair through an ocean of blood. If the reader will consult Dr. Cave's Life of Athanasius, he may learn who shed it. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 45 topere nobis commendet Paulus unitatem spiritus in vinculo pacis. Porro ad fovendum et retinendum inter pios consensum, plus quam necessaria est ilia solennis fidei professio ; denique quicunque optabunt ecclesiam Dei stare incolumem, non segre ferent hoc adminiculo earn fulciri. Non putamus esse qui litem moveant de generali ilia professione : sed frigeret ilia, nisi distincte quisque tam hcereticis quam perversis dogmatibus renunciet." Forbes Op. fol. vol. i. p. 498. CHAPTER III. REMARKS ON CERTAIN PRETENDED PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION. The Reformation, a subject very much misrepre sented by interested writers, having frequently been brought upon the stage, and reformation being the object of the Confessional, I will go back again, and make some observations on the principles which our Author hath very injuriously, and without referring to any single authority, fathered upon the first re formers. I shall, therefore, endeavour to shew, these are neither the principles of the Reformation, nor of the Scripture ; but that they are more probably bor rowed from some modern improvers of the Reforma tion, of a very different temper and persuasion from the first reformers of Popery. These principles are delivered by the Author, at the opening of his work : " When the Protestants first withdrew from the com munion of the Church of Rome, the principles they went upon were sueh as these : Jesus Christ hath by 46 REMARKS on the confessional. his Gospel called all men unto liberty, the glorious li berty of the sons of God, and restored them to the pri vilege of working out their own salvation by their own understandings and endeavours *." For this doctrine, as I observed above, we are referred only to the whole body of Protestants in the gross ; no particu lar writers of that class being cited upon the occa sion. We are, therefore, to take it as the doctrine which this Author hath adopted, and to consider how far it is agreeable to truth. That Jesus Christ hath called all men to liberty, will readily be allowed as an express declaration of his Gospel. In what sense the Scripture itself under stands this liberty, we shall see presently. In the mean time, it is certainly true that Jesus Christ did likewise call all men to obedience and subjection for conscience sake ; and was himself the greatest ex ample of it in all the occurrences of his life ; from his birth, which happened while his parents were at tending a summons from the Roman Emperor, to his condemnation by Pontius Pilate. He absolved no man from his duty to the powers that were set over him ; but commanded his hearers to submit to the au thority even of corrupt Scribes andPharisees,~because they sat in Moses's seat f ; only with this reserve, that they should not do after their works, because these were very far short ofthe perfection and purity pre scribed by their teaching. It is equally true, that the present governors of this Church sit in the seat ofthe Apostles, though they are none of them invested with miraculous powers : for the Scribes and Pharisees wrought no miracles; yet their authority devolved to them from Moses, who wrought many. They were * Conf.p. 1. | Matth. xxiii. 2. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 47 also as distant from Moses in point of time, as the present Church is from the age of the Apostles ; and, I hope, as unlike to Moses in their practical en dowments, as the Bishops of this Church are unlike to the Apostles, even in the estimation of the Author of the Confessional. Now it would be wrong to suppose that Christ was more solicitous concerning the peace, order, and dis cipline of the Jewish Church, than concerning the government of the Christian : for the sake of which he invested his disciples with the same authority as was committed to himself — As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you, &c. * ; and he left them with this promise — Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end ofthe world t ; not with these individual per sons to whom he then spake, but with those who should succeed to their ministration in the Church : for you, and your posterity or successors, mean the same thing in the language of the Scripture. Thus Jacob says to Joseph : " God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers;}; ;" that is, with their children, who were brought out of Egypt four hundred years afterwards. St. Paul hath a remarkable passage to the same effect in his first Epistle to Timothy — " I charge thee in the sight of God, and before Jesus Christ, that thou keep this commandment without spot, and unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." Upon which text we have the following remark in Bishop Overall's Convocation Book> p. 180. " It was impossible for Timothy to observe these things till the coming of Christ, he being to die long before ; therefore, the precepts and rules which St. Paul had given unto him * John xx. 21. t Matth. xxviii. 20. t Gen. xlviii. 21. 48 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. to observe in his episcopal government, did equally appertain, as well to Bishops, his successors, as to himself ; and were to be executed by them succes sively after his death unto the world's end." There is no necessary connection betwixt the mi raculous powers of the Apostles, and their ecclesi astical commission as rulers in the Church : for they wrought miracles with a view to those only who did not believe * : but their authority, as ministers of the Church, was committed to them for the sake of those only who were within the Church : and the occasions of the people render the like ministerial authority as necessary now as it was then. The late Bishop Coneybeare is reflected upon, for arguing from the consent- required by the Apostles to their doctrines, to the consent required by succeed ing Church-governors to human articles f, in what the Author calls his famous subscription sermon. It doth not appear that he hath done this, unless his text is taken for an argument of his sermon ; yet he might have done it very safely, the argument being allow able when properly expressed : otherwise it cannot be true that Christ, according to his promise, is with his Apostles (that is, their successors) to the end of the world. If we may have the liberty of express ing the argument in our own terms, rather than those which the Author puts into our mouths, it will stand thus— The Apostles required a consent to their*doe- trines ; therefore, their successors may require a con sent to the same doctrines. The argument hath now a very different face ; and it will not be easy to an swer it ; because it will be requisite to point out and demonstrate, that there is a disagreement between * 1 Cor. xiv. 22. f P- 23. Note B. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 49 our present doctrines and those of the Apostles de livered to us in the Scripture ; of which labour the Author is remarkably sparing throughout his whole performance ; quoting the Scripture but seldom, and then chiefly in a sense of accommodation, as it fur nishes him with phrases to express his own jests and sarcasms. Let us now examine to what species of liberty Christ hath called men by his Gospel. And here, to guard against some false ideas of liberty, we may ven ture to affirm, that Christ never called any man to a liberty of rejecting his own laws, and denying his own doctrines; and that there can be no such thing amongst Christians, as a liberty against God. I should have thought it superfluous to say this, had I not lately seen it maintained, in express terms, by an advocate for reformation, and the advancement of primitive Christianity, that " no man ought to pay any sub mission to that doctrine and discipline which he does not like *." All the liberty of which I can find any account in the Scripture, is a deliverance from the bondage of sin-\; and a glorious liberty it is : but then it is such as leaves a man the servant of righ teousness. There is another sort of liberty, whic h sets us free from the burthensome yoke of the services and ceremonies of the Mosaic law J ; and there is likewise a liberty, which the servants Of Jesus Christ may plead upon just occasions, and which was ac cordingly pleaded by many at the Reformation : I mean, that of obeying God rather than man, where the commands of the latter are inconsistent with * Independent Whig, vol. ii. p. 45. t Rom. vi. 18. 22. + Gal. v. 1, 2, 3. VOL. II. E 50 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. those of the former. Yet this is more properly a state of subjection to the laws of God, attended with the privilege of siffering shame for his name *, than a state of freedom from human authority : and indeed the Gospel-state, in whatever light we shall view it, provided we do not pervert and transform it into something else, will prove at last to be a state of obe dience. The first reformers, that they might preserve their obedience to the divine laws, retained the sub stance of religion as it was before ; removing only the sinful impositions and modern superstitions which had been introduced without any warrant of Scrip ture, or precedent of the purest ages ; and the most zealous and forward amongst them never extended Christian liberty to matters of faith, but confined it to things in their nature indifferent f. We meet with none of these distinctions in the Confessional, though they were religiously attended to by the more learned and sober sort of Protestants, who did not then set up a new system, but corrected the new, as nearly as they were able, by the old : which is the duty of our Author to do, if he is infected with any unscrip tural novelties. And when he recommends liberty, he ought to make some proper reservations in favour of obedience : for there is a wild and dangerous species of liberty, which sometimes takes upon it the name of conscience, and in this disguise treads under foot the laws of God, and would soon abolish the very name of Christianity, if it were left to its own ways. * See Acts iv. 19. and v, 41. + Haec indifferentia sunt, et in Ecclesice libertate posita, Calvin. Instit. lib. iv. c. 17. §. 43. and Mr. Cruden, in his Concordance, (a book of more authority than some hundreds of Commentaries) de fines the liberty of the New Testament as a power or freedom in using things indifferent: referring to the texts of 1 Cor. viii. 9, 10. 29. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 51 But let us proceed with the supposed principles ofthe Reformation. " For the work of salvation sufficient means are afforded in the Holy Scriptures, without having re course to the doctrines and commandments of men." The sense which I presume the Author to have in tended in this place, is very loosely expressed. For means, as the word is generally applied by divines, signify the means of grace, or sacraments of the Church ; which are indeed prescribed by the Holy Scriptures, but cannot possibly be administered by them. Whence it comes to pass, that every Christian is thrown into a state of dependence upon other Christians by the very conditions of his religion, and cannot subsist as such but in society. And as the sa craments cannot be administered without some form, which form is not set down for us in so many words by the New Testament ; necessity requires that it should be settled by the governors of the Church, after the pattern of the best times. However, let us take these for the means of know ledge, and instruction in Christian learning. Neither will this sense agree with the principles of the first Protestants ; if we may judge by their practice, which is the surest rule. For the Augustan ConfessionxAaivAy discovers in the matter of it, that the compilers had a particular regard to the faith of the primitive Church ; which the Author understands, by the doc trines and commandments of men ; and is an enemy to all Confessions, chiefly on account of their conformity with the doctrines of the first Christians. In the conference at Worms, anno 1557, de norma judicii ecclesia, the Protestants assumed, as the rule of their judgment, prophetica et apostolica scripta, et sym- bola, fyc. not the Scripture alone, but the Scrip- e 2 52 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. ture interpreted according to the faith of the pri mitive Creeds *. Mr. Chillingworth, than whom no man ever argued with more earnestness for the Bible as the only reli gion of Protestants, doth nevertheless allow to the Church, " an authority of determining controversies of faith, according to plain and evident Scripture, and universal tradition ;" and that the Church is infal lible, so long as it proceeds according to this rule. He affirms, that this tradition was valuable so long as the primitive Churches preserved their unity in matters of faith : which is the ground of that passage in Tertul lian — Variasse debuerat error Ecclesiarum; quod autem apud multos unum est, non est erratum, sed tra- ditum '[. Here the way of Papists and Protestants di vides : for they deduce their traditions down to the modern ages of the Church. We only say, what is certainly both true and reasonable, that the tradition Tertidlian speaks of, is as good now as it was then. All Protestants ever were, and now are, bound by their profession to grant, that the Gospel hath de livered us from the doctrines and commandments of men, properly so called, as certainly as from the vain traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees ; but it hath not absolved us from the prudence and caution, and indeed the common-sense, which requires every be liever to pay a proper regard to a general consent amongst the first and best Christians ; nor did the Protestants think so ; as this Author, forgetting him self a little, hath taken care to inform us in the next paragraph but one ; where he complains, that the Re formers determined the one sense of Scripture to be * Matthiae Theatr. Historic, p. 1072. t Tertull. Prescr. contr. Haeret. See Chillingworth, chap. ii. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 53 the sense of the primitive Church, that is, the sense of the orthodox fathers, for a certain number of centuries. From these they took their interpretations of Scripture, and upon these they formed their rule of faith and doc trine, and so reduced their respective Churches within the bounds of a theological system. Did they so ? and who were the Reformers then that set up private judgment and the Scripture, independent of the faith of the primitive Church ? The truth of the matter is, this principle of the Reformation is such as the Author finds; the other is such as he thought proper to make, that there might be some foundation for his new superstructure. He proceeds to instruct us, tha-t faith and conscience are not to be compelled by man's authority. Whatever authority the Christian society may be invested with, no Protestants were so absurd as to think that it could force any man to believe, and be baptized, and be saved : for the Christian life is a work of choice, and a reasonable service, not to be extorted by any au thority, even of God himself ; so that men must be gained over to the truth by sufficient evidence ; yet not without the grace of God disposing the heart to understand and admit of it. The Church administers this evidence in behalf of its own injunctions : but be the evidence ever so just and cogent, it always will and must be in the power of men to reject it; as many did the preaching of the Apostles, and even of Christ himself : and they would again do the same at this day, were Christ and his Apostles to preach the doctrine of the Church of England in person, as they still do by their writings. When it is objected (in the next words) as a prin ciple ofthe Reformation, that the Church of Rome hath none other than human authority for the spiritual do- 54 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. minion she claimeth, the assertion is too general to be true ; and the Papists will rather despise the Pro testants who advance it, than be at the pains to an swer them : for the Church of Rome, in common with the Churches of France, England, and Abyssi nia, is so far invested with spiritual authority, as to have the commission of Christ for baptizing, con firming, ordaining preachers, and administering the Communion in both kinds, if she would be so just to herself as to make use of it. For those inventions of later times, which distinguish her from the primitive Church, she hath indeed none other than human au thority. If every kind and degree of spiritual domi nion is denied to the Church, then these distinctions will be of no value ; and therefore the Author points his reflections either against the reformed Church of England, or the idolatrous Church of Rome, as his occasions make it convenient. But the first Re formers, a few fractious and unreasonable men ex cepted, were always inclined to do this Church more justice. The last article is as follows : " The Church of Christ is congregated by the word of God" This principle hath neither truth nor sense : for the Scrip ture can no more congregate a Church, than it can administer Baptism and the Lord's Supper : and it is a notorious fact, that the Church was congregated by Christ and his Apostles before the Scriptures of the New Testament were written. Our blessed Lord or dained his twelve Apostles, and his seventy disciples, by his own personal act ; and appointed the two sa craments of the Church while he was present with it. The Apostles appointed the order of deacons soon after the ascension ; and the Church is now congre gated by descent or succession from that Church, which REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 55 was originally congregated by Christ and his Apostles. Paul received his commission from Heaven imme diately : he laid his hands upon Timothy, investing him at the same time with an authority to lay his hands * upon others ; and so on to the end of the world. The same rule had obtained before in the Jewish Church, which was congregated by descent from the family of Aaron, and the tribe of Levi ; and so it was understood by Christ himself, who al lowed the Scribes and Pharisees to sit in the seat of Moses, though Moses had been dead two thousand years before. There is no other possible way of de riving any authority from God, now he hath ceased to act personally in the Church, without being ex posed to all the excesses of imposture and licentious ness. If the Church were congregated, as this writer imagines, in opposition to reason and fact, any en thusiast, with the Bible in his hand, might form a society, extract a new set of doctrines, contrary in every respect to the old, appoint new sacraments, plead co-ordinate rights, and supersede the present Church upon Protestant principles ; that is, upon such principles as this gentleman, and the Papists, have falsely imputed to the whole body of Pro testants. There are two other principles, which the Reform ers are allowed on all sides to have maintained very expressly ; but these are exhibited in the new system only to be condemned. The Author tells us, they " unhappily adopted certain maxims as self-evident ; namely, that there could be no edification in religious society without uniformity of opinion; and that the true sense of Scripture could be but one f ." The design * 2 Tim. i. 6. 1 Tim. v. 22. t Conf. p. 3. 56 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. of the Confessional is so intimately affected by these two principles, that it was necessary they should ap pear under some disadvantage. But if the former of them is strictly enforced by the Gospel, and the lat ter evident to reason and common sense, the unhap piness with w7hich they were adopted is rather to the Author himself than to the first Reformers. It is a determined point with St. Paul, that the Christian society is edified by love or charity *, which is the end of the commandment f , or consummation of Christian virtue : and this writer's performance would yield us too pregnant a proof, though there were few others, that men do not love those Christians from whom they differ in opinion. Nothing indeed is so subversive of the pacific intention of the Gospel, as strife, wran gling, contention, envy, hatred, and malice ; all of which, by unhappy experience, seem to arise more naturally from mistakes and differences in religion, than from any other causes whatsoever : and it may have a foundation in reason, that the division will be greatest of all, when men are divided by that which ought to unite them the most. Happy, therefore, would it be for the world, if we could but once see men reconciled to that one religion (it cannot be more than one) which hath been delivered to them by Jesus Christ and his Apostles ! For as there is no enmity so restless and dangerous, as that which is generated by religious differences, so there is no friendship upon earth so strong and extensive, as that which arises from religious agreement. So long as there is variety of opinion in the Church, there will be wrangling and animosity ; and under this state our Master hath informed us, that his disciples are scarcely to be dis- ' Eph. iv. 16. + 1 Tim. i. 5, REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 57 tinguished from unbelievers, and men of this world *. Nor is it necessary that the matter in agitation should be some of the higher doctrines of faith ; for the smallest spark will be sufficient to kindle a flame, which, howsoever low it may begin, will soon extend itself to the higher parts of the edifice. What alter cations and heart-burnings have we seen in this coun try ! and how have some consciences been galled and overburthened with the weight of this question : Whether it is as lawful for a minister of Christ to appear in a garment of flax as in one of sheep's wool? A difference no more worthy of putting Christian love to the trial, than that of some Jewish rabbies, whose consciences (while they were swallowing a camel) could never be well satisfied concerning the precise number of white hairs which ought to deter mine a beast not to be a red heifer. So great was the diversity of opinion amongst some of the first Protestants, that it exposed them heartily to the obloquy and contempt ofthe Church of Rome. It broke them into sects ; some of which, as the Au thor describes them in strong terms, were scandals to all religion, and nuisances to all civil society. Their opinions as Protestants being neither restrained nor condemned by any general form of Christian doctrine, the Papists had a favourable opportunity of calum niating the whole body as the maintainers of every heresy, abettors of every sedition, which Europe had heard of or seen in that generation f. Such was the condition ofthe Protestants, by his own account, be fore they were reduced to an uniformity of opinion by the orderly establishment of some common system of faith. The Reformers, therefore, having their eyes * John xiii. 35. t Conf. p. 4. 