sold for ONE PENNY, and dispersed in great numbers, to poison the minds of the common people. You would take the author for a sincere believer of the Holy Scripture, perfect in his Charity, and fortified with the Spirit of a Martyr. But be not deceived: all is not gold that glitters. Let me therefore beg your attention while I make some remarks on these extracts, to shew you that his attempts are quite contrary to his declarations, and his doctrines subversive of the whole plan of Christianity and then you will see what a vast difference there is between the sound of words and the sense of them.

In the first place then, all sensible people reckon it a very suspicious circumstance, when a man opens a cause with a panegyric upon himself. If a stranger, when you enter his shop, were to salute you with the praises of his own honesty, his strict regard to the honour of trade, and his love to all his customers, past, present, and to come, you would look upon all this as a bait, and be certain he intended to cheat you. So our Socinian pamphleteer in his title calls himself a Lover of the Gospel he dare not leave you to find this out by his book; but hopes you will be blinded toward the mischief of it by a good opinion

VOL. I.

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opinion of his character, before you enter upon it. it. He professes the deepest concern for the honour of the Gospel; but as he denies all its saving doctrines, who can take his word? Even though he should confirm it with an hundred oaths?

Then he exhorts you to make use of your own Reason; that is, to see things, with your own eyes, and not be imposed upon by what you are taught: which is very excellent advice; but he has not followed it himself, neither does he intend that you should follow it. His notions are borrowed from Socinus, and his Deistical followers, particularly from Chubb the tallow-chandler, whose writings contain all the secrets of the present reforming Divinity. So that he cannot justly pretend to the merit of having used his own Reason. And as to you, he writes his pamphlet with the hope of bringing you to entertain the same views of Christianity with himself: therefore his compliments to your Reason are nothing but the flattery of one who is all the while supplanting your Reason, in order to make way for his own particular notions against Christianity. For this purpose he helps you to some interpretations of texts of Scripture, so very much out of the way,

that

that your own Reason would never have hit upon them; neither would his, if he had not been told of them.

The imperfection of the Reformation is a topic much declaimed upon of late; and this author, in concert with the Divines of the Feathers Tavern, is of opinion, that, though Popery is gone, many errors are still remaining. In answer to which, we have this to say for our Divines at the Reformation, that we are sure they believed the Scripture ; and their writings shew that they understood it but as to the Reformers of this present time, we are not sure they do either the one or the other. The Lovers of the Gospel in Luther's days took off the superstitious dress of Christianity, but left the body of it secure. If we go to work now, we must reform it to the bone; and even then some nice judges may be offended with the skeleton, and never rest till they have set up the Idol of Heathenism; as some attempted to do about fifty years ago; and their officiating minister was Mr. John Toland, who composed a form of divine service to the Infinite and Eternal Universe.

The author proceeds to assure us, that as Reason and the Scripture are each of them P 2

the

the Gift of God, they cannot be contrary to one another. Right Reason (when we have found out what that is) cannot possibly be contrary to the Scripture, because the Scripture contains the Reason of God; but the Reason of any particular Man may be very contrary to it. So that we want a distinction here: for when we speak of Reason in general terms, every man makes himself the compliment to think that his Reason is the thing intended. But it is one thing to have the Gift of Reason as an human creature, and another thing to have the right use of it. The first we have by Nature; the second is the work of Grace: and if a writer puts one of these for the other, or imagines them to be the same thing, he will soon talk very absurdly. Voltaire has the Gift of Reason; but he has not the gift of using it; for on every subject that relates to Christianity, he reasons like an ideot; yet with a mischievous vein of wit, which easily catthes people of corrupt minds. The philosophizing Greeks, to whom Christ crucified was foolishness, had their Reason like other men, but education had perverted it, and rendered it contradictory to the Reason of God; so that it was of no use to them in divine subjects, but rather

an

an hindrance. A similar train of education will have just the same effect now: and you must not expect, that any person who abuses his Reason, will confess that he does so. He will go on to boast of Reason in general, and make no exceptions to the disadvantage of his own Reason in particular. When human Reason sees things as the wisdom of God sees them, then it performs its proper office: but when it sees them otherwise, then it takes the name of Philosophy, and turns into foolishness, like the boasted Reason of the Greeks, who professing themselves to be rwise, became fools. The world has always been full enough of this sort of Reason. How common is it for people to talk about conscience; and yet how few there are who consider what it is: for conscience is an agreement or coincidence of the judgment of man with the judgment of God. When conscience condemns what God approves, or approves what God condemns; it is no longer conscience, but conceit and delusion. The Conscience of the Quaker assures him that it is needless to be baptized; and the conscience of the Socinian scruples the Worship of the Church of England as Idolatry; but there is no more reason in the one or the other, than