SECOND LETTER FROM THE REV. FRANCIS STONE, ON HIS LATE VISITATION SERMON.

SIR,

To the Editor of the Monthly Repository.

CANNOT resist the temptation to treat as well my Trini tarian, as my Unitarian Christian brethren, preachers, both within and without the pale of the Church, with a copy of a resolution passed by the committee for auditing the accounts of the Clergy's Fund, at Baddow, Essex, in June; and of another by the Southern Unitarian Society, at their annual meeting at Horsham, Sussex, in July. The two resolutions exhibit a striking contrast.-" Resolved, that the offer of 51. by Francis Stone, Rector of Cold Norton, towards the support of the Fund for the benefit of the widows and orphans of the Essex Clergy, as being the profits of two editions of his blasphemous and heretical Visitation Sermon, be rejected with disdain." (N. B. I cannot be quite exact in copying every word, as I have left the original with a particular friend). "Resolved, that the thanks of this Society be given to the Rev. Francis Stone, for the exertion he made in the cause of truth, by preaching and publishing the Sermon, which he delivered on the 8th day of July, 1806.' Now Mr. Editor," utrum horum mavis accipe." You see, like the apostles, I have my share of "evil report and good report." I leave it to Unitarian Christians in general to determine, whether the former resolution be not highly seasoned with the cayenne of acerdotal arrogance, insolence, ignorance and intolerance. With respect to the latter resolution, I cannot evince my gratitude to the society for their honourable testimony to my exertions in the cause of truth, more to their and my own satisfaction, than by a devout, cordial

prayer to God to prosper their active, well-tempered zeal to diffuse, after the example of Christ, and in conjunction with thre London and other country societies of the kind, the knowledge of, and the sole exercise of worship due to the "one living and true God, the Father," through the whole human race, by the distribution of appropriate tracts on the subject. The Unitarian Fund Society is also worthy of all praise for setting apart a portion of it for the support of preachers among the dissenters on the Unitarian plan. I beg leave to suggest a hint that if the Fund should increase so as to admit providing the public watering-places, as well inland as maritime, with chapels and ministers for this great and good purpose during the season, they would form something of a counterpoize to the influence of Methodist preachers, with which these places abound, especially if the former be careful to deliver their discourses with force and energy, and with a suitable natural action and gesture, but free from their noise and rant.

I have the honour to be, Mount-Sion, Your obliged Friend, and obedient Servant, Tunbridge Wells, Oct. 3d. FRANCIS STONE.

AN EPISTLE OF GROTIUS, ON THE SILENCE OF THE EVANGELISTS, CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF CHRIST'S LIFE, PREVIOUSLY TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY.

To Peter Puteau.

Paris.

SIR, Is answer to the question which a friend lately put to you, Why they who wrote the books which we call the gospels, relate none of the actions of our Lord, except what Luke mentions as happening in his twelfth year, till he was thirty years of age? the matter appears to me in this light :-The subject which an author is to handle, or which he is to pass over, is to be determined by the design of his work. The apostles and their disciples did not intend to write an indiscriminate history of Christ but the great topic, which they published in their preaching, and which they committed to writing was, as the title, gospel, intimates, the new doctrine, that required sincere repentance and promised remision of sins and eternal life: which was preached in a way of preparation by the baptist, perfectly promulgated by Christ, and by the apostles, under an express command, carried into the whole world. Matt. iv. 23.

Tx. 35. xxiv. 14. Mar. i. 14. Eph. vi. 15. Acts x. 36. Luke xvi. 16. Hence every doctfine disagreeing with the doctrine of Christ is called another gospel. 2 Cor. xi. 4. Gal. i. 6. But the death of Christ, his resurrection, ascension into heaven and the gifts of the holy spirit, by all which he was declared to be the Son of God, attested the truth of the doctrine and the certainty of the promise revealed by him. Hence the gospels consist of two parts, doctrine, and history confirming the doctrine. A witness of his resurrection, Peter says, must be ordained out of those who had conversed with Christ from the time that John began to baptize, till he himself was taken up into heaven. Acts i. 22. And he elsewhere, chap. x. 37, calls the principles which were published through Judea, beginning in Galilee, after the baptism which John preached, THE WORD. Luke describes his treatise as a narrative of those things which Jesus did and taught from the time he began to teach and work miracles, even till he was taken up. Acts i. 1, 2. The first miracle which he performed, was at Cana, in Galilee, John ii. 11. after he had been baptized by John; which happened in his thirtieth year. Luke iii, 23. In this instance it was the will of God, that the law, which did not admit the Levites to their sacred office before that age, should be observed by Christ. Num. iv, 3. 47. 1 Chron. xxiii. 3. The relations of his divine origin by the apostle John, of his human descent by Matthew and Luke, and of the pledges of his future character in the temple given by the last writer; are to be looked upon as prefaces, to point to and recommend the person, from whom each gospel would derive its authority. Therefore as nothing relative to his great office was done by Christ before that mature age, the former period is properly passed over in silence by the sacred writers'; for he spent his life till then in privacy and in subjection to his supposed father and mother, Luke ii. 51. Hence he was not only called rexlovos vos, the Son of a carpenter. Matt. xiii. 55, but he is described as rexlwv, a carpenter. Mark vi. 3. Justin Martyr speaks of his making ploughs and yokes and other articles. In the books of the Old Testament, you will observe that often nothing is said of the prophets till the word of the Lord came unto them : that is till the time αναδείξεως αυτών προς τον Ισραήλ, till their showing unto Israel, as it is expressed by Luke. c. í. 8o. This is the circumstance intimated in the phrase," a prophet, arose."