58 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. open to the plainest maxim of the Scripture, and see ing it thus confirmed by the experience of their own time, would have been without excuse, had they been so vain as to expect any edification in religious society without uniformity of opinion. In this, however, our Author cannot follow them : for why ? the Bishop of Clogher, in his Essay on Spirit, was of another mind; and his authority is introduced in the following man ner : " I apprehend, says Dr. Clayton, any attempt towards avoiding diversity of opinion, not only to be an useless but impracticable scheme. In which I entirely agree with him * ;" and so do many others, with whom this Author, perhaps, would think it hard to be associated. However, I am willing to own, that the first of these unhappily-adopted maxims is not of so much importance to religious society, if the Author can make good his censure against the second. For if the true sense of Scripture can be more than one, men may differ in their religion, without depart ing from the truth ; and in such a case, but little danger is to be apprehended ; unless this difference should be blended with a spirit of pride and oppo sition, which delights in mischief. But how far this is possible, he hath not attempted to shew us; either by reason, or any pertinent examples from the Scrip ture itself. Different senses may be either collateral or contra dictory. By collateral senses, I mean such as agree in effect, though they differ in terms ; or such as do not contradict any express proposition of the Scrip- * P. 201. In another of his publications, he is so far from re garding the love of uniformity as a Christian virtue, that he scoffs at it in the worthy writer of the Three Letters, as " a brain-sick anxiety for the safety and preservation of ecclesiastical peace !" Occas. Rem. part i. p. 57. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 59 ture. Of these there may be different sorts, and all of them inoffensive, at least not attended with im mediate danger, provided the passage be obscure, or the matter indifferent *. But of contradictory senses, it is impossible that more than one can be the true sense ; such, for example, as are given by the Author's friends on one side, and by the Church of England, in conjunction with the primitive Church, on the other. It would carry me far beyond my present de sign, if I should descend to particulars ; which the case doth not require, especially as Dr. Clarke hath saved me the trouble, by an attempt to reconcile the language of our liturgical forms to the sense of Arian- ism; of which his readers could easily see the im propriety; and he disserved the cause by it very much ; for which he is blamed in the sixth chapter of the Confessional, by the same person, who, in the course of the same performance, declares it to be his own private opinion, in opposition to the Reformers, that the Scripture (written with at least as great pre cision as any human forms) may have more true senses than one ! The liberty of private interpretation, for which he hath pleaded, must drive him either upon this absurdity, or another equal to it. For if the true sense can be but one, and he hath insisted on a right in every individual to put his own sense ; supposing withal, after the Essay on Spirit, that no two thinking men are agreed exactly in their opinion about any one of * The texts relating to the secret decrees of God, are of this sort ; and therefore, the seventeenth article of this Church is purposely left open, or inclining to a neutral sense. This neutrality is very vehe mently and disingenuously opposed in the Confessional j though it hath been frequently proved by learned men in the clearest manner. There is no better account of it extant, than what is given by the learned writer of the Three Letters. See Let. II. p. 160, $c. 60 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. the articles * ; then it may come to pass, that he hath been pleading for a right in nine men out of ten to ¦put false sense upon their Bible. Of these two evils he hath chosen the former, as the more specious in theory ; though in practice they are but one and the same. To gain some credit to his own project of reforma tion, he hath ventured to furnish the Reformers with such principles, as they do not appear any where to have professed. And where they are suffered to speak their own sentiments, he pronounces them to have been unhappily adopted. His scheme, therefore, is such as can find no precedents, but with some of the rabble of the Reformation t> who either had no set tled principles at all, or were made no account of; and so were not worth being referred to as au thorities. How far he is to be trusted in his representation of the sentiments of other persons, will appear from the liberty he hath taken with Dr. Clarke, whose prin ciples fall short of our Author's system, and stand in need of some correction : for which purpose he as sumes, as we shall see, an expurgatorial authority. * Conf. p. 4. . t Such were Muntzer, Buckhold, Knipperdoling, Servelus, David George, &c. with whom a certain writer of their lives hath joined Arius and Mahomet ; because the first Protestants who blasphemed the Holy Trinity were found amongst the tribe of Anabaptists. Pri vate revelation immediately from God, true liberty, the Re storation of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and the reading of no book but the Bible only, were the fundamental principles by which these enthusiasts were carried first to error and delusion, and thence to re bellion, plunder, and massacre. See the Apocalypsis, published at the end of Ross's View of all Religions, edit. iii. p. 5.11. The like private revelation was pretended to by Socinus. See the Full Answer, p. 85, &c. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 61 "The Church, saith the Doctor, hath no legislative authority. We agree to this likewise *." When I considered this passage, I was rather inclined to sus pect, that however Dr. Clarke might be mistaken in some other respects, he was rather more modest and discerning than he is here represented ; therefore I turned to the place quoted in the Author's margin, and found the following to be his real words : " The Church, in matters of doctrine, has no legislative power." Matters of doctrine, which are the discri minating terms of the proposition, are taken out of it ; and when this experiment is made, it comes up to the Author's intention. We all grant, in common with Dr. Clarke, that the legislative power of the Church cannot extend to matters of doctrine : for the power that can make a law can unmake it ; and then it would follow, that the Church might dispense with any doctrine of the Scripture. Therefore the legis lative power of the Church can reach only to forms, and circumstantials, and matters of discipline : but doctrines rest wholly upon the power of God, and the authority of divine revelation. Though Dr. Clarke was not loose enough in his principles, some other Reformers are to be met with, who have happily adopted a set of principles which approach rather nearer to the plan of the Confes sional than such as occur in the writings of Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, or any other learned person of that age : and I shall now exhibit a few of them (adding an occasional note or two) from a work which came out several years ago as a public paper, under the title of the Independent Whig, or a De fence of primitive Christianity. If the reader can * Conf. p. 179. 62 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. consult that work, without having a surfeit from the first pages, he may increase the following extracts to as great a length as he pleases. 1. No man ought to pay any submission to that doctrine and discipline which he does not like. Vol. II. p. 45 *. 2. No such person in nature by the appointment of the Scripture, as a Priest, or Ambassador of Jesus Christ. Vol. II. p. 152. 3. Jesus Christ is sole King in his own Kingdom ; sole Lawgiver to and Judge of his own subjects in matters of conscience, and which relate to their eter nal salvation^ Ibid. 123. 4. There was virtue in the world before there wras orthodoxy in it ; which hard, equivocal, priestly word has done more mischief to mankind than all the tyrants that ever plagued the earth. Vol. i. p. 40. 5. Christian Priests have agreed in opposing the * This asserts, in other language, no more than is proposed (p. 16, ofthe Confess.) as the principle which ought to have taken place at the Reformation ; namely, that all teachers should be left at liberty to disown whatever, after proper examination, they judge in consistent with the Scriptures ; i. e. every doctrine they do not like, or cannot believe : for what example have we of any single person de nying a doctrine of the Scripture, without pretending to proper ex amination ? And the propriety of his examination must be admitted in every case upon his own report ; otherwise this proposal can have no -meaning, and will be over-ruled at the first step. The natural consequence of it must be obvious to every considerate person. The Arian will disown the Trinity — after proper examination : the Soci- nian will disown the Redemption — after proper examination: the Quaker will disown the two Sacraments and the Resurrection - after proper examination, &c. Thus we shall find all Christianity disowned by parts—after proper examination ; and, if this scheme were to be adopted, must be contented with a Church whose whole religion is disowned upon principle. And to what good end ? Why, Popery would then visibly decline, and the true ends of the Reforma. tion be fully answered. See ibid. 10 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 6H eternal principles of morality, or natural religion. The religion of these holy hirelings consisted — in certain abstruse points not worth knowing. Vol. I . p. 43. 6. God was King ofthe Jews, in virtue of a con tract at Horeb : and without a stipulation on their own part, they would have been under no obligation to keep the law of Moses. Vol. II. p. 153. 7. Bigotry, chains, and cruelty are always, and in all places, the certain issue of uniformity ; which is itself of an infamous race ; being begot by the craft of the Priests upon the ignorance of the Laity. Vol. III. p. 223. 8. Tyranny can never subsist without uniformity, nor liberty without schism. Ibid. 9. All articles of faith are a foolish attempt to make the Holy Ghost talk intelligibly. Ibid. p. 30. 10. I heartily thank God that we have Dissenters; and I hope we shall never be without them *. Vol. III. p. 223. 11. The Priests are enemies to atheism and irre- ligion, only to disguise and carry on their own de signs of wealth and power. Vol. II. p. 100. 12. The absurdities and ravings of those reverend old gentlemen, whom we call the Fathers— =It is hard to say whether the uncharitableness, roguery, or stu pidity of these old saints appears uppermost f. Vol. I. p. 44. Nine in ten of the decrees of Fathers and Councils are so foolish, so incredibly extravagant, * I hope there are many serious Dissenters, who will not return the compliment ; and heartily thank God that they had such an apo logist. t Our Author is very little behind in the flowers of his rhetoric upon the same subject. " Mr. Le Clerc, a much greater admirer of Grotius than he was of a whole cart-load of Fathers." Occas. Rem. part ii. p. 64, note. 64 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. that it would have been below the dignity of an exe cutioner to have burnt them. 13. Dr. Benjamin Hoadley, the best Bishop, the best Protestant, and the best man that ever adorned the mitre, — who suffered under the rage of a wicked and despairing faction *. Vol. III. p. 226. If any reader should think me unjust in bringing these Authors together, I must beg of him to suspend his judgment till he has perused the next chapter. In the mean time, let it be observed, that they both agree in offering incense at the shrine of Bishop Hoadley ; both plead for such liberty as rises to ab solute independence; both set up the Scripture to confute Creeds and Confessions ; and, in their capa city of painters, they both use their utmost art and skill in representing the Church of England as a * Such a commendation, from the pen of such a writer, is the severest satire I ever yet met with upon Dr. Benjamin Hoadley. This man plainly saw the issue of Dr. Hoadley' s arguments ; though some others, of a much better meaning, scarcely knew what to make of them. I remember well an observation, which I heard many years ago, from a worthy gentleman, who had been a reading man, and was in the prime of his life at the date of what was called the Bangorian Controversy. He said he had followed Dr. Hoadley very attentively in his argument, and found him so specious in the manage ment of it, that he became, for a time, a convert to his doctrine. If his principles were right, it followed, by necessary consequence, that men could not be called to account in the Church for any of their words or actions ; Christ being the sole judge in his own king dom, and having appointed under him no judge upon earth for any such purpose. When his lordship was pressed with the absurdity of this notion, as contrary to fact, reason, and Scripture, No, replied he, I meant only that Christ hath appointed no judge upon earth able to see into mens' conscience. This (said my friend) never had or could be made a question of: and as I was fully convinced by his own words that he had meant otherwise, and was now driven to a gross evasion, I gave him up, and never looked into one of his books afterwards. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 65 monster in every limb ; with this difference, indeed, that the outlines drawn by the Independent Whig are somewhat harder, his colouring stronger, and his finishing not so exact. The publishers of that scan dalous paper struck at all the foundations of Chris tianity itself, under the denominations of High- Church and Priestcraft ; thinking themselves more likely to succeed by making the Church odious, than by attempting to confute any of her doctrines in a serious manner. Thus too the Confessionalist, a great advocate for the Scripture, dares not trust to that for his success : but hopes to accomplish his purpose by aspersing all the leading characters, from the beginning of the Reformation, who have shewn a friendly aspect toward our doctrine and constitu tion : all of which is as much out of the way, and will in the issue procure him no more credit, than if he had found fault with the time shewn by a watch ; and instead of comparing it with the time of the hea vens, had spent all his labour, wit, and learning, in persuading people that the case is made of base me tal. How he hath conducted himself in the execu tion of this part of his plan, will appear in what fol lows. vol. n. 66 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL CHAPTER IV. THE AUTHOR'S MANNER AND LANGUAGE IN THE PRO SECUTION OF HIS SUBJECT, COMPARED WITH SOME OTHER WRITINGS AGAINST THE POLITY AND DOC TRINES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Our excellent Hooker, having been a witness to some of the earliest attempts that were made to reform the established order of this Church and State, we shall find it useful, upon the present occa sion, to consider particularly how he has represented it in the Preface to his Books of Ecclesiastical Po lity ; and the reader, I hope, will excuse the length of the following extract ; because I have some very . obvious reasons for not expressing Hooker's sense in fewer words than his own. " The method of winning the people's affections to the cause (for so ye term it) hath been this : first, in the hearing of the multitude, the faults, especially of higher callings, are ripped up with marvellous ex ceeding severity and sharpness of reproof; which being oftentimes done, begetteth a great good opi nion of integrity, zeal, and holiness, to such constant reprovers of sin, as by likelihood would never be so much offended at that which is evil, unless them selves were singularly good. — " The next thing hereunto is, to impute all faults and corruptions, wherewith the world aboundeth, unto the kind of ecclesiastical government estab lished. — " Having gotten thus much sway in the hearts of men, a third step is, to propose their own form of Church- government, as the only remedy of all evils, REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 67 and to adorn it with all the glorious titles that may be. " The fourth degree of inducements is, by fashion ing the very notions and conceits of mens' minds in such a sort, that when they read the Scripture, they may think that every thing soundeth towards the advancement of that discipline, and to the utter dis grace of the contrary. Their minds are forestalled, and their conceits perverted before-hand, by being taught — that the sceptre, the rod, the throne, and the kingdom of Christ, are a form of government only by Pastors, Elders, Doctors, and Deacons : that by mystical resemblance, Mount Sion and Jerusalem are the Churches which admit, Samaria and Babylon the Churches which oppose the said form of govern ment. — And, in like sort, they are taught to apply all things spoken of repairing the walls and decayed parts ofthe city and temple of God by Esdras, Ne- hemias, and the rest; as if purposely the Holy Ghost had therein meant to fore-signify what the Authors of Admonitions to the Parliament, Supplications to the Council, Petitions to her Majesty, and of such other-like wf its, should either do or suffer in this their cause. " From hence they proceed to an higher point ; which is the persuading of men, credulous and over- capable of such pleasing errors, that it is the special illumination ofthe Holy Ghost, whereby they discern those things in the word, which others reading discern them not. — Then it is instilled into their hearts, that the same spirit, leading men into this opinion, doth thereby seal them to be God's children. This hath l»red high terms of separation between such and the ipest of the world ; whereby the one sort are named the brethren, the godly, and so forth ; the other f 2 68 REMARKS ON THE. CONFESSIONAL. worldlings, time-servers, pleasers of men, not of God, with such like. " When instruction doth them no good, let them feel but the least degree of most mercifully tempered severity, they fasten on the head of the Lord's vice gerents here on earth, whatsoever they find uttered against the cruelty of blood-thirsty men: and to themselves they draw all the sentences which Scrip ture hath in the favour of innocency suffering for the truth." And in the same preface, he introduces some of the brethren who had separated themselves from the Church, as remonstrating to others who remained still in its communion, " with what zeal they had ever profest, that in the English congregations, the very public service of God is fraught, as touching matter, with intolerable pollutions, and as concerning form, borrowed from the shop of Antichrist." The success which once attended this method hath probably been always understood as an encourage ment to farther trials : But whether we can account for it or not, so it has happened, that this system hath been adopted in most of its branches by every zealous opponent of the Church of England. They who are moderately acquainted with our ec clesiastical history, know the original of these un happy differences. And they who are not, have a right to be informed, that before the Reformation could be settled in this kingdom, the intervention of a Popish reign obliged many of our reforming Divines to seek for peace and protection in other countries. Some of whom having differed among themselves ih that forlorn state of independence, and imbibed a seft of foreign prejudices, brought them over to their own country in the prosperous days of Elizabeth, and sowed REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 69 the first seeds of that civil and religious discord, which it may be wholesome for every Englishman to remem ber ; though one would wish to have it forgotten by all the rest of the world. " Our Common Prayer Book," saith the pious Dr. Jeremy Taylor, " had the fate of St. Paul; for when it had escaped the storms of the Roman sea, yet a viper sprung out of Queen Mary's fires, which at Frankfort first leapt upon the hand of the Church : but since that time it hath gnawn the bowels of its own mother, and given itself life by the death of its parent and nurse *." In be half of the first Puritans, thus much may justly be said, that they were more properly enemies to the 1 outward economy of the Church, than to its faith and doctrine. But the hands of their children have been strengthened of late years, and their opinions not a little corrupted (as some of themselves know and lament) by a fresh party of Arians and Deists, who have come in as auxiliaries -\, and have so far acted the part of Dissenters as to take advantage of all their accustomed ways of arguing, to divide and distress the members of the established Church, and overthrow the Gospel itself. We cannot suppose that the Author of the Confes sional had deliberately formed any intention of imi tating the method described by Mr. Hooker; but may impute his accidental application of it, to the writers he has studied, and the cause he has undertaken ; it being natural enough that like principles and preju dices should suggest a similitude of argument and expression; we are therefore not at all surprised, that * Collect, of Offices, p. 12. + Of this the reader hath seen a famous example in the extracts from the Independent Whig, a paper calculated for the advancement of the dissenting interest. 