A Letter to the Common People. The origin and issue of Arianism... I. Arian Writers work upon the pride of the common People. ... PAGE 149 ... .152 155-6 II. They tell them their common sense is a sufficient IV. They try to set them against the Athanasian Creed... Their objection returns much stronger upon themselves.... .157 ....160 V. They forge a contradiction, and put it into the •• . . . 161 ..ibid. VI. Fallible Arians rail at the orthodox for being fallible men: yet these fallible men do not deliver their own doctrines, but such as they receive from an infallible God..... .162 VII. Their prostitution of Protestant principles......164 VIII. Faith of the first Reformers reflected upon by Arian writers; but is an argument against themselves... IX. They think the reformed faith as bad as Popish idolatry: but the ground of their accusation is weak and blasphemous. ...168 171 They alter the Scripture to keep this accusation in countenance 175 178 X. A sophistical objection to the Litany, by the author of The Confessional. XI. The Arians plead seriously for the removal of the orthodox faith, because it is offensive to Jews and Turks.. 181 XII. guished by the God proposed in it, as the object of our faith and obedience and as there is no true religion, but the religion of Christians, so is there no true God, but the God of Christians. Before the coming of Christ, and the fulfilling of the Law, God was known by the name of Jehovah, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. The Israelites, who were the seed of Abraham, and drew their whole religion from a divine revelation, had the knowledge of the true God; and the people of every other nation, who were " aliens from the com"monwealth of Israel, and strangers from the cove"nants of promise," were also without God in the "world." Though they talked much of God, and wrote much of him, and offered him many sacrifices, yet they knew him not: the being they served, was a Eph. ii. 12. not God, but another in the place of him, falsely called by his name. And though some modern Christians have forgot there was any difference, yet the very heathens themselves, upon some occasions, were ready enough to allow it. Naaman the Syrian, when he was cured of his leprosy by the prophet Elisha, made a public confession of it." Behold, 66 now I know that there is no God in all the earth, "but in Israel." The same is affirmed by the inspired Psalmist "All the gods of the heathens are "idols ;" and God himself declares them all to have been vanities c. The case is now with the Christians under the Gospel, as it anciently was with the Jews under the Law: they believe in the only true God; while the unchristian part of mankind, who are by far the majority, either know him not, or wilfully deny him; as Pharaoh did the God of the Hebrews when he was told of him. And we are now got to such a pitch of indevotion and ignorance, that among those who profess and call themselves Christians, there are too many who are almost come to be Heathens without knowing it. For there is a fashionable notion propagated by most of our moral writers, and readily subscribed to by those who say their prayers but sel a 2 Kings v. 15. b Psal. xcvi. 5. c Jer. xiv. 22. dom, dom, and can never find time to read their Bible, that all who worship any God, worship the same God; as if we worshipped the three letters of the word God, instead of the Being meant and understood by it. The Universal Prayer of Mr. Alexander Pope was composed upon this plan; wherein the Supreme Being is addressed as a common Father of all, under the names, Jehovah, Jove, and Lord. And this humour of confounding things, which ought to be distinguished at the peril of our souls, and of comprehending believers and idolaters under one and the same religion, is called a catholic spirit, that shews the very exaltation of Christian charity. But God, it is to be feared, will require an account of it under another name; and though the poet could see no difference, but has mistaken Jove or Jupiter for the same Father of all with the Lord Jehovah; yet the Apostle has instructed us better; who, when the Priest of Jupiter came to offer sacrifice, exhorted him very passionately to "turn from those vanities "unto the living God";" well knowing that he whom the Priest adored under the name of Jupiter, was not the living God, but a creature, a nothing, a vanity. Yet the catholic spirit of a moralist can discern no difference; and while it pretends some |