REMARKS.

The reasons assigned by Grotius, in the preceding passage, for the silence of the Evangelists, concerning the private period of Christ's

life, will appear, it is conceived, just and satisfactory. But they not only justify the sacred historians, but shew them to be considerate and judicious writers. A credibility is by these means derived to their narrative. It is formed to answer a precise and definite end, that is, to exhibit Jesus in his public character, and to give such specimens of his discourses and works, as were sufficient to illustrate the nature of his doctrine, and to evince the truth of his mission. It was not their intention to gratify a vain curiosity, to raise an useless astonishment in the minds of the reader, or to pour out lavish eulogiums on the subject of their history. Had they been governed by a disposition to exaggerate, forge and invent; would they have written in a strain so moderate and modest? Would they have kept themselves within the limits of the public ministry of their master, or confined themselves to those scenes, in the narrative of which, as being public, they were most open to detection, if they deviated from real facts? This is very different from the tenor of the Apocryphal gospels, very different from a fictitious fable, very different from the legends of popish saints, very different indeed, from those genuine histories, which are meant to give a full delineation of a character, and to set off, to all possible advantage, a distinguished and eminent personage. While my pen has been in my hand, I have met with a passage in the candid Lardner, so much to the purport of these remarks, that I am tempted to give it.

"How simple and plain, how free from all pomp and ostentation, is the beginning of every gospel. The writer enters immediately upon the matters of fact he has to relate, without any laboured introduction, without any attempt to raise the expectation, or engage the af. fections of the reader. If it had been an artificial story, invented and composed with design, we should have many other particulars in it than are now there. They have not sought out occasions to enhance their Master's honour. The former part of his life is almost entirely passed over, and, besides his miraculous birth, the obeisance paid him by the wise men, and some extraordinary circumstances at the purification of the virgin, scarce any notice of him from that time to his public appearance at about the age of thirty, excepting that one fact of his arguing with the doctors in the temple. Luke. ii. 46. Had it been a story forged and contrived, his infancy and youth had not been thus slightly passed over: we should have had many accounts of wonderful preservations, and a miraculous providence attending him all along, there would have been related divers omens and presages of the figure he was afterwards to make in the world; numerous specimens of pregnant capacity and zeal: whereas the historians have al most immediately entered upon his public appearance, which was, what mankind was chiefly concerned in."

B -m.

Lardner's Works, Vol. x. p. 552, 553.

J.T.

SUPPLEMENT TO MR. KENRICK'S SERMONS ON THe state

OF THE DEAD.

Sir,

To the Editor of the Monthly Repository.

If you think the following scriptural argument for the suspension of consciousness between death and the resurrection, worthy of a place in your Repository, you may insert it. It was drawn up as a supplement to the three sermons on the state of the dead, in the first volume of the excellent sermons of the late Rev. T. Kenrick.

LANDTERB.

1. If man enjoy continued consciousness through the intervening time between death and the resurrection, he must grow better, or worse, or neither.

2. That he should remain of exactly the same character, without the smallest alteration in the nature or degree of it, though he had the exercise of his mental faculties and affections during that interval, which his being in a state of consciousness would imply, is contrary to all our experience and observation in the present state, and inconceivable without supposing, that the Deity will employ a perpetual miracle to prevent any change of character.

3. That the Deity should make use of a constant miracle for such purpose, is contrary to all reasoning, from analogy and from the nature of man, and has no countenance whatsoever from the light of naturę or of revelation.

4. If a man's character should undergo a change during his existence in an intermediate state, it will be different in some respect or other at the close of that period from what it was at the commencement.

5. If at the end of that period and when the day of judgment is arrived, his character be different from what it was at the time of his death, and the sentence he then receives be one that is suited and proportioned to the character, with which he quitted the present life, it will be adapted to a character, which in nature, degree, or both, no longer exists, and the righteous Judge of mankind will not treat him according to what he then is.

6. If on the other hand his sentence be adapted to his then present character, he will not receive the things done in the body acccording to what he had done whether good or evil, which is contrary to express declarations in the New Testament. See Rom. ii. 6. 2 Cor. v. 10. Gal. vi. 7. Eph. vi. 8, &c. &c.

7. From the preceding articles it follows, that, whether the senence passed on man at the judgment, be adapted to the one or the