70 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. he cannot proceed four pages in his Preface without the use of invectives and bitter reflections ; which are nothing to the merits of the eause, and ean be of no other use in it, but only to inflame the minds of men to farther degrees of uncharitableness and factious opposition. These are repeated throughout the course of the work as frequently as an opportunity offers ; and are every where seasoned with marvellous exceeding severity and sharpness of reproof. Our worst enemies will scarcely deny it, when they find that Scribes, Pharisees, Hypocrites, and Churchmen are convertible terms *. It was the more laudable and generous practice of the first Puritans, to discover the real faults of higher callings, and expose them unmercifully to the mul titude : But it is easy to discern, that the most un pardonable crime a man can be guilty of in the judg ment of this writer, is an affection to the Church in which he was baptized. Upon this principle, Arch bishop Bancroft is "the fiery Bancroft};" Archbishop Laud "the malicious Laud\ ;'' Dr. Heylin " the fire brand Heylin §." The Divines who had a commission to treat with the Dissenters in the time of Charles II. are reflected upon for the share they had in the Con ference at the Savoy; which he hath stigmatized as a complication of sophistry, hypocrisy, and virulence on the part of the orthodox, hardly to be paralleled in Popish history ||. The word orthodox comes in very unseasonably upon this occasion. The subjects of that conference were not matters of faith, but of form: and the Presbyterians of that time, whose cause he here takes upon himself, would have given him small * P. 300. 333. + P. 225. J P. 21. Pre/. j p„«». || Pref. p. 29. 10 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 71 thanks for setting them in opposition to the orthodox, among whom they were pleased to reckon them selves *. The Author hath here owned something in directly, of which they would have been ashamed. However, if any reader upon the strength of this or some broader hints, should suspect him to be rather unsound in his persuasion, such a person is to be re garded only as a sly orthodox brother hanging his ears in a corner f ; that is, as an insignificant cur, sitting and musing by the fire-side. If he should have the courage to take up a pen in defence of his faith, then he is to be reckoned among the " champions of error of the most palpable kind % — in the first ranks of whom appear those who enjoy plentiful emoluments from the nature and construction of the establish ment ; who are therefore concerned to defend every thing belonging to it, not because it is true, or rea sonable, or righteous in itself, but because it is esta blished §." A very reasonable and charitable infer ence ! But why is he thus hasty to conclude, that they who enjoy plentiful emoluments are bound to de fend every thing in the establishment, whether right or wrong ? This looks as if he and his friends had been aiming chiefly at their emoluments, while they have seemed to be pleading against their doctrines : and were therefore resolved to understand a defence of their doctrines as a defence of their emoluments. Ox, perhaps, this reflection may be thrown out, to discourage them from defending what he has opposed, * See the Hist, of Nonconformity, printed 1708, p. 203. t P- 318. t Pref. p. 4. § Pref. p. 5. So speaks the Independent Whig, vol. iii. p. 253. " Who know no reason for liking what is established, but purely, be cause it is established : and will they not always have something very plausible to urge in favour and defence of their Gain ?" 72 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. lest they should be thought mercenary in the eyes of the world. But what would he say', if they were to make no defence at all ? I apprehend, he would be in the foremost ranks of those who would impute their silence to a sense of their weakness ; and conclude they said nothing, only because they had nothing to say. If their Faith is received from the Scripture and the purest ages of the primitive Church, it is a prin cipal part of their duty to contend earnestly for it against the disputers of this world : which if they should fail to do, he might then fall upon their cha racters with some shew of justice, and argue in plain terms, that they ought no longer to receive the wages, because they had ceased to do the work. The Prophet compares such careless guardians of the flock to dumb dogs that cannot bark * ; and though the wolf will be sure to like them never the better for their vigilance, and impute it all to self-interest, or any other disho nourable motive, yet I hope they will always think that silence, which argues a want of fidelity to the Master of whose bread they are eating, the greater reproach ofthe two. The childish topics from which these champions reason, are " public authority, long possession, the concurrence of the majority, the danger to public peace from attemps to innovate f;" and suchlike. I do not stay here to refute all these accusations ; first, because many of them belong to a certain class of arguments which the injured are not always bound to answer; and for which, I would advise the Author to consider seriously, whether he may not one day be obliged to answer us. Secondly, because they are only introduced as a specimen, to exemplify the first step in his method of reasoning. * Isa. lvi. 10. f Hid. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 73 The men of Mr. Hooker's days having ripped up the faults of higher callings, proceeded next to im pute them all to the kind of Ecclesiastical govern ment established. And if we ask the Author, whence all this unreasonableness, and unrighteousness, and hy pocrisy, and virulence arises ; he readily accounts for it from the doctrine and discipline now established : which being established, must be defended; and being palpably erroneous, is never to be upheld by the writers of the Church, but at the expence of truth, reason, and morality. It follows therefore, that the natural remedy is the removal of those articles and forms which have been the sources of all these evils. Then would a golden age of Truth, Peace, and Prosperity return once more to the world ! And he is so filled with enthu siasm at the prospect, as to assume the air of a pro phet, predicting that this visionary scene will one day be realized ; when " the hearts and understand ings of Pastors and People shall be opened as of one man, and prepared to receive those truths*, which at present are confined to the breasts of a few f ." As the Puritans were ingenious in accommodating to their new discipline the prophecies and histories of the Scripture, even so would he also persuade us, that Christ and his Apostles were zealous for that same species of reformation which he hath laboured to re commend J: that the forms and fences ofthe Church which he hath attempted to overthrow, are " certain strong holds and partition walls, which it was the de sign of the Gospel to throw clown and to level § ;" (whence it follows, that we are Heathens or Jews:) * Revealed to us in the systems of Socinus and Bishop Hoadley. f P. 335. % P. 229. 300. § P. 171. 74 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. that the kingdom of Christ is set up when establish ments are pulled down : that the true Christian liberty, of which such glorious things are spoken in the Gos pel, is a state of freedom from Creeds, Articles, and Subscriptions ; which are bonds, yokes, and beggarly elements, disagreeable to the spirit and design of Chris tianity * : that it is tyrannical and Popish to lead men, but pious and glorious to mislead them. The adversaries of Mr. Hooker made such wonder ful discoveries in the Scripture, as they pretended, by the special illumination ofthe Holy Ghost. That the parallel is exact in this article, I would not be thought to insinuate : the writer of the Confessional seeming rather to refer the great discoveries of himself and his friends to a superior degree of reason and common sense, than to the aids and assistances of Divine Grace ; and hath inserted it in the class of his prin ciples, that Jesus Christ hath restored men to the pri vilege of working out their own Salvation by their oivn understandings and endeavours^. But though the principle may be different, the high terms of distinc tion which are bred by it are nearly the same : where by on the one side are found " the united powers of piety, truth, and common sense % : on the other igno rance, indolence^, profligate secularity \\, and theidol- atry of lucre %." The one sort are honest and sensible Christians; knowing and thinking Christians** — rea sonable men and consistent Protest cits —serious and ju dicious men \\ — willing and capable of examining things without partiality and without hypocrisy. The other sort have had their character already ; being bigots, partial and prejudiced retainers to Church * Pref. p. 22. f See Conf. p. 1. + Pref. p. lo. § P. 25. H Pref. p. 72. f P. 335,336. ** P. 25. |f Pref. p. 18, 19. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 75 power*, starving Inquisitors^, champions of public error ofthe most palpable kind ; from the addle-headed Dr. Webster \, to the miserable and ridiculous sophist Dr. Waterland §, and so on to the firebrand Heylin, the factious Laud, and the fiery Bancroft! At the reading of these phrases, some will probably be so unjust, as to suppose the Author wholly made up of combustibles, and that he can breathe out no other language than that of persecution. But this happens only when his face is set against the friends of tbe Church. His words are as smooth as oil when he meets with the puritanical Abbot, so excellent a person, so wise and so good a man || ; or the ivorthy Bishop of Clogher — or the venerable Bishop of Win chester %. He is indeed so subject to be turned about by the influences of a party-spirit, that you will find him praising and vilifying the same individual person, as it happens to suit his purpose. Dr. Rogers, the chaplain of Archbishop Bancroft, who wrote upon the Articles in 1663, drops an expression, of which the Author endeavours to avail himself, and upon this occasion honours him with the appellation of "Honest old Rogers **." But in another place, he is metamor phosed on a sudden into " Thomas Rogers — who ex tols the Bishops, and reviles the Puritans with the most abject sycophantry ¦ff". The two remaining topics from which the Puritans argued, and upon which they chiefly depended for all their influence with the common people, were those of Popery and Persecution. And here the Author keeps equal pace with them. His favourite common place is the resemblance between the two Churches * P. 173. + Pref. p. 17. t P- 349. § P. 183. || P. 225. IT P. 303. ** P. 23. ft P- 215. 76 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. of Rome and England*. By his account, we have some doctrines of Popish original ; we have others which naturally lead to Popery ; and have nothing to plead in favour of the establishment, which will not equally justify all the Romish errors, and even the Inquisition of Portugal itself. Every subscribing Member of the Church of Eng land is affirmed to be in a train which would lead them with equal security to acquiesce in the genuine imposi tions of popery f ; that is, a train which leads them to subscribe doctrines that may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture, will lead them to sub scribe the worship of Saints and Images, the vicarial power of the Pope, transubstantiation, indulgences, &c. Therefore these, in the Author's opinion, may be proved by the Scripture as well as our's. To such a length of absurdity will a man's wrath carry him, when he is determined to make the best of an insup portable cause ! He will clean the streets of the Papists with his own hands, rather than be in want of some dirt to cast at his brethren ofthe Church of England! He brings it as a general charge against the Clergy of this Church, that none of them know how to con fute Popery ; their discourses on the subject are super ficial — and they omit the master argument against Popery J. Here the Author is pretending to great things, and, like other pretenders, affects an air of depth and mystery : for he is not kind enough to tell us what this argument is. It may, however, be con jectured from the spirit of his Book, that if we would confute Popery in a masterly way, we must first con fute our own Church : and, I believe, if we humour him thus far, he will trust us for the rest. * See p. 87. Note 7. et alibi pass. f Pref. p. 72. I Ibid. remarks on the confessional. 77 By the Papists we are admonished, that we can never maintain ourselves against the disorder ofthe Sectaries, unless we admit ofthe Pope's infallibility as the Master Argument : By the Son of liberty we are instructed on the other hand, that unless we preach down the establishment, we shall never be able to keep out Popery. It being impracticable to please both these advisers at once, will it not be the wisest way to argue as we have hitherto done, and not to offer any direct affront to either, by taking the other's counsel ? Such principles as these of the Confessional have made very few, if any, converts from Popery ; and its Priests need not wish for any circumstance more promising, than that of seeing the people of this* Church universally inclining to his opinion. The confusion that must necessarily arise if his project were to take place, would soon yield them a plentiful harvest. Besides, his accusation of the Clergy, as if they were already generally indifferent about Popery, or even well inclined to it, must give encouragement to popish emissaries, if they will be weak enough to believe his reports. As he hath been so free in censuring the Clergy for their superficial discourses, and is himself so accurate and masterly in his confutation of Popery ; he will give me leave, before I quit this topic, to present the public with some of his own sentiments upon the sub ject. He complains of the unwearied endeavours of treacherous Priests to pervert his Majesty's Protestant subjects to their intolerant superstition: but allows, in the very next page, that their notions of the religious kind, such as transubstantiation, purgatory, saint- worship, relics, masses for the dead, penances, and other articles, have no immediate ill effects upon civil society *. * Pref. p. 68, 69. 78 REMARKS on the confessional. He has discovered that their superstition is intolerant; that is, it will bear no contradiction ; it persecutes, imprisons, tortures and burns the members of society for opposing it. And what is this superstition ? It is the belief of transubstantiation, purgatory, saint- wor ship, relics, masses for the dead, penances, and other articles, which have no immediate ill effect upon civil society. Did this gentleman never hear of the bloody act of six articles, upon which Henry the Eighth burnt his subjects for denying transubstantiation * ? Why did Queen Mary drive so many martyrs to the stake ? and to what shall we impute all the disturb ances that have happened in France, such as regicides, proscriptions, murders, and massacres, but to these controversies of the religious kind? He professes a particular aversion to the spirit of intolerancy ; though (by the way) he hath discovered as much of it in him self, as it is possible for any man to discover with his pen, (and God forbid he should ever have the direction of any other weapon !) but happening not to see the connection between that and the superstition from which it arises, he exclaims furiously against the effect, and leaves the cause out of the question. Whereas, if the religious superstition of the Church of Rome were once reformed, her spirit of intolerancy would presently abate, and civil society would soon have less reason to complain of her practices. For when a man is sensible that the truth is with him, he may possess his own soul in patience, though he sees other people strongly deluded; and hath no more rea son to be provoked with them for their misfortune, than with a miserable object who hath lost his sight, or broke one of his legs. But error depends only upon * See Strype's Mem. Book I. chap. 49. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 79 violence for its support ; when it is tried, it is easily enraged, because it is sensible of its weakness ; and hence men are generally inclined to persecute others, as they themselves are more or less mistaken. Expe rience hath rarely failed to confirm this observation. Heathens, under their own religious differences, could be civil to one another, because they were all upon an equal footing in point of evidence and authority. The Romans made no scruple of tolerating the super stition of their neighbours: they adopted the Isis and Serapis of the Egyptians into the number of their deities ; and, probably, had charitable sentiments of their Cats, Beetles, and Onions : but at the same time hated and vilified the Jews, who had the knowledge of the true God : and when the Christians appeared, with truth, and reason, and facts invincible on their side, had recourse to fire and sword throughout the world, for want of better arguments. But the Chris tians themselves, in their state of purity, were never guilty of molesting any sort of people, or meddling with the affairs of civil society : though this writer, with a view of apologizing for the factious tendency of his own work, strives very hard to make Christ and his Apostles accountable for all those struggles and tumults, which, he says, were occasioned by at tempting to introduce the kingship of Jesus * : and is pleased to instruct us, that our Lord would certainly have prescribed other measures, had these been unjusti fiable. As if he had prescribed all those struggles and tumults of unbelieving Jews and Heathens, as neces sary to introduce the Gospel, which were actually raised only with a design to keep it out ; and cannot be imputed to the Apostles, or to the Gospel, but * P. 312. 80 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. only to the blind zeal and fury of its adversaries, whom no sensible Christian did ever suppose to have acted in this matter by a divine prescription. They found me, saith the Apostle, purified in the Temple, neither with multitude nor with tumult. Acts xxiv. 18. No ; where the ignorance, the error, and the bi gotry is, there will the tumult be ; unless we should argue, like Tertullus the orator, in behalf of the Jews, that Paul was a mover of sedition, and was guilty of all those tumults, in which he was passive, and they themselves were the only actors. Upon the whole, I believe there hath seldom been any error of the religious kind, which was without some ill influence upon the order of a commonwealth; to say, therefore, that the Papists are mistaken in their religious opinions, is but to affirm in other words, that they are the disturbers of civil society. Our Author, who supposes any of the errors of popery to be without this ill effect, goes contrary to reason and fact, and contrary to his own opinion in other cases. The Church of England, as he imagines, hath its religious errors of the most palpable kind. These errors, in his opinion, lead directly to tests and sub scriptions, which are subversive of the civil rights of mankind. He takes occasion also to inform us, how " the Calvinists certainly inferred the lawfulness of resisting wicked and unrighteous princes, from their theological doctrines of Election and Grace * ;" though the connection between these principles and the in ference is not very easy to be understood. In a word, he " knows not of any truth or error of the religious kind, that could be called merely speculative f ;" and can see how civil society is affected by all doctrines, 'P. 251. fP. 311. