religion, worthy of a philosophical deist, is uninspired natural religion; and that, As human reason alone is amply sufficient to guide us into all needful truth, a divine communication is no less unnecessary in the abstract, than all pretensions to such communication are false in the concrete. If we ask the specific ground, on which the latter system is preferred to the former; we are told, that the religion of the Bible is hampered by too many difficulties to be rationally credible and these difficulties are forthwith produced and expatiated upon with no small degree of triumphant satisfaction. But here a question naturally rises; Whether the deistical scheme itself, in all its component parts, be free from difficulties and objections: for that, which is preferred to Christianity on the express score of the difficulties attendant upon revealed religion, ought certainly in reason to be as free as possible from all liability to the unpleasantness of a direct and wellfounded retort. In the following discussion, the question now before us is answered in the negative. Its purpose is to show, not only that Infidelity has its own proper difficulties as well as Christianity, but that those difficulties are imcomparably greater and more formidable: for, while the alleged difficulties attendant upon Christianity have repeatedly met with an adequate solution, though deistical writers are accustomed confidently to urge and reurge them without taking the slightest notice of the answers which have been so often afforded; the difficulties attendant upon Infidelity are of such a nature, that they never can be solved to the satisfaction of an unbiassed and rational inquirer. Hence results the plain and self-evident conclusion: that, Since Infidelity is encumbered by more and greater difficulties than Christianity, to adopt the infidel system evinces more credulity than to adopt the Christian system. The principle, in fine, of the argument, which has been prosecuted throughout the ensuing pages, is the reductio ad absurdum. By a specification of the immense insuperable difficulties which on all sides beset his system, the deistical infidel, even on ground of his own selection, is convicted of gross irrationality. August 6th, 1823. It will be proper to state, that this work was written as a competitory Treatise on the proposition, That there is more credulity in the disbelief of Christianity than in the belief of it: a proposition, which was adopted by the Church Union Society in the Diocese of St. David's as the subject of their Essay for the year 1823. January 20th, 1824. CONTENTS. It is useful not to suffer Infidelity to be always the assailant of revealed religion, but occasionally to carry the war into the country of the enemy himself. By such a process it will be found, that to reject revelation evinces more credulity than to retain it: because the difficulties attendant upon unbelief are greater than the difficulties I. A statement of the possible grounds and reasons of Infidelity. 1. A discussion of the first possible ground: that A revelation from heaven cannot, in the very nature of things, take place. 2. A discussion of the second possible ground: that A revelation from heaven is in itself so improbable an occurrence that it beggars all credibility. p. 4. 3. A discussion of the third possible ground: that The evidences, upon which our reception of a system claiming to be a divine revelation is demanded, are so unsatisfactory, that they are insufficient to command our reasonable assent. p. 5. 4. A discussion of the fourth possible ground: that Numerous objections exist in the case of each system claiming to be a 6. A discussion of the sixth possible ground: that Our unassisted reason is sufficient, and therefore that a revelation is un- II. A summary of the grounds of a Christian's belief. p. 14. III. A summary of the grounds of an infidel's unbelief. p. 15. The difficulties attendant upon deistical Infidelity in the abstract rejec- tion of all revelation from God. p. 17. Deism presents so many difficulties, that, unless they can be satisfac- torily removed, the presumption will be, that a revelation from God to man has actually been made. p. 17. I. Though the deist may be able to prove from the frame of the world, that it must have been created, he is unable to prove that it was created by one only God. p. 17. II. If it be allowed to him for the sake of argument, that there is one only God, he is unable to demonstrate the moral attributes of 1. He cannot demonstrate the justice of God. p. 21. 2. He cannot demonstrate the mercy of God. p. 25. 3. He cannot demonstrate the goodness of God. p. 28. III. Thus unable to demonstrate the moral attributes of God, he is of necessity ignorant what service will be pleasing to him. IV. All these difficulties in the deistical scheme draw after them the crowning difficulty, that God, whose works evince his wisdom, yet acted so unwisely as to place his creature man in the world without giving him the least instruction or information relative From the fact of the general deluge, taken as a specimen of the mode |