that, as a part of natural religion, the forgiveness of sins was surrounded with too much uncertainty to be the source of any comfort, or the spring of any exertion in the human breast. But that there are solid foundations of truth and justice laid for it, cannot, I think, be doubted: it seems absurd to think