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 81 and all errors, except the above-mentioned errors of popery. Therefore, skilful as he is in the invention and use of master arguments, he shall never teach me how to preach against popery, till I want to give Protestants a better opinion of it *. The parallel which was laid down towards the be ginning of this chapter, requires me now to consider some of his reflections upon persecution ; the odium of which he endeavours, as often as he can, to fasten upon his superiors, both civil and ecclesiastical ; and, in this particular, doth strictly follow the puritanical system of opposition described by Mr. Hooker. He complains, that " the Clergy of Protestant esta blishments have been protected in their opposition to innovations," (that is, in their defence against tlie oppo sition of innovators) "by the higher powers, as well as Monks and Augurs -\." It is an hackneyed artifice to couple good and bad things together, that both may appear equally odious. The religion of Monks was idolatrous ; and the religion of Augurs was dia bolical : if any man can delight himself with placing the Clergy of Protestant establishments in such com pany, it will scarcely be worth our while to interrupt his amusement. The cases, however, so far as the higher powers axe concerned, oughttobe distinguished. The religion of Monks and Augurs was indefensible, * In the Occasional Remarks, Part I. p. 51. he sneers at the Letter-writer as a man not fit to be argued with, a pretended de fender of a Protestant Church, because he either is, or pretends to be ignorant of the master argument against popery. But behold, at p. 138 ofthe 2d part, when he had a little more time to look for it, he says, " I can but guess what the master argument against popery, alluded to by the Author of the Preface, may be." Such are the un happy fluctuations of writers who are determined to confute the Church, and have no principles to begin with. t Pref. p. 14. VOL. II. G 82 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. either with or without the protection of the higher powers ; but the religion of Protestant establishments may be generally defended by Scripture and reason, though all the powers of the earth wrere in a confe deracy to abolish it. Therefore the intrinsic merits of any religion are independent Ofthe higher powers; who, in different ages, have taken both sides of the same question. But then Monks and Augurs, through their interest with the higher powers, could stir up persecutions against innovators, who would have cor rected their superstition by the introduction of some beneficial truth : and the Clergy of Protestant esta blishments, by the report of the Coivfessional, have succeeded in the same way. But here the parallel will not hold, for two reasons ; first, because Christianity is a better thing than the religion of Heathens, and more worthy of every kind of protection : whereas it doth not appear that the Calvinistical forms are in any respect better than the Episcopal ; or that the he resy of Arius would be any improvement upon the Creeds. Secondly, because the same species of pro tection is not common to both cases : for the higher powers protected Monks and Augur shy leading their opponents to the stake, boring their eyes out of their heads, and tearing their flesh from their bones with red-hot pincers. But the Clergy of Protestant esta blishments, at least of this Protestant establishment, desire no more than protection to themselves, without persecution to their adversaries. If any of them did ever expect more, it was in an age when rigour was more generally adopted as the governing principle of all parties ; or when religious error hath been attended with some practices against the state; by which every case of this sort is very much altered : for then the cause is properly of civil concern; and the protection REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 83 of the Church becomes the same thing with the se curity of the government, We see here, how artfully, by a turn of his pen, he has transformed the defence made by the Clergy of Protestant establishments into an opposition; as if the quarrel was always started on their part. By another figure of oratory, he improves bare neglect (perhaps, not so much) into actual persecution. " A man," in his judgment, "must be in a very uncommon situa tion, as well as of an uncommon spirit, even in this land of liberty, who is bold enough to undertake the patronage of a cause, to which so many, at different periods, have fallen martyrs. Not always, indeed, by fire and sword, but by what kills as surely — hunger and nakedness *." This is a lamentable picture of martyrdom, but it is little more than a vision : for some ofthe Author's chief martyrs have died in peace upon the best preferments in the Church; and, during the state of their earthly pilgrimage, found a Bishop- rick, or a Mastership, or one of the higher Rectories, a very comfortable protection against hunger and na kedness. If any foreigner were to read this lamenta tion, and understand it according to the letter, he must of course think it no uncommon sight to meet Confessors against the Test and the Creeds, walking about the streets of London without shoes or stock ings, under all the misery and contempt of Christian slaves in the states of Barbary ! But such a person ought to be told, that party-language, in this coun try, hath flights, figures, and phrases, enough to furr nish out a tropological Dictionary : and that a man is said to be hungry and naked, when he cannot threaten his superiors into a good opinion of himself, * Pref. p. 16, 17. G 2 84 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. or get a seat in the House of Lords ; or drive those out of the house, who are "already in it. Thus again, when a controversial adventurer ofthe reforming tribe exclaims against inquisitions, racks, and tortures ; nothing more is to be understood by these terms, than that somebody hath written against him, and contradicted him. The Author of the Con fessional, in his Occasional Remarks upon the Three Letters, suspecting that his principles cannot be up held by evidence and argument against a writer so well furnished ; has recourse, as before, to this low thread-bare expedient of dressing up his answerer in the garb of an inquisitor, invested with the powers of the holy office : and puts such a speech into his mouth as would be addressed to himself, if he were called to an account under ground in a dungeon at Lisbon *. I never heard that any man did himself or his party much good by these dreadful complaints of per secution ; and the reason is plain enough ; because those real martyrs, who suffered for the truth, and received nothing but evil in return for their good works, took it all with patience ; submitting them selves to the will of God, without whose permission no persecutor could have power to hurt them, and employing their last breath in devout expressions of resignation and forgiveness. But pretended martyrs to falsehood and sedition, can find no relief, but in giving vent to all the uncharitable passions, when pride, self-deceit, or enthusiasm, hath drawn them into a snare. When the straying sheep is brought back to the fold, spoiled of its fleece, or even led out to the slaughter, it is silent and unresisting : but there is another animal of a different spirit, which * Occ. Rem. P. ii. p. 12, 13. 11 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 85 will neither be led nor driven ; and against which, if a man doth but hold up his finger, it is instantly tor mented with the blackest apprehensions, and fills the air with its outcries. After so many severe reflections upon every degree of literal or figurative persecution, it might be ima gined that the Author dislikes persecution in every shape, and hath a general tenderness for the interests of the human species ; but persecution is a terrible thing, only when a man dares to speak, write, or act against the interests of the Confessional. Then hun ger and nakedness, whips, scourges, and all the imple ments of the holy office, are set before the reader, to inspire him with a pious zeal against inquisitorial re- markers and letter-writers. But if persecution ope rates ever so sharply, in its literal sense, against the objects of his own aversion, he has then no fault to find with it. " Laud and his fellows," as he will have it, were going to introduce popery consequentially at a back door by means of the Arminian doctrines, but were seasonably stopped in their career * : that is, Laud himself had his head chopped off before the rabble upon a scaffold, many of his fellows were worried out of their lives without mercy and without law ; and those who were more gently dealt with, (as Durel ex presses it) ivere only plundered, turned out of their liv ings, or imprisoned f . But all this, as it stands in the Confessional, was a seasonable stoppage ! because po pery was going to be introduced by a writer, whose work against the Papists is as solid, extensive, and unanswerable, as any the Reformation hath to boast of. Sir Edivard Dering, a great enemy to Archbishop * P. 254. f Durel' s View of the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas, p. 93. 86 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. Laud, was so just as to confess, that " in his book against Fisher, he had muzzled the Jesuit, and would strike the Papists under the fifth rib, when he was dead and gone ; and being dead, wherever his grave should be, Paul's would be his perpetual monument, and his own book his epitaph *." Our Author having judged in thismanner, and being now of opinion that " the Church of England still is, though by degrees imperceptible to vulgar eyes, edg- * Dering's Collection of Speeches, p. 5. The Confessionalist, who cannot be content without beheading the memory of Archbishop Laud, follows the Independent Whig : who is for ever railing at Laud and his brethren — Laud and his faction — Laud a hot-headed monk, &c. Vol. iii. p. 282, 283. And speaking of Laud, and Bishop Cosins, and others like them, he observes, " the best apology that can be made for them is, that they were stark mad." p. 262. What apo logy then will be left for those, whose wisdom, religion, and justice, required them to cut off the head of a madman ? When a man's ma lice is too much inflamed, it gets the better of his cunning. For if Archbishop Laud was black enough in his life-time, there is no oc casion to blacken him after his death : and the practice is so unneces sary, absurd, and cruel, that if I heard a man bawling against a felon, formerly convicted at the Old Bailey, and keeping up the noise for twenty years after his execution, I should never be able to ac count for it, but by supposing that this man was conscious of the other's innocence, and afraid lest the guilt should be justly trans ferred from the sufferer to his accusers and judges. The inflamma tory names bestowed on Churchmen by the predecessors of the Con fessional, and the Independent Whig, were such as these — Beelzebub of Canterbury, monstrous Antichristian, Pope, most bloody opposer of God's saints, vile and cursed tyrant ; all this was for the metropolitan: the rest of the Bishops were incarnate devils, Bishops of the Devil, enemies of God; and the inferior Clergy were popish Priests, hogs, wolves, greedy dogs to fill their paunches, a cursed murthering genera tion. This reforming rhetoric is extracted from a book entitled the Modern History of Enthusiasm, which consists chiefly of a series of facts, such as I would recommend to the consideration of those who are in danger of being imposed upon by some of the pretensions of this age. Printed for Owen, in Fleet-Street, 1757. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 87 ing back once more towards popery * ;" he and some of his corn-plotters may think themselves obliged in conscience to effect another seasonable stoppage. But we hope they do not intend to pursue the same me thods as before, because they were unchristian, and affixed no small degree of scandal and infamy upon the Protestant name. If the author's imagination hath flattered him into an expectation of seeing those times return upon us, it is like he will be disap pointed. For the sectaries, to whom he hath taken so much pains to recommend himself, are not such now as they were formerly. Their separation hath given them an alliance with men not much inclined to any of the forms or doctrines of Christianity ; and if we except the Methodists, (to whom he hath also paid his compliments f) they are supposed to retain in general but little more than the vapid remains of that religious zeal which inspired them with violence in the days of Charles and Elizabeth : neither is it probable, that their zeal should be revived by his writings ; in which there appears so strong a disaffec tion for the distinguishing articles of our common faith, with an inclination rather to dispute every thing than believe any thing. To this it may be added, upon his own authority, that as there is at present no tendency towards popery in the higher or lower orders of the Church, but such as is impercep tible to vulgar eyes ; a stoppage at this time would not be seasonable. For the benefit of more learned eyes, he hath invented a very ingenious hypothesis, with a little of Mr. Bayle's assistance, by which he is able at any time to demonstrate, that the man who is not a Calvinist, either now is, or very soon will be, a • Confess, ibid. t Occas. Rem. P. ii. p. 25. 123. 88 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. papist. But as this hypothesis hath been contradicted by experiment for two hundred years, in this and other reformed Churches of Europe, it is not to be apprehended that he will gain many proselytes by the use of it. I have now given a short view of those popular topics, to which a very considerable part of the Con fessional may be reduced, and which the Author never loses sight of throughout the whole course of his work. Nothing more need be added at present, but a word or two of appeal to the Author himself: not that I am about to make any sanctified pretensions to charity*, for him to sneer at ; or that I shall presume to offer him any good advice, which he would fling back in my face with some ill names at the end of it : my design being only to apply myself to his com mon sense. By reforming the Church then, I suppose he means altering it for the better : and he will hardly deny me the liberty of understanding the word in this sense. But let me ask him : is it credible that a writer, who hath treated the Church, and all that relates to it, with such outrageous contempt and aversion, can possibly intend to do it any good, either ofthe moral, religious, or ceconomical kind ? The tendency of his work ought to have appeared in the spirit of it : and if his sentiments are capable of any application for the benefit of religion, he is much to blame for pro^ posing them in so suspicious a form. Deists and re probates rail at the Church and the Clergy, not be cause they wish to see either of them better than they are ; but because they abhor Christianity itself, and would be glad to render it contemptible, by as- *" Occas. Rem. P. ii. p. 25. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 89 saulting it indirectly through the persons of its mi nisters, and the forms of its establishment. If any writer argues with their temper and spirit, every im partial reader will naturally suppose him to be actuated by their motives and principles. Such an orator may easily know how the public will judge of him, if he will but bring the case home to himself. Let him imagine then, that a physician had ex hausted his breath and his eloquence in describing the Author of the Confessional as a monster made up of palpable error, pride, folly, avarice, cunning, cru elty, and hypocrisy ; and could never mention his name without affixing to it some vilifying epithet, and pronouncing him absolutely unfit to live any longer in the world ; now if this same physician, with out being called in, should presently insist upon pre scribing an alterative to mend the Author's constitu tion ; what would he think of it ? Indeed, what could he think, but that he was going to be poisoned 1 And who could be offended with him for apprehend ing the worst ? especially if the officious doctor had solicited the higher powers, that the patient might be compelled, in defiance of the common principles of liberty, together with the most sacred rights of Englishmen, to swallow the prescription by a public order from the board ofJiealth, and destroy himself with his eyes open. 90 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. A POSTSCRIPT, IN ANSWER TO A LATE PRODUCTION OF THE SAME AUTHOR UNDER THE TITLE OF A CARD. " The Author of The Confessional presents his com pliments to the reverend William Joties, A. B. late of University College in Oxford, and Rector of Pluckleif in Kent, with his cordial thanks to his Reverence for taking so much pains to convince the public that the Principles and Spirit of the said Author are not the Principles and Spirit of the said reverend William Jones. It would greatly add to the obligation, if his Reverence would please to signify to the public, the true reason why a testimony so honourable to the Author of The Confessional, wrhich hath been so many years upon paper, did not appear in print before. The said Author takes this opportunity to express his hopes, that his Reverence's old acquaintance at Ox ford, will be no less grateful to his Reverence for ex culpating their common mother from an opprobrious reflection of old John Fox the martyrologist, thrown out in the following terms. Fuit aliquando Oxonia vestra religionis parens, nunc videndum vobis ne dege- neret in novercam. Audio enim nuper a vobis Oxonien- sibus subscriptum esse obsoleto Mi, ac jam dudum ex- ploso, articulo de Transubstantiatione. Upon the Principles, and in the Spirit, of the reverend William Jones, it may safely be affirmed, that John Fox was an old Ignoramus, who knew not the extent of Church-authority, or of the powers and privileges of an orthodox University." 15 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 91 The Author of The Confessional hath prudently adopted the form of a Card, because it admits but of little : and the less the better, when a man hath no thing to say. A writer with a pen so fluent upon occasion, and under so much provocation as he ap pears to be, would have said more, had he judged himself as capable of giving satisfaction to the pub lic, as of sending a little angry message to the re verend William Jones. In the Title of Mr. Jones's Remarks, it appears that he is a person in Holy orders. This the Card- writer objects to him with a low-lived spirit of insult, which demonstrates the Card to be a genuine pro duction of the Author of The Confessional. He plays upon it six times over, in the following terms — his Reverence — the said reverend — his Reverence — his Reverence — his Reverence — the reverend. If he thinks Mr. Jones's profession a reproach to him, and can find any amusement, or discover any wit, in object ing it so often in so short a compass, no wonder he hath been so active in writing against the Church and the Creeds. If he alludes to any impropriety in Mr. Jones's title-page, the accident is so trifling in itself, and so little connected with the subject of Creeds and Subscriptions, that the Apologist who catches at such a twig, must be under some peril of drowning : and if the same attempt is repeated six times within the limits of one page, he must be just upon the point of sinking ; notwithstanding the bra vado of another Edition ; which surely would have been better guarded, had it been as easy to vindicate the principles of The Confessional, as to print them over again. Mr. Jones is presented with the Author's " cordial thanks to his Reverence, for taking so much pains to 92 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. convince the public, that the principles and spirit of the said Author, are not the principles and spirit of the said reverend William Jones." In all which, there seems to be a mixture of what the Author him self hath elsewhere stigmatized as " the meanest of all mean things, self-adulation." The Pharisee said — I thank thee, that I am not as other men are : and probably that Pharisee meant as he spoke. If this learned Gentleman should be as sincere as he was, Mr. Jones humbly thinks he hath as little reason to be offended with the insulting cordiality of a modern Confessionalist, as with the more solemn self-deceit of an ancient Pharisee. The Author calls upon Mr. Jones to signify the true reason, why his Remarks were not printed sooner : as if the remarks which are wrong now, would have been right three years ago. In his Pre face, he hath already given every reason he is ac quainted with : but had his Remarks been reserved ten years longer, and no reason given for it at last, except the unreasonable authority of his own private judgment, that plea ought not to be controverted by the Author of The Confessional. If he in his turn should ask that Author to signify to the public his true sentiments concerning the honourable testimony he hath boasted of, and whether he doth really think he hath acquired any honour by Mr. Jones's Remarks upon him ; every body would see that the question is ill-natured, and implies such an extravagant autho rity, as none but an Inquisitor can pretend to. Had the wit ofthe Card- writer been exercised with better success, it would still have given Mr. Jones comfort to find himself suffering under his indigna tion in common with the University of Oxford: against which, it seems, there is nothing to be ob- REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 93 jected at present, but that some of its members, in the days of John Fox the Martyrologist, subscribed to the obsolete exploded article concerning Transub stantiation. The Card hath been exhibited to some friends, who are at a loss for the sense of this oppro brious reflection, under its present application: for how can the University now want to be exculpated, while they are not subscribing; for but against Transubstantiation, as a notion repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, &c. See Art. xxviii. Here, it is presumed, the Author hath a mythological meaning, viz. that the University hath now subscribed a doc trine obsolete and exploded like that of Transubstan tiation, even the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, by the belief of which, Christians have been distin guished throughout the World, from the first publi cation of the Gospel ; and this Author hath not one argument against it in his whole book, which a lad might not be able to answer before his matriculation. But this parallel, if such a thing is intended, will not hold in any one respect. For Transubstantiation, in the days of John Fox, was become obsolete by being formally dropped in the Reformation under Edward VI.; whereas the doctrine of the Trinity hath been retained as the fundamental of Christianity by all the reformed Churches : on which account they are all held very cheap by the Author of The Confes sional. Transubstantiation had likewise been ex ploded : that is, it had been completely refuted and exposed by the Divines of the Reformation in public conferences and polemical writings. But where, and when ; by wrhat persons, and upon what grounds, except those of Deism, hath the Doctrine of the Trinity been confuted? To explode without con futing is the employment of a free-thinker, in the bad 94 REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. sense of the word, who thinks not only against cus tom, fashion, and the Church, but against all the rea son, evidence, and authority of Divine Revelation. When any writer hath once adopted that plan, he is, generally speaking, past recovery ; and when he ought to argue, he will sneer, insult, write cards, and be delighted with the repetition of his own scurrility. A man in this condition, if he have respect to him self only, ought rather to be prayed for than dis puted with ; though at the same time it is a duty every Christian owes to the public, to take care they are not imposed upon by his sophistry. Lastly, it is affirmed that " Mr. Jones's principles would have justified the University in subscribing to Transubstantiation." Not unless the Author is so indulgent to the Church of Rome, as to allow that Transubstantiation is agreeable to the Scripture. Whoever writes against the Sophistry of The Con fessional, must expect to do it at the peril of being hooted at for a Transubstantialist ; this being the only argument the Author hath to depend upon ; and he hath now worn it as threadbare as the Reverends and Reverences in his theological Card. If he should amuse himself with writing any more Cards, the re verend William Jones will think it most adviseable to suffer in silence under all the effusions of his wit and scandal ; if they ought not rather to be thank fully and cordially received from that man, who hath vilified all Christian Antiquity, worried all the best Characters of the Reformation, and was tormented with a more than ordinary aversion for the late greatest ornament of the Church of England., Ne vertheless, with God's leave, and a very humble sense of his own abilities, though with the utmost confi dence in the self-sufficiency of his Cause, he will be REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 95 ready to follow the Author in any future Vindication, as soon as he shall apply to Reason or the Scripture in defence of his own spirit and principles ; both of which, unless the learned are mistaken, or guilty of gross flattery to the Rev. William Jones, are now left under some disgrace. There are some other words of old John Fox the Martyrologist, which, in their literal acceptation, will explain the true state of things between the Author of The Confessional, and the Author of The Remarks — Quod si is essem, qui perbacchari cum Us contra Episcopos et Archiepiscopos, aut scribam prce- bere me illorum ordini, hoc est, insanire cum Mis vo- luissem ; nunquam istos in me acideos exacuissent. See Fuller's Church Hist. B. ix. p. 807. Pluchley, JulyU, 1770. ZOOLOGIA ETHICA DISQUISITION CONCERNING THE MOSAIC DISTINCTION ANIMALS CLEAN AND UNCLEAN. AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN TO CHRISTIANS THE WISDOM, MORALITY, AND USE OF THAT INSTITUTION. IN TWO PARTS. He is not a Jew which is one outwardly. — Rom. ii. 28. VOL. II. H PREFACE It being difficult to foresee what a Reader will expect from the title of this Disquisition, it may be useful to inform him, that while I was revolving the matter of it in my mind many years ago, I was curious to know how the subject, according to my own sense of it, would appear to a Jew. It was not long before an opportunity offered. I met with a young man of that persuasion, who having been engaged with a printer at Amsterdam, for the Hebrew language, was some thing of a scholar, and appeared to have a good command of the Old Testament in his memory, with as much freedom of speech and ingenuity as is to be met with amongst that sort of people. To this person I applied myself; and when I had satisfied my curiosity, I committed to paper the particulars of our Conversation, with which I shall here present the Reader, that he may understand the design of the following sheets. But then I must request him not to blame me, if I do not make my Jew more sensible than I found him ; and also if I take the liberty of exhibiting our discourse in its natural terms, though more agreeable to the familiarity of a private conversation, than to the formality of a deliberate treatise. Christian. You Jews have a great aversion to Swine's flesh : pray tell me what is your reason for it ? Jew. Because it is forbidden in our Law. Christian. But why was it forbidden ? what harm is there in it? Jew. Because the Swine does not chew the cud. Chr. How came that to be any objection ? Jeiv. Sir, you know it is so ordered in our Law : it was h 2 100 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING God Almighty's will, and we are not obliged to account for it. Chr. But if the Laws of God are not unreasonable in themselves, you should consider their intention. The ser vice of reason is surely more acceptable to God than the ser vice of ignorance ; which is like that of the Beasts, who obey the will of their Creator without knowing what they do. One would wonder how any rational creature can be zealous in the observation of such a service. Jew. You would not have me despise what God has com manded, and leave off the custom of the Law ! I shall never do that in all my life. Chr. You would know better how to act in that respect, if you could be brought to consider the reason of what you are practising. If I were to ask, why you eat the flesh ofthe sheep, you would tell me, because it divides the hoof, and chews the aid. But you eat neither the hoof nor the cud; so that the reason cannot lie here, but must be sought for in the general Character of the animal, to which these marks are an Index. That you may understand what I say, com pare the Sheep and the Swine, as you would compare two men, a good one and a bad one, and see whether you cannot discover a remarkable difference between them, Don't you know that an Hog will be drunk ? Jew, Oh ! yes, and I have seen them drunk, and falling down in the dirt. Chr. But no man ever saw a Sheep drunk, neither can it be tempted to any excess ; being remarkably moderate in the use even of water itself. Jew, What you say is true, but I did never mind it before. Chr. Perhaps so ; but I wish you would think of it : for though vain people mock at your dislike of Pork, the matter is of more depth than either they or you are aware of. Therefore give me leave to proceed. You must have ob served that the Sheep is patient ; it neither lifts up its voice nor struggles while men are taking away its fleece ; but, as the Scripture expresses it, is dumb before its shearers. If you were to use the same liberty with an Hog, there would be, as the proverb has it, great cry and little wool. If you CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 101 would force an Hog one way, he endeavours to run the other way ; so that he cannot be driven unless he is tied by the leg; but the Sheep goes quietly to the place appointed, and is obedient to the voice of the Shepherd. Wash a Sheep, and it preserves its whiteness till it comes to be sheared: but when you have washed an Hog, he buries himself in the mire, and becomes more filthy than he was before. Sottishness and immodesty go together, as do also temperance and chas tity. A tail is given to the Sheep and other four-footed beasts for decency; but the Swine, by a certain twist of the tail, common to the species, discover what other animals con ceal, as if it were divested of all shame. It is stiff necked top (a reproach which the Scripture hath fixed upon your fore fathers *) beyond all other beasts, and its snout is so inflexibly pointed to the ground, that it cannot look upwards to the sky. You see then, friend Mordecai, that the difference between the Sheep and the Swine is much more in the manners than in the meat ; and that you ought to abhor the Swine, only as an example of every thing that is hateful in the sight of God. What honour do you expect to get by abstaining scrupulously from Swine's flesh, if you are like an Hog at last in your man ners and inclinations ? Have the Jews no swine of this sort among them ? Jew. Yes, we have many who are wicked in all manner of wickedness, and beastly like the Hog. Chr. Such men ought not to expect that their diet will recommend them to God, if in their appetites and actions they are more nearly allied to the Devil. We Christians, though we have too many bad men amongst us, make it our rule to fulfil the law of Moses in a more rational manner than you, by coming up to the spirit of it ; that is, by avoiding the earthly, unclean, and groveling affections of the Swine; and then we are sure that the eating of Swine's flesh will neither offend God, nor do us any harm. Here you, may learn the true difference between a Christian and a Jew. You have; the form, but we have the sense of it : you value yourselves upon the preservation of the husk, while we are in pos session of the kernel. And hence one of our interpreters * Exod. xxxii. 9.. 102 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING puts a question, the answer to which is of more value than all the glittering trinkets in the Boxes of all the Jews in Christendom — Do we make void the Law ? — Yea, we establish the Law. If you could understand the meaning of these few words, they would lead you at once out of all your errors. Jew. I shall never leave my Religion : they are only the worst of the Jews who leave their Religion, and they never prosper afterwards. Chr. I suppose it is your custom to harden one another with such sayings : but if you look back upon the Jews as a nation, you will not find that they have prospered much within the last seventeen hundred years. You will argue better when it shall please God to open your eyes ; without which it will be vain for any man to hold up the Truth, ex pecting that you should see and embrace it. However, there was no harm in desiring to know your opinion on this sub ject ; and I wish you would speak of it to some of the more learned of your brethren. Jew. I will ask them about it : and I think you are right in what you said about the Hog : but we have many Jews who will make a very good dinner of Hog's flesh. Such was the issue of this Conference, if that can pro perly be called a Conference, in which a Jew, who under stands nothing of what he professes, and whose grand object is the vending of his wares, had one side of the argument. I never received any report from this Jew concerning the sentiments of his brethren ; but by the information he gave me very soon after, I have reason to think there are some Christians, who regard the Subject with equal ignorance, and, perhaps, greater indifference. I must take it patiently, if such persons should never find themselves much interested in the following enquiry. The writer who would return to the unfrequented Paths of primitive Theology, must look for his encouragement from Readers of the same taste, if such are to be found. In every age they have been always few in comparison, who were animated by an attachment to the peculiar wisdom of Revelation. If I had written five hundred years ago, my thoughts might have been offered to a set of indolent monks, as little concerned about the Spirit 13 CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 103 of Prophecy, as the modern student of the coffee-house, whose whole attention is devoted to Plays, Novels, and fac tious Newspapers. In the Age of the Reformation, when all the ancient foun tains of Literature were opened, the Evangelical Spirit of the Old Testament was cultivated by some of the most emi nent writers of that time ; and the sight of it, even to this day, hath scarcely ever been lost among the Puritans. We of the Church of England are now risen above that sort of learning, as we think; though it is to be feared, we are rather degenerated and fallen below it : and this is one reason why so many false and dangerous speculations have been making their way into the fashionable Divinity : for they who depart from the proper stile and genius of the Scripture, will hardly escape some defection from its doctrines. I do not here mean to become an accuser under the more popular Character of the Reformer; neither would I be thought to have discovered what is unknown to other men. We have Authors of eminence and genius amongst us, who are undoubtedly sensible of the value of that literature for which I am now pleading, because their writings shew them to be far advanced in the knowledge of it ; particularly the celebrated Prselector de Sacra Poesi Hebrceorum, and the learned Author of Dissertations on the Prophecies; from each of whom I might produce many excellent observations to justify that praise which they merit from a better hand. As to myself, I would be considered only as an humble fol lower of such learned Interpreters : and if I have ventured to pursue the matter of the following Disquisition farther than they would have done, I hope that hath happened, enly because I have meditated long upon this particular Subject. I found it more fruitful than I expected, and have been led by it into many speculations, which have been exceedingly pleasant to me in the hours of my Solitude. I am sensible they would be more pleasant to the public, if it were the fashion to be somewhat better versed in that sort of Learning, by which we are essentially distinguished from the Jews ; I mean, in the figurative sense of the sacred Writings ; which no Jew can possibly understand and continue to be a Jew ; on which account it is so largely insisted upon by the author 104 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING of the Epistle to the Hebrews, a discourse particularly cal culated for their instruction. Where the Scripture is studied by those who have no private ends to serve by misrepresent ing it, its figurative mode of expression will be studied of course ; because no great progress can be made on any other principle. It is necessary to the understanding of the Bible, as its proper Alphabet is to the decyphering of any Language. " Certain images (says Dr. Lowtli) borrowed " chiefly from nature, express certain other notions less " obvious to the understanding ; a constant uniformity being " observed in the application of them : and I believe this one " thing, if it were diligently studied, would always be of " excellent use to explain the meaning of the Hebrew " Prophets *." A gentleman formerly educated at Christ Church College in Oxford, and known to the Physicians as the Editor of Areteeus, had formed a design of dedicating his life to a complete Work on the Symbolical Language of the Scrip ture ; and if I had a faithful account of him from a contem porary and fellow-collegian who knew him well, great things might have been expected from him, when his abilities and experience had so great a Subject to work upon. I have much reason to wish that he had accomplished his design : but, alas ! it became abortive on the same principle with many other excellent undertakings, the mortality of the un dertaker; who did not live to make any progress in the work. This loss, however, is already supplied in some mea sure by the judicious Criticisms of Dr. Lowtli; and we shall have yet less reason to lament it, if an introductory Dis course to a new Commentary on the Psalms of David, which is now in manuscript, by an able and ingenious hand, should see the light. Some small specimen of this Symbolical language may fee collected from the ensuing pages. Other hints may be ga thered from Erasmus his Enchiridion militis Christians; and * certae Imagines, plurimum Naturales, certas alias notiones, quarum subtilior est ratio, lege quadam constanter servata, expri- munt ; quam rem unam arbitror, si accurate investigetur, ad intel- ligendos Vates Hsebrseos semper maximo adjumento fore. Praelect. xxxi. p. 1. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 105 many more may be found in the collection entitled Philo- calia, at the end of the works of Origen ; whom the incom parable Erasmus delighted to follow in his capacity of an Expositor. But as I am now only writing a preface, with out taking upon me to deliver rules for the interpretation of the Scripture, I must content myself with committing these few hasty reflections to the farther consideration of the in telligent Reader ; after I have informed hira, that this Dis quisition will be followed by other like Disquisitions and Discourses on Scriptural and Moral Subjects, till the whole shall amount to an octavo volume. Pluekley, July 8, 1771. A DISQUISITION, Ssc. Every Institution of God must have something in it which deserves our attention ; and though the wis dom of any particular Law may not shew itself to a careless Enquirer, who looks no deeper than the sur face ; yet if it be examined by the rules of interpre tation laid down for us in the Scripture, and com pared with the State of Nature, we shall generally find our labour well rewarded. As we did not invent the Bible, God hath wisely provided against our inventing the interpretation of it : the Scripture itself, when properly searched, be ing sufficient for the unfolding of its own difficulties. If any subject is left without an explanation where it is first delivered, we find it resumed or referred to in other places ; and some new circumstances are in troduced, which serve to enlarge our views, and clear up what is obscure. Hence it comes to pass, that howsoever other books may be explained, the only rational method of interpreting the Scripture is to compare spiritual things with spiritual; to clear up one passage of divine writ by others which relate to it : and in the mouth of two or three witnesses of this sort every word ought to be established. Let this rule be 108 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING our direction with respect to the Institution we are about to examine. I. In the 11th Chapter of Leviticus, the principal Animals of the Creation are divided into two Classes, one of which is declared to be clean, and the other un clean : and when the proper distinctions are adjusted, the whole is summed up in the following manner.— " This is the Law of the beasts and of the fowl, and " of every living creature that moveth in the waters, " and of every creature that creepeth upon the earth ; " to make a difference between the unclean and the " clean, and between the beast that may be eaten, " and the beast that may not be eaten*." The He brews were to eat of no creatures, but those which bore certain marks or characters in their several na tures, such as gave them a place amongst the clean animals : and as to the rest, which have also their proper characters, different from the former, they were forbid to taste or even to touch them, under the penalty of making themselves unclean and abomi nable in the sight of God. II. Now if God doth nothing but for wise and suf ficient reasons, as all men must believe who believe that there is a God ; He must have commanded his people to observe this distinction for some reason, either natural or moral: either because some animals are by nature clean or unclean in themselves ; or em blematically so, with respect to other things expressed and understood by them. It could not be for the former reason ; because God had already pronounced the whole creation, including all beasts, cattle, creep ing things, fishes, and fowls, to be very good. There fore no creature could be objected to on account of * Ver. 46, 47. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 109 any natural disqualification. And had any of them been unclean in a natural sense, at the time God de livered this law to Moses, they would be so still ; their natures being still the same : and it would be as unfit and sinful for a Christian to eat them now, as it was to an Hebrew formerly. But this it certainly is not : for saith the Apostle, " I know and am per- " suaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing " unclean of itself — For every creature of God is " good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received " with thanksgiving ; for it is sanctified by the word " of God, and by prayer *." It may seem strange to us at this time, that the Apostle should express himself with so much warmth and earnestness con cerning a subject seemingly so indifferent : but the newly converted Jews being under the prejudices of Education, were extremely tenacious of the observ ances of the law of Moses ; and of this in particular, as their posterity also are (or pretend to be) at this day. III. This distinction then did not subsist on ac count of any natural uncleanness in some creatures more than in others. And but one more sensible reason can be assigned, why there should have been any distinction at all. For if no creature of God is unclean of itself, in its natural capacity ; it evidently follows, that when the Law of Moses declared many creatures to be unclean, nothing but their moral ca pacity could be intended. Hence it will be easy enough to understand, that although there could be no virtue or morality in abstaining from such creatures upon their own account, it might be very useful and edifying to do so, if a pious regard were had at the * 1 Tim. iv. 5. 110 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING same time to what their natures and properties resem bled : as, on the other hand, it must have been a very indifferent ceremony, if not childish and absurd in the sight of the Divine Lawgiver, to observe this law in the letter, without any sense of its moral in tention ; as children read over the Fables of Msop, not to understand men and manners, but for the cu riosity of hearing Sheep, Foxes, and Ravens argue like human creatures. In a word ; if this Institution was figurative, and carried with it a moral obligation, it will be found worthy of the divine wisdom, and consequently worth the consideration of every Na turalist, who has sense enough to understand, that indevotion is no necessary part of his profession as a Philosopher. That it really was such as I have just now supposed, may be fully proved from the vision of St. Peter ; which will serve as a key to open this whole subject. IV. We read in the 10th Chapter of the Acts, that this Apostle " went up upon the house top to pray " about the sixth hour. And he became very hun- " gry and would have eaten : but while they made " ready, he fell into a trance, and saw heaven opened, " and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had " been a great sheet, knit at the four corners, and " let down to the Earth ; Avherein were all manner " of fourfooted beasts of the Earth, and wild beasts, " and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And " there came a voice to him saying, Rise, Peter, kill " and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord ; for I have " never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. " And the voice spake unto him again the second " time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou " common. This was done thrice, and the vessel was " received up again into heaven." CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. Ill Immediately after this exhibition, the Apostle, by the direction of the Spirit, went to the house of Cor nelius, a devout Roman, whom God had chosen for a member of the Christian Church : of which Society that visionary Sheet was a figure, comprehending people of all nations, gathered from the four winds or quarters of the earth, and enclosed in white linen, to signify the Christian purity and righteousness. When he was entered into the house of Cornelius^ he observed to the people who were present, " Ye " know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man " that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one " of another nation : but God hath shewed me that " I should not call any man common or unclean." Here we have an apostolical comment upon the sense of this vision. God had shewed him that he should call no living creatures unclean ; but by these brutes of all kinds he understands men of all nations. And without question he applied the vision to what the wisdom of God intended to express by it. The case was this : St. Peter, as a Jew, was bound to abstain- from all those animals, the eating of which was pro hibited by the law of Moses. But God shewed him that he should no longer account these animals un clean. And what doth he understand by it 1 That he should no longer account the Heathens so : " God," says he, " hath shewed me that I should call no man " common or unclean :" or to speak in other words borrowed from the Apostle, " God hath shewed me " that a Jew is now at liberty to keep company or " come unto one of another nation ;" which so long as the Mosaic distinction betwixt clean and unclean beasts was in force, it was not lawful for him to do : especially as Christ himself, in the beginning of his ministry, when the Jews were still entitled to the 112 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING pre-eminence given them by the law, had repeated the same rule to his Apostles—" Go not into the way " ofthe Gentiles-— but go rather to the lost SHEEP " ofthe house of Israel *." V. This Vision being founded upon the distinction now before us, and the sense of it being clear and unquestionable, we may proceed to make some use of it. Thus then let us argue ; that if the liberty of feeding upon unclean creatures was offered to St. Peter as a sign of a communication now opened be tween the Jews and the Gentiles ; it was the original intention of the contrary prohibition, to teach the Hebrews, that they should hold no Society with hea thens and idolaters. For a liberty in one of these cases could not infer a liberty in the other, unless it hath been a truth known and acknowledged by those who understood the law, that a restraint in the one had always implied a restraint in the other. To say that animals pronounced unclean by the Law might now be eaten, was the same as to declare in other words, that the heathens might now be safely con versed with and preached to : therefore, when it was enjoined that these creatures should not be eaten, it was the same in effect as if it had been declared in so many words, that the people of God should avoid the conversation and manners ofthe heathens. Nothing can be plainer, than that the uncleanness ascribed to brute creatures is not their own ; for they innocently follow their several instincts ; the wolf when it de vours the lamb, and the swine when it wallows in the mire. The instinct of the wolf is not cruelty but appetite. In man it would be otherwise, because one man does not want the blood of another. The tur- *- Matth. x. o, 6. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 113 pitude ofthe swine is not moral but natural : it is as blameless as the scent of a dunghill : yet in these things they hold up to us a picture of bad men, who when they imitate the properties of certain brutes, depart from the dignity and purity of that state to which God called his chosen people. Therefore it was well observed by Tertullian, that " if any ill qua- " lity is condemned in brute animals, certainly it is " much more condemned in man, who is a rational " creature *." VI. This subject can never be misunderstood (at least, in its outlines) if it be considered, that nothing which goeth into a man can defile him ; and that no thing is unclean in the sight of God but Sin. The powers of darkness are called unclean Spirits, andun- clean Devils f from their wickedness. So that if any thing is prohibited as unclean, we must understand it to be so only in a moral sense, with some respect or other to Sin. VII. As there is nothing unclean with God but Sin : so is there nothing pure in his sight but obe dience and holiness : which observation, when ap plied to the other part of our subject, will shew us why some animals were approved of and selected from the rest as proper to be eaten. For if unclean beasts expressed the immoral character of the unbe lieving Gentiles, the clean ones must have agreed to the character of the Israelites : as when it is known that darkness is an image of the Devil, we need no other information that Light, its opposite, must be an emblem of God, * Quando irrationale animal ob aliquid rejicitur, magis illud ip sum in eo qui rationalis est homine damnatur. Tertull. de Cib. Judaic. t Luke iv. 33. VOL. II. I 114 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING VIII. Hitherto I have deduced the grounds and reasons of this distinction from such passages of Scripture as do not literally interpret, but only imply an interpretation of it; though in so direct a manner, that no doubt can remain, but With readers who are either very ignorant or very much prepossessed . How ever, it is asserted in the plainest terms in the book of Leviticus itself, that the meaning of this law is such as I have supposed it to be. The words are these : " I am the Lord your God which have sepa- " rated you from other people : ye shall therefore put " a difference between clean beasts and unclean, and " between unclean fowls and clean ; and ye shall not " make your souls abominable by beast or by fowl, " or by any manner of living thing that moveth upon " the ground, which I have separated from you as un- " clean. And ye shall be holy unto me ; for I the Lord " am holy which have severed you from other people, " that ye should be mine *." The substance of which in fewer words is this : God tells them, they should abstain from the eating of these unclean beasts, only to remind them of their own separation from unclean Gentiles: while, on the other hand, they were to par take of the clean, because they themselves were to be holy unto the Lord. IX. It is time now to descend to the particulars of this Institution, and enquire, what animals are as signed to the two different classes above mentioned, and how their qualities, when morally understood, agree to the two different kinds of people they were intended to represent. A few creatures selected from the inhabitants of the Earth, the Air, and the Waters, will be sufficient for our purpose, because we may * Lev. xx. 24. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 115 form a judgment of all the rest from such a specimen. The propriety of a distinction between them will appear upon the first hearing of their names : for, if we review the 11th Chapter of Leviticus, we find on the good and peaceable side, amongst the clean crea tures, Oxen, Sheep, Goats, and Lambs; all fishes with fins and scales ; all fowls, as Doves, Larks, and ' such like, which are unexceptionable in their man ners, and lofty in their flight. On the other side, there are dogs, swine, wolves, foxes, lions, tygers, moles, and serpents ; eels and water-snakes ; vultures, kites, ravens, owls, and bats. All these, and many other creatures, so far as their instincts and properties are discovered to us, agree so well with the different sorts of men, to whom the Scripture hath given them an alliance, that none but the infinitely-wise Creator, who framed them for moral as well as natural purposes, could have dis tinguished and applied their several natures with so much simplicity, brevity, and propriety. X. It is evident, upon a first inspection, that there is a wide difference between these two parties, with respect to their manners and ways of life : but we have here a more compendious method of distinguish^ ing quadrupeds by certain external characters, ex pressive of their internal natures and instincts: those only being admitted into the Class of clean animals, which divide the hoof and chew the cud. In regard to these external characters, it might be sufficient for our present purpose to observe, that they are gene-' rally attended with a disposition tractable, harmless, and profitable. But I cannot help thinking, that the characters themselves are expressive of moral en dowments : though unless they are interpreted with some degree of caution, it may be easy for us to fall i2 116 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING into groundless refinements, and to mistake subtlety for solidity. Thus much is clear ; that an animal with a cloven hoof is more inoffensive with its feet, than the several tribes of wild beasts, whose paws are armed with sharp claws, to seize upon their prey : or than the horse, whose feet are applied by instinct as offensive weapons : or the dog, who although he is not armed with claws, like the bear or the tyger, hath feet en dued with great swiftness that he may pursue and destroy such creatures as are gentle and defenceless. Then again, neither Aristotle nor Pliny need be cited, to prove that quadrupeds with a divided hoof tread surer than those whose hoof is entire ; there being a plain mechanical reason, why a foot, which presents several angles and edges, should take faster hold ofthe ground. I have frequently observed, that such creatures have a surprising felicity in keeping upon their legs, either up or down or across any dangerous declivity. The goat affords us the most extraordinary instance of this sort ; particularly the wild mountain-goat, whose agility in conveying him self with safety over the craggy cliffs and precipices of the Alps, hath been celebrated by learned tra vellers *. It is also worthy of a remark, that this class of animals is not only surer footed, but more orderly and regular in their progress. Sheep have a natural pro pensity to follow one another's steps. It is their custom to approach the fold, or come forth from it again, in a train or file. They traverse their pastures Scheuchzer in his Itinera Alpina. Ainsworth supposes the ex pression in Gal. ii. 14, which is certainly metaphorical, was spoken with an allusion to this faculty of rectitude in the cloven footed ani- mah—they walked not uprightly according to the truth. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 117 in the like order ; whence it is observable, that the fields which they frequent are quartered out by a mul titude of narrow tracks, which they seem to follow with a scrupulous exactness. This habit is still more remarkable in the Ox ; it being the practice of oxen to tread in the very footsteps of their predecessors : so that when a drove of them have passed through any deep and narrow road, they leave the surface di vided into a regular succession of ridges and furrows, as if it were the work of art. If brute creatures could reason and dispute as men do, this plodding practice of the Ox might possibly be ridiculed by the Ass, as the orthodox Believer, who is content to tread in the steps of his forefathers, is scoffed at by the rambling Freethinker, who uses it as the privilege of his nature, to deviate into by-ways, untrodden by those who were much wiser than himself. Surefooting is an image not improperly applied to elementary Truth in Science : whence it will not be unnatural to suppose, that this first Character of the clean Animals was intended to be expressive of rec titude and certainty of principle in moral agents. Error is various and changeable in its nature : but Truth, being one and the same in all ages, will always be productive of sobriety, regularity, and Uniformity, in those who are content to follow it. XI. The other character of a clean beast is that of chewing the cud; a faculty so expressive of that act of the mind, by which it revolves, meditates, and dis courses on what it hath laid up in the memory, that it is applied to this sense by the Greeks* and Latins ; * Avafiripvictafievoc rn fivnfiri ra Pe/jpio/xcva. Lucian. In this passage the act of eating, together with that of chewing the cud, is applied to the memory and understanding. 118 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING and the word ruminate is well known to have the same metaphorical meaning in English. A beast thus employed hath likewise all the outward appearance of abstraction in its countenance, as if it were engaged in some deep meditation : and it practices the chew ing of the cud more particularly, when it is least sub ject to interruption, that is, when it is lying down at rest. Pliny makes the same observation * ; and I ap prehend there is a natural reason for this, as the food is more easily recalled into the mouth from its tem porary lodgement in the stomach, when the body is lying in an horizontal position. This character then, as it stands in the Scripture, must signify a devout turn of Thought, and holiness of Conversation : for the word of God is the food of the mind, which, being laid up in the heart, should be again revolved at all seasons ; so that being properly applied to the inward man, it may contribute to a daily increase in grace and godliness. Such is the practice of that man whom the Psalmist pronounces to be blessed : his delight is in the law of the L ORD, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. His attention is fol lowed by all the signs of spiritual growth and strength: he bringeth forth his fruit; his leaf withers not, and his work prospers. All of which is signified to us in some other words of St. James — " whoso " looketh into the perfect law of liberty and con- " tinueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, * Taking it from Aristotle, of whom he is little move than the transcriber, in very many subjects. This circumstance did not escape that great master of natural imagery, Milton. Others on the grass Couch'd, and now fill'd with pasture, gazing sat, Or bedward ruminating. Par. Lost, B. iv. 15 CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 119 " but a. doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in " his deed." Every Israelite, who answered to these two characters of the clean Animals, was blameless in principle and practice, and was an Israelite indeed*. XII. If we are right in general concerning the sig nification of these characters, the solution will be farther confirmed by an application of it to particu lar cases. Two animals are described in the 11th Chapter of Leviticus, in each of which but one of these characters is found. The Camel chews the Cud without dividing the hoof; and the Swine di vides the hoof without chewing the Cud. With this opposition in their external marks, our plan requires that there should be as great an opposition in their manners. Accordingly, we find the Camel endued with gravity, patience, tractability, modesty, and a constitution almost incredibly temperate and abste mious : while the Hog is the most refractory, impa tient, noisy, impudent, intemperate, and nasty, of all the animal Creation. If we descend to a more critical consideration of their different natures, the moral heathen seems to have been censured under the figure of the Camel, and the immoral Israelite under that of the Swine. Pride is apt to boast of moral goodness, as sufficient in itself, without the hearing of the word of God. The Camel hath short Ears, which appear as if they had been cropped ; and the enormous size of the creature, with his lofty carriage, and those vast bunches of flesh which deform his body, express the disposition of him who is puffed up in his fleshly mind: * If the Reader desires to know what others have said on this part of the subject, he may find the opinions of Origen, Irenceus, ffesyekius, and others, very well exhibited by Pkrius, Fol. 64. E. 120 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING who in his own opinion hath attained to the first magnitude of wisdom and perfection. But it is as impossible for such an one to enter into the kingdom of heaven, as for a Camel to go through the Eye of a needle : he is as much too big for the narrow way of Christian humility and self-abasement, as a Camel for the passage of a needle's Eye. The Swine is an image of him who holds the truth in unrighteousness. Of this error the Scribes and Pharisees of our Saviour's time were the greatest ex amples. For as the swine, if we judge by the print of his feet, and some other of his properties, hath an alliance with the better sort of cattle, and is of a mixt nature : so they were strict in their adherence to the doctrines of the Church, and valued them selves upon a punctual observation of the ceremonial Law : but were inwardly full of extortion and excess; devourers qf widows' houses ; an unclean, insatiable herd, before whom the Pearls of the Gospel were not to be cast. XIII. My subject leads me to observe in this place, that the animals which were clean were also sacred; that is, set apart by the law for the purpose of sacri fice. The propriety of which is evident, in whatso ever sense we understand the institution of sacrifice. For if the worshipper who offered a beast to God, meant by that act to devote himself, using the ani mal as his substitute or proxy ; then certainly it was not fit that he should represent himself by unclean creatures, whose instincts and manners would con vey an odious idea of his own person and character ; and consequently make his devotion ridiculous. In order to make a sacrifice acceptable, it was re quisite that the qualifications of the offerer should correspond with those ofthe offering. The innocent CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 121 manners of a clean victim were a tacit reflection upon an unclean offerer. When the worshippers of the true God were corrupt in their principles or morals, their oblations were no longer either proper or accept able : which was signified to them in those words of the Prophet — He that killeth an ox is as if he sleio a man : he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off" a dog's neck: he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine' s blood *. The prophet adds the reason, why their de votion was thus censured — they have chosen their own ways ; and their soul delighteth in their abominations ; with which, such abominable sacrifices as the Hea thens offered to their impure Deities, would have corresponded better than those appointed by the law of Moses. And this shews us the folly of the hea thens, in sacrificing swine, dogs, and even human creatures f : which could happen only through their * Isa. lxvi. 3. t Inter quce nonnunquam et homo fit hoslia, latrocinio sacerdotis dum cruor etiam de jugulo calidus exceptus patera, dum adhuc fervet, et quasi sitienti idolo infaciemjaclatus,crudeliterpropinatur. Tertull.de Spect. cap. x. The like practice of offering human sacrifices to the Manes of those who were slain in battle, is alluded to in Virgil, who seems to have borrowed the sentiment from Homer, Iliad xxiii. 175. Sulmone creatos Quatuor hicjuvenes, totidem quos educat Ufens Viventes rapit : inferias quos immolet umbris, Captivoque rogi perfundat sanguine fammas. JEn. x. 517. Instead of spiritual, they adopted physical reasons for some of their sacrifices ; slaying the hog in honour of Ceres, because it roots up the grain. As if the Deity were mean enough to take delight in being revenged upon his own creatures, for exercising the instincts he hath implanted in them, and seeking their food in the common course of nature. • Prima putatur Hostia sus meruisse mori, quia semina rostro JZruerit pando, spemque interceperit anni. Ovid. 122 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING ignorance concerning the origin of sacrifice, and their imperfect notions of moral purity. The characters of their Deities were strongly marked with unclean- ness, cruelty, and all kinds of immorality : and as a false object of worship naturally leads to false devo tion, we are not to wonder that the custom of sacrk ficing, which they had received by tradition, dege nerated in many respects into downright absurdity. But there is another sense, in which the institution of sacrifice is to be understood : for every sacrifice had its prophetic use, and was prefigurative of the true sacrifice of Jesus Christ : with respect to whom it was necessary that every animal, preferred to this sacred application, should be recommended by every possible character of innocence, purity, and perfec tion : therefore the sacrifices were taken from the three tribes of Sheep, Goats, and Oxen; each of which were always to be perfect in their kind. XIV. The Diet of the Hebrews being thus imme diately connected with the most solemn Acts of re ligious Adoration, the daily course of their living carried with it an exhortation to purity of mind and body, and directed their faith to its greatest object, the vicarious Sacrifice of the Messiah. Unless the circumstances of man under the penal ties of Sin had required a propitiatory sacrifice, per haps animal food had never come into use, the human teeth, as well as the intestines, seeming rather adapted to a vegetable or farinaceous diet* : and if this is the origin of animal food, the consideration of it will reconcile every Christian Believer to a practice, which hath appeared very shocking to natural reason. Men * The Question, whether man is naturally carnivorous, was learn edly agitated by Dr. Wallis and Dr. Tyson : their observations are very curious and worth examining. See Phil. Trans. No. 269. p. 769. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 123 of abstraction and refinement, whose lives were re mote from war and rapine, and devoted to rational exercises, reasoned themselves into an abhorrence of animal food : pronouncing it to be unnatural and bar barous, that poor innocent creatures should be put to death for the support of human life, which might well be supported by other means, and with a far bet ter prospect of health and longevity. I say innocent creatures ; for according to the observation of unen lightened heathens the lot hath universally fallen upon the more innocent part of the creation ; — Non rete accipitri tenditur, neque milvio, Qui malefaciunt nobis ; Mis qui nil f admit tenditur. Ter. Phorm. II. i. 16. The Pythagoreans axe represented by Ovid ex claiming in a very pathetic manner against the cruelty of mankind, in behalf of Sheep and Oxen, Quid meruistis oves, placidum pecus ? Sfc. Quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque, Innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores ? And again in his Fasti ; Aptajugo cervix non estferienda securi, Vivat, et in dura sctpe laboret humo. Unless we were hardened by daily custom, it would surely be imposible for any rational man to reflect without pity and indignation concerning the mul titudes of harmless labouring oxen, which are daily led out to the slaughter; or the thousands of help less bleating sheep, first stripped of their clothing, and afterwards bled to death, to supply the wants of the human species. But they who carried their humanity to this un- 124 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING reasonable height, were ignorant of the best and truest Philosophy, and vitiated in their understand ings by that old Egyptian Conceit ofthe Metempsy chosis : for thus it ought in reason to be. The moral necessities of man can be supplied only by the Death and Benefits of a propitiatory Sacrifice, the common substitute of all mankind : whence the Providence of God hath mercifully ordained, as well by the present condition of the natural Creation itself, as by the ap pointment of Revelation, that his bodily life should be sustained in a like manner ; thereby to remind us every day (though few are wise enough to accept and apply the admonition) that the life of man is in a state of forfeiture ; and that there can be neither the preservation of life, nor the remission of Sin, with out the shedding of innocent blood. Thus doth the whole world conspire in offering up a daily sacrifice, and attesting the truth of the 'Christian doctrine, with the same insensibility that Caiaphas uttered a similar prophecy in its favour — It is necessary that one man should die, that tlie whole people perish not. XV. Fish and Fowls are distinguished upon the same moral principles of good and evil as the qua- drupedes ; though not with the same physical marks of distinction. Concerning the Fish, this rule was given in the Law — whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the Seas, and in the Rivers, them shall ye eat. The progressive motion of fish is owing to the tail : for so may a boat be driven forward by the agi tation of a single oar from the stern. The fins serve to keep the fish upright, and support it while it is stationary in any part of the water. The centre of gravity being above the middle region of the body, (the reverse of which is the case with birds) a fish floats unnaturally with its back downwards, when CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 125 the fins are taken off*. Their scales, which are very hard, bright, and radiated, compose a sort of armour, which serves for their defence, and adds at the same time an appearance of light and purity. The fish thus distinguished differ as much in their way of life from the smooth and slimy inhabitants of the waters, as in their colour and lineaments : for such fish are generally disposed to raise themselves from the bottom, and swim about with agility in the superior regions of the water ; while the Eel buries itself in the mire, and all the crustaceous tribe lie scrabbling upon the ground. As for the testaceous, an eminent Naturalist f hath formed a new System, wherein they are distinguished from all other fish under the denomination of Worms : which, though somewhat bold, is not altogether unnatural, as their bodies are inarticulate, and without the common or gans of sense. The moral of all this is as plain as before; the whole being a figurative monition, that a sordid and groveling way of life Avas to be abhorred by the Ser vants of God ; whose minds being under the direction of divine truth and wisdom, their affections were to be raised from vice to virtue, from pollution to purity, from things temporal to things eternal. XVI. Among the Fowls, those were accounted clean, which are gentle in their nature, lofty in their flight, and musical in their voices ; which last, I think, is not the qualification of any one bird of prey. The birds being distinguished, not by an ap probation of the good and innocent, but by an ex ception of the bad, the observations I have to make on this part of the animal Creation must be reserved till we come to consider the other part of the subject. * See Borrelli, P. i. ccxiii. ccxiv. -)• Linnceus. 126 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING XVII. I can see no moral reason for the admission of the locust, and some other insects into the society of clean animals : yet the Septuagint seem to have apprehended such a thing, by their putting the word ofyiopayyv for what we translate a beetle; and Pliny also speaks of it as the property of some locusts to destroy serpents. However, I cannot but think it strange, that there should have been so much unne cessary criticism (and some of it even ridiculous) amongst Divines, concerning the food of John the Baptist ; when the locust is so particularly specified as a kind of food allowed to those who were under the Law : and there is not the least reason to suspect that the word is improperly rendered by the Greek Translators. Diodorus Siculus speaks of a people who were called uKpiSo^ayoi from their feeding upon lo custs ; and Pliny tells us of certain Ethiopians, who lived only upon locusts, dried and salted, so that they were reserved for food throughout the whole course of the year *. And in his Chapter of Locusts, he adds, that the Parthians accounted them delicate meat f. Another ancient Writer, who composed a treatise on the Red Sea, speaking ofthe Acridophagi, or locust-' eaters of that region, observes, that their habit of body was thin and meagre. Whence we have an unexceptionable reason, why this diet was preferred by the Baptist, as being most agreeable to that abstracted and austere condition of life, which he had taken upon him in the wilderness. Hasselquist, a Swedish disciple of Linnteus, who tra velled about twenty years ago into Egypt and Pales tine, solely with a view to natural History, puts this * Pars qumdam Mtluopum locustis tantum vivit, fumo et sale dura- tis in annua alimenta. Lib. vi. $0. f Parthis et ha in cibo grates. Lib. ii. 29. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 127 matter out of doubt. Speaking of the locusts of John the Baptist — " They (says he) who deny insects " to have been the food of this holy man, urge, that " this insect is an unnatural sort of food— but roasted " locusts are at this time eaten by the Arabians — I " was once speaking to a judicious Greek Priest " about this affair — he answered, their Church had " never taken this food to be any other than what is " expressed in the Testament, nor did he know any " thing to contradict it*." XVIII. We are now to review that other class of animals, from which all the Hebrews were com manded to abstain : and under this prohibition, as hath been already observed, they were admonished, in a figurative way, to avoid the company and the manners of the idolatrous Gentiles. Accordingly we find amongst these creatures all the ill qualities of ignorance, uncleanness, subtlety, rapine, violence, and cruelty ; which were almost as general amongst heathens, as amongst wolves, dogs, leopards, and other beasts of prey ; who live by the death of their fellow-animals, and whose^^tf, instead of being harmless, as those of the Sheep or Ox, are by nature swift to shed blood. One of the earliest hea then Characters we find in the Scripture was Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom was Babel.; and Babel being called the mother of Harlots and abomi nations, was therefore the primitive Seat of Idolatry; whence the name is mystically f applied to all the subsequent idolatry of the World. From these con siderations, I think, it is clear enough that Nimrod, however truly he might be the founder of a new State * Hasselquist's Voy. and Trav. in the Levant, p. 230.410. X Rev. xvK. 5. 128 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING and a new Policy, was at the same time the father of a new religion. And indeed, diversity of govern ment, and diversity of religion, have in all ages been reciprocally productive of one another. The reli gion of this man and his fellows, being a false one, would bring with it a spirit of persecution toward all those who still adhered to the true worship. He is called a mighty hunter before the Lord; an expres sion worth attending to. For though men of war like dispositions have always made it their practice to live rather by the chasing of men and beasts, than by the more innocent and salutary labours of tillage; yet the hunting here spoken of must be supposed to include an act of irreligion, and imply that he was also a persecuting adversary to the religion of the true God *. His name is taken from a word which signifies a leopard, the chief hunter of the desart, the most high-spirited, ferocious, and blood-thirsty of all wild beasts. There being such a natural affinity between a wild beast and the founder of an idolatrous kingdom, all the four heathen Empires are so represented in a Vi sion ofthe Prophet Daniel; in which the Babylonian being the first and most noble is signified by the Lion, and the Grecian by the Leopard : whence it is well observed as a rule by the learned Bishop Newton, in his Dissertations on the Prophecies, that " a beast" (meaning a wild beast) " in the prophetic style, is a " tyrannical idolatrous empire \." The skin of the Leopard is expressive of its evil disposition. The * And blood began its first and loudest Cry For differing worship ofthe Deity. Thus Persecution rose ; and farther space Produced the mighty hunter of his Race. Dryden. \ Vol. iii. p. 220. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 129 coat of a Lamb or Sheep, which is generally pure and white, corresponds with the meekness and inno cence of its temper ; and a soul purged of its Sin is compared to the whiteness of wool ; on which ac count Christ, who was without sin, was signified in the Passover by a Lamb without spot : but the skin of this furious animal is all over spotted with stains like those of iniquity : whence it is asked, with an allusion to the incorrigible state of a sinner, Can the Leopard change his spots * ? But the ferocity of wild beasts doth certainly cor respond to that spirit of hatred, whereby the zealots for Idolatry were always stirred up to ac.ts of violence against the servants of the true God, and the preach ers of righteousness. The Hebrews experienced the malignity of this zeal in Egypt, Babylon, and among the neighbouring nations of Idolaters. But it broke out with greater fury than ever, when the empire of Satan was shaken from its foundations, and the de formity of Polytheism was exposed to the world by the light that was held up by the inspired Apostles. By the permission of God, it was then " given to the " beast | to make war with the saints and to over- " come them." Then did St. Paul fight with beasts at Ephesus ; with the noisy and senseless votaries of the Ephesian Diana, who contended for their lying superstition with all the violence and fury of wild beasts : and indeed all, who undertook to publish the truth, had the barbarity of irrational unbelievers to encounter ; such as are called by Ignatius S^pia avBpu- TronopQa, beasts in the shape of men. For however some of the heathens might be refined by a knowledge of the belles lettres, and the practice of the polite arts ; * Jer. xiii. 23. t Rev. xiii. 1 — 7. VOL. II. K 130 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING they were altogether savage in their zeal against the preachers and professors ofthe Christian Faith. Ten dreadful persecutions under the Roman Emperors were scarcely sufficient to satisfy this heathen thirst of blood. It was as natural for them to torture a Christian, as for a Lion to tear a lamb in pieces. The error of their principles confirmed them in these practices : for, though the cruelty of persecution was executed by Magistrates and Soldiers, it was dictated and encouraged by Philosophers ; who seldom failed to cast oil into the flames of Persecution. To see themselves out-argued, out-lived, and exploded, by a sect sprung from those Jews, whose religion and manners they had ever affected to treat with consum mate disdain : this was a provocation never to be endured by men of unmortified Spirits, who had placed all their pride and pleasure in a pompous shew of superior Reason and Eloquence. XIX. Let us now compare these different animals with respect to their several ways of life : for these, in the clean and unclean, are as opposite as their dis positions. Sheep, oxen, gOats, deer, &c. are formed into societies ; they herd peaceably together, and are subject to the laws of government ; as well for their own advantage, as for the service of man : for the sheep escapes the merciless wolf by living in subjec tion to the shepherd. But beasts of prey go about by themselves in forests and desarts, incapable of en tering into any friendly communion. They are so many single tyrants, genuine independents, who ac knowledge no superior, but fight their way through the world, and live in a state of hostility with the whole creation. If they ever unite into gangs, it is with the spirit of thieves and murderers, who are banded together only that they may plunder innocent 13 CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 131 people with greater security. And, like other thieves, they are all fond of darkness. When the Sun goes down, the Lion stalks forth from his den : at which time the sheep, under the direction of the shepherd, are retiring to their fold. And when the cattle are climbing up the mountains to their pas ture, to meet the rising of the sun, the tyrants of the night are warned back to their hiding-places. XX. All those were unclean among the inhabitants of the waters, which were without fins and scales. This exception does not only exclude shell-fish, and the monsters of the deep, but particularly those of the eel or snake kind, which lie grovelling at the bot tom, and discover the same impure inclination with the swine. These fish are disturbed by thunder and storms, and swim about when the waters are thick and turbulent : but as soon as the elements are at rest again, they presently slide down to their native mud. Thus the mind, when polluted with impiety and un belief, cannot be raised to the contemplation of truth, unless it is alarmed by the expectation of divine judg ment ; on which occasion the greatest reprobates are most violently moved, hurrying themselves as fast as they can into a state of repentance. But the effect abides no longer than the cause ; and so their terrors and their penitence vanish together. When there was thunder and hail in the land of Egypt, and fire ran along upon the ground, even Pharaoh could recollect himself, and say — I have sinned this time ; the Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked — But when he saw that the rain, and the hail, and the thun ders were ceased, he sinned yet more and hardened his heart, he and his servants. Such is" the issue of that involuntary repentance, which has no principle to support it. The body, which rises of itself toward k 2 132 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING the surface of the stream, may continue aloft : but that which is raised only by violence, will sink the deeper for its fall. XXI. The prohibited Fowls are Eagles, Vultures, Hawks, Cormorants, Ravens, and such like, which persecute and devour those of a more gentle nature ; or feed uncleanly upon filth and dead carcases ; whose young ones also suck up blood, and where the slain are, there are they. Such were the heathens, whom St. Paul hath described to us * as cruel and unmerciful, full of envy, murder, and debate, given up to the vilest passions, and all the uncleanness of dead works. For the nature of man, unrefined by an infused sense of the true God, and the true Religion, is no more of fended with evil than a crow with carrion ; but can feed upon it, and delight in it. Yea and Reason it self (if the depravation of Reason deserves that name) will plead for it as the greater good : and such Rea son can never be expected to approve ofthe Christian Purity. The Apostle hath likewise observed, that the heathens were without natural affection. Fathers have murdered their children ; the nearest relations and the dearest friends have destroyed one another, on the ground of some enthusiastic notions of honour and liberty. Besides the superstitious practice of of- ferring their sons and their daughters to Moloch and other diabolical deities, some of them had a custom of exposing such new-born infants as they did not approve of; or thought they should not be able to support, to perish in the woods with hunger, or he devoured by wild beasts : and the same practice is now tolerated among the Idolaters of China f. This * Rom. i. 28, &c. t Jesuits Travels, vol. i. p. 85. Edit. ii. of Lockman's Trans lation. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 133 is like the Ostrich ; a foolish bird, which has wings without being able to raise itself from the Earth, and is void of that crroo-yr), that instinctive tenderness, which other creatures feel for their offspring, —which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them. She is hardened against her young ones as though they were not hers : her labour is in vain without fear ; because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neitlier hath he imparted to her understanding *. XXII. That infidelity and ignorance, into which the heathens had been betrayed by a vain aspiring after wisdom, was the principal source of all the fore going enormities. They did not like to retain God in their knowledge — but became vain in their ima ginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. In this respect they were allied to the tribe of Owls and Bats, and other birds of night, all of which the law pronounced to be unclean. In the owl we have a grand image of the Sceptic, who loves darkness ra ther than light, and is more proud of his artificial ig norance than any man ought to be of the most useful knowledge; who could never find truth, because he never loved it; as the owl is offended with that glory which the Sun diffuses over the natural Creation. As the day has no charms for the owl, Revelation hath nothing Wise or wonderful with the unbelieving Phi losopher ; who brings with him to the word of God all that prejudice with which the owl flies out into the Sun-shine. Yet he has his admirers ; as the hooting of one owl is music in the ears of another. This em blematical bird, when exposed to the Sun against his •* Job xxxix. 14, &c. 134 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING will, lets down before his sight an inner eyelid or membrane, which in the owl is very conspicuous ; as the infidel puts a veil over his heart to intercept and weaken the rays of truth. Some birds respect the light to a degree of Adoration. The cock proclaims the approach of it every morning ; on which account his voice was the most proper to remind St. Peter of that true light from which he had apostatized. But the owl has a natural aversion to the Light : and if he breaks through his ordinary rules so far as to make his appearance in the day-time, he is pursued and repri manded by other birds as a monster who is a disgrace to their kind ; at least as one who has no business with the Sun. When Sceptics meddle with the Scrip ture, they are just as much out of their element : and to follow their objections, with the hope of recover ing them to a confession of the Truth, is like arguirig the case seriously with an owl, with the hope of per suading him to admire the day-light. But here it may be proper to observe, that our zeal on such occa sions ought never to exceed the bounds of mercy and decency. The birds which express their indignation against the owl never kill him, being of those kinds which are unarmed and inoffensive in their nature. So it is not required that we should pelt and stone an infidel to death for the wickedness of his folly ; but should all agree in giving public notice of him, and shewing the world what he is *. For internal realities * A little piece is just now brought to my hands entitled Voltaire in the Shades, or Dialogues on the Deistical Controversy. Here the wild opinions of Voltaire, Rousseau, and some other superior wits, who make a figure in modern Pyrrhonism, are compared and ri diculed with some touches of original humour, by an Author who has taken some pains in pursuing their absurdities and contradictions : and appears to be as well acquainted with ancient as modern Infidelity. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 135 do not always agree with external appearances. The outward form ofthe owl seems to promise a great de gree of gravity and wisdom, while its principles and manners are opposite to the common sense of other birds, and its office in the creation, reduces it to the rank of a common mouse-trap. So the Philosophers it represented made a pompous display of Reason and Learning, all of which, so far as they applied it to Divinity, was no better than solemn ignorance and folly : professing themselves to be wise they became fools; and by an unaccountable fatality chose this very bird as the Emblem of their wisdom ; which was ac cordingly held in great veneration at Athens, the principal seat of heathen Learning, as the Symbol of Minerva, the tutelar Goddess of that City. The voice of the owl is, so far from being agreeable to the Ear, that Superstition hath regarded it as an omen of death or some other dismal calamity * : and surely it is no improper counterpart to those howlings and lamentations for the dead, which were uttered by heathens who had no hope of a resurrection. XXIII. Fowls that creep, going upon all four, were to be held in abomination. Such is the Bat: and though this prohibition may seem superfluous, at least in the Letter of it, the Bat being an odious creature ; yet we are assured, they are eaten by the people of Java f, and likewise in the Island of St. John \. A modern systematical Naturalist describes the bat to us, by observing that it has six fore-teeth in the upper * Hinc exaudiri voces, et verba vocantis Visa viri, nox cum terras obscura teneret : Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo S av0pw7rov, the outward man *. 2. That as they were naturally addicted to Idolatry, the pre cepts of their Ritual were borrowed from the prac tices of Idolaters, and accommodated to the service of the true God : that so their inclination might be humoured, and at the same time their Apostacy pre vented. In these two principles there are almost as many absurdities as words : for one of them contradicts the other, and both are independently confuted by the Scripture. It was a method in the highest estimation with the heathens, and observed universally, to con ceal their divine doctrines under the veil of some figu rative forms of speech. The Egyptians were famed for their Hieroglyphics ; the Pythagoreans Sox their Symbols; the Greeks and Romans had an extensive Mythology, under which the mysteries of their Re ligion were represented ; and all the fables of anti quity shew what an opinion was entertained of allu sion and imagery, for the improvement of the mind in the manners of human prudence. Maximus, in his Epistle prefixed to the works of Horapollo, hath well observed, that " the Egyptians had their adyta, and " Greeks and barbarians in general, when they de- " livered down the truth, concealed the principles of ?' things under (enigmas, symbols, allegories, metaphors, * Vide Proleg. cap. i. Neque verisbnile est Deum, cui cum pin guioris ingenii populo res. erat, vilia ulla mystice depingere vel hiero- glyphice prohibere voluisse. Lib. i. cap. v. §. iv. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 153 " and such like figures *." They were induced to this, as he informs us, by the three following con siderations : 1. That their disciples might be accus tomed to a short and sententious way f of expressing themselves ; a similitude or metaphor exhibiting that sense at a single view, which is weak and dilute under the ordinary circumlocutions of language. 2. That the Science of Divinity might be kept from the profane vulgar, and deposited with students properly initiated ; lest that which was too common should fall into profanation and contempt. 3. That the un derstanding, being sharpened by the difficulty of in vestigating a mythological meaning, might set the greater value upon the knowledge thus acquired. The adepts of Egypt were conducted to their sacred literature through the preparatory forms of writing called epistolographic ; to which the next in order was the Hieratic, or the writing used by the religious Scribes and Priests ; and lastly they were admitted to the Hieroglyphic, which was the symbolical writing of their Divinity, and was thought the most perfect and important of all. X. This of Maximus is a learned and rational ac count. We are now to compare it with Dr. Spencer's principles. The purport of his whole work is to shew, that the Heathen Ritual was the Original and the Jewish Ritual was the Copy. But the Heathen Ri tual was all mystery and allegory : how then can it be credible that the Jewish, if borrowed from it, * Aiyvirrioi Se /cat avroi Sia tidv aSvriov irap' avriov KaXovpevwv tovto ataiJHOQ EKSiSaBKovai. Kai o\tog (iapfiapoi re apa Kai EXXtjvec rag riav 7rpaypar7ro£ Se Sokei pn iroppid deiorepag ETwrvoiag tmv rfiiKng SiSao- Kdkiag a^afxevog.t Max. Planud. in Vita iEsopi. 160 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING plicity of fools. They even filled the heaven itself with them, expressing thereby the nature of the Ele ments, and accommodating them to the celestial phe nomena ; placing the figure of the Crab at that point of the Zodiac, when the Sun, having attained the height of the Summer, begins to go backward again toward the winter ; and the figure of the Capricorn or mountain Goat, at the lower Tropic, where the Sun begins to climb upwards toward the northern he misphere. The two Bears, inhabitants of the coldest Climates, are placed by the North Pole, over the re gions of perpetual frost and snow ; the Lion, the Egyptian Symbol of the Solar Light *, in that part of the Zodiac which corresponded formerly to the month of July, when the Heat of the Sun is most predominant : and the like propriety of expression might be traced in others of the celestial figures, which may seem to have been placed with no other design than that general one of parcelling out the Stars into intelligible tribes or classes. The fabulous origin given to them by some of the Greeks and La tins is altogether childish and ridiculous. XVI. Here it is to be observed, that the heathens having erred in their notions of honour and excel lence, some of their highest virtues having been no better than celebrated vices ; they have on many oc casions given the precedence to unclean animals, adorning even their Divinities with the skins of Beasts of Prey. The appetite for honour, as it sig nifies military glory, being attended with a thirst of KEov. Kai rag ptv Kopag Trvpw- CEig, to Se irpooanrov orpoyyvXov' Kai wEpi avro uktivoeiSeiq rptvat Kara pifinoiv -nXiov, oQzv Kai wo tov Spovov tov wpov Xeovtus vwo- TtOeatrt, Seikvvvteq to wpog tov Seov tov £toov ovpftoXov. Horapoll. Hierogl. lib. i. cap. xvii. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 161 blood, it is not strange that the mighty warriors and hunters of the world should have chosen to array -themselves with the spoils of Lions, Leopards, Tygers, and Bears, their rivals in cruelty. But the servants of God, who had the more valuable ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, are said to have wandered about in sheeps skins and goats skins, in a world that was not worthy of them. They preferred the appearance of those Creatures, who like themselves had been help less, persecuted, and yet most serviceable to the world. Our Saviour supposes all his followers to be in sheeps-clothing ; warning us at the same time that many should assume the habit of the sheep, though allied more nearly in their appetites and manners, their internal character, to the ravening wolf. And it seems agreeable to reason, that the Providence of God hath designedly furnished the sheep with the best materials for human clothing, as it were to re mind us daily what Spirit we should be of. It is dif ficult to account for those coats of skins* which God gave to Adam and Eve, to clothe them before their expulsion from Paradise, but by supposing them to have been the skins of animals slain for sacrifice, in consequence of the fall: and if such, they were of the clean sort, amongst which the Sheep had the preference, being afterwards appropriated to the daily service of the Tabernacle and Temple. XVII. In the modern Science of Honour, com monly called Heraldry, the principal Characters are taken from the animal kingdom. But here again the chief place is given to Beasts and Birds of the savage and rapacious kinds. Cornelius Agrippa, in his work upon the Vanity of the Sciences, which is a Satire * Gen. iii. 21. VOL. II. M 162 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING upon all orders and professions, but rather too preci pitate and unmerciful, takes occasion from this cir cumstance to fall foul upon all the Titles of Honour and Nobility, as having their original in Theft, Mur der, and Rapine. " It is unlawful (saith he) for No- " blemen to bear in their Coats an Ox, a Calf, a Sheep, " a Lamb, a Capon, an Hen, or any of those Creatures " which are necessary for the use of mankind ; but " they must all carry for the Ensigns of their nobility " the resemblances of cruel monsters and birds of " Prey. — There be many of the smaller animals also " that claim a prerogative in the shields of great men, " provided they are the documentors of mischief. — - " Those shields that are blazoned with things that " are less noxious, as Trees, Flowers, Stars, or are " otherwise distinguished only by variety of colours, " are accounted much more modern and less noble " than the other, as not being acquired by any acts " of war, or other artifices of Ruin and Destruction*." It is indeed very true, that the chief and perhaps the only merit of some, who have been raised to that Honour by which their posterity are ennobled at this day, consisted in their adhering to the fortune of some Tyrannical Invader, who took that to which he had no Right but from the Sword ; and rewarded his accomplices with Inheritances violently taken away from the lawful Possessors. Yet after all, there is a Military Virtue, which ought to be distinguished as a proper foundation of Nobility. For as some have been raised by the ruin ofthe innocent; others have received the honours they justly deserved for deliver ing their Country at the hazard of their lives : a ser vice which the strictest laws of Christianity have not * Chap Ixxxi. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 163 Condemned, though peace on earth is its principal ob ject. For, as things are now constituted, peace and good order are the consequences only of war : and John the Baptist, who was sent to reform all orders of men, did not censure but rectify the profession of a soldier : who ought never to begin a quarrel, nor proceed to bloodshed upon false accusations. And all Kings, who are Soldiers by their office, should lay up this Counsel in their hearts. XVIIL But leaving Heathens, Mythologists, and Heralds, it concerns us more immediately as Christ ians to consider how it comes to pass, that we are not now obliged to a literal observation of this Law. For this there are two Reasons. 1 . Because it is betr ter to fulfil the Spirit than to observe the Letter of the Law. The Gospel enjoins all that purity without a figure, which the Law suggested to the Jews under the distinction of meats. He, who has attained that purity of heart, hath already answered the end ofthe Law; in which case the descriptive or ceremonial part may be rejected as a yoke of bondage no longer ne cessary. In this moral part the Jews miscarried: the Apostle having taught us, they were not profited by the meats in which they were occupied *. It was the de sign of the Great Lawgiver that they should be pro fited : such was the admonition which this distinc tion held forth to them : but they were not They had the form, without that grace to which it should have led them : while Christians, on the contrary, having that grace which the Jews wanted, are dis pensed with concerning the form. The Law and its meaning is written in their hearts, and manifested in their lives. Instead of making void the Law, they * Heb. xiii. 9. M 2 161 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING establish it by keeping up to its intention. The king dom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost: it is all that the figurative meat and drink of the Law signified and recommended. The food that is clean and holy is a true faith, and a life separated from Sin. He who is thus distinguished from other men, is the Guest of God, and hath communion with Christ, whose meat was to do the will ofthe Father that sent him. On this consideration we are released from the li teral observation of the Law. That practice is now superseded by a better, which will bring us to a nearer alliance with God. Another consideration is this ; that the Gentiles, being admitted to the Gos pel, are no more to be accounted common or unclean. For the separation of the Jews was kept up, as Dr. Spencer hath learnedly remarked, by the observation of this Law in particular : and as that separation subsists no longer, the Law is of course become ob solete. XIX. But though the Divine Mercy hath accepted men of every kind to the privileges of Christianity, it cannot be too often repeated, because it ought never to be forgotten, that Jesus Christ did not come to save men in their sins, but from the dominion of sin and all its evil consequences. The Church is therefore not to be used as a sanctuary to all manner of iniquity. On the contrary, they who enter into it should put off their savage natures, as the animals which entered into the ark of Noah. The Gospel is more excellent than other Systems, because it hath a power of changing the manners by rectifying the passions. For Pride will have the effects of Pride ; Covetousness will be followed by fraud and rapine ; Ambition and worldly Policy will transform Chris- CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 165 tians into monsters, let them loose upon one another, and introduce such disorders amongst them as for merly among the Heathens. This is finely touched by Dr. Young, and in such terms as fall in with our present subject ; Eager ambition's fiery chace I see ; I see the circling hunt of noisy men Burst Law's Enclosure, leap the mounds of Right, Pursuing and pursued, each other's prey : As wolves for rapine, as the fox for wiles ; Till Death, that mighty Hunter, earths them all. Night IV. XX. Let every man then examine his own heart, and review his Character as it is reflected to him in this Mirror of the Animal Creation. Let him con sider whether he is honest, industrious, and profitable to Society, as the labouring Ox ; meek and patient as the Lamb ; or whether he returns as the Dog to his vomit, and as the Sow that is washed to her wallow ing in the mire : whether he is harmless as the Dove, or subtle as the Fox, and rapacious as the Vulture : whether he avoids the Truth, as the Owl avoids the Light ; or whether he rejoices in it, as the Lark which rises toward the Heaven with the appearance of the morning. For though Jews and Gentiles are incor porated together for the present, the immutable dis tinction between Good and Evil shall at length pre vail over the temporary Naturalization of men in the Christian Society ; an eternal separation shall take place ; and they only who shall have put on Purity, Temperance, Resignation, and Patience, shall have their final Portion with the Lamb of God. XXI. While we are aspiring to this moral use of 166 A DISQUISITION CONCERNING the brute Creation, it will be a grand reproach to us if we are unmindful of its natural use. Reason and Religion require, that the creatures of God, especially those appropriated to the service of man, should be treated with discretion and tenderness. The Mercy of God is over ail his works : his Providence extends to brutes as well as to men : hefeedeth the young ra vens that call upon him ; and even the Lions, roaring after their prey, do seek their Meat from God. All the creatures in the Earth, Air, and the Sea, wait upon his bounty, and he giveth them their meat in due season. The proper office of man therefore, as the Vicegerent of God in the government of the animal kingdom, is to imitate the goodness of God ; to take delight in providing for the wants of such creatures as are dependent upon him, and in applying them, with moderation, mercy, and gratitude, to the uses appointed by the wisdom of our common Creator. Kings, who rule over men, are ordained ministers of good to those who are committed to their charge. The safety of the people is the supreme law of their conduct ; and no divine authority will give a sanction to the wanton destruction, or even the unnecessary oppression of their subjects. In like manner, God hath made man the Lord of inferior creatures, but not their Tyrant. There are many ways of abusing them ; but to insist upon these at large, would be quite fo reign to the nature of this disquisition. The practice of dissecting animals alive to satisfy an unprofitable curiosity, is horrible to reflect upon. Indignation must be excited in any benevolent mind, when it pre sents to itself an helpless dog, stretched upon a table, crying and fainting under the knife of a philosophical butcher, who affects to enlighten the world with his wonderful discoveries : as if science were like to re- CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 167 ceive some elegant improvements from a man who has no feeling. It is a consideration not less offensive, and, I fear, we have much to answer for upon this account, that horses, which contribute so much to our health, com fort, and convenience, should be hurried out of their lives, with galled breasts and battered knees, to save the precious time of impatient people, some of whom never employed any moments of their life to the glory of God or the good of their country. This is now become a national offence : and though the de votees to pleasure, together with the drudges of Mammon, may be too much in haste to listen to the voice of a speculative Monitor : yet certainly God, who hath lent his creatures to us, will not think it beneath his notice to enquire how they have been treated. Cruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguish ing vices of the lowest and basest of the people. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of igno rance and meanness ; an intrinsic mark, which all the external advantages of wealth, splendor, and nobility cannot obliterate. It will consist neither with true learning nor true civility ; and Religion disclaims and detests it as an insult upon the majesty and the goodness of God ; who, having made the instincts of brute beasts minister to the improvement of the mind as well as to the convenience of the body, hath furnished us with a motive to mercy and compassion toward them very strong and powerful, but too re fined to have any influence on the illiterate or irre ligious. ADDITIONAL REMARKS. I. To shew that I am not singular in ascribing a moral signification to the corporeal marks by which the clean animals were distinguished, I have referred to some ancient writers, as their sense is exhibited by Pierius in his Hieroglyphics, See p. 11 7, of the fore going Disquisition. But it is not necessary to go so- far backward. I have followed, without knowing it, the sense of a modern divine ; whose compositions shew him to have been one of the best writers this Church can boast of ; I mean Dr. Young, Father to the celebrated author ofthe Night Thoughts. In his Sermon called, the Holy Contemplative, we find these words : " Among the ceremonial Laws of Moses " (whereof the allegorical was the most proper and " principal interpretation, and according to which " sense they were chiefly to be observed) this was " one — that no beast should be accounted clean, but " such as had these two qualities, cleaving ofthe hoof, " and chewing of the cud. And these two qualities " in the beast were only symbols of these two acts in " men, which I am now treating of. Dividing the " hoof was a symbol of the act of discerning between " good and evil, that is contemplative knowledge : " and chewing the Cud was symbolical of the act of " applying what we know to practice ; and both '¦' these are necessary to make a man clean." Young's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 178, 179. ADDITIONAL REMARKS. 169 II. At p. 121, some notice is taken of the impure sacrifices of the heathens, and particularly of their horrible practice of offering human victims, which is confirmed by a passage or two in the margin. The av0pw7ro(Wia and reKvoOvo-ia of the heathens have been treated more at large by a very able hand, Mr. Bryant, in his Observations and Enquiry relating to ancient History, which every learned Reader, who is fond of such researches, will consult with pleasure and ad vantage ; the author having discovered a more than ordinary degree of skill in Biblical as well as Grecian Antiquity, together with great judgment and inge nuity in the application of Etymological Criticism. He has shewn by a multitude of authorities, that hu man victims were offered to the heathen Deities, in Egypt, Arabia, all the states of Greece, Italy, Ger many and Gaul, Iceland, Africa, and America. In a word, that where Idolatry prevailed, it was ever at tended with this unmerciful superstition of shedding human blood, with every possible circumstance of barbarity. The whole account taken together affords us a frightful picture of the abominations of Pagan ism, and is even a disgrace to human nature : for it does not appear that the practice was ever censured to purpose by any of the heathens, till the previous publication of the Gospel had occasioned some of the more learned and rational among them to alter their tone ; the Christians in their writings and dis courses having severely exposed the impurity, ab surdity, and cruelty of the heathen Superstition. From what original this general practice of offering human victims could be derived, is a question of im portance. Mr. Bryant deduces it from a tradition common to the most remote antiquity, which in pro cess of time was miserably depraved : and his curious 170 ADDITIONAL REMARKS. observations on the Mystical Sacrifice of the Phoe nicians render it more than probable. See p. 286. For this, and other offerings like to it, under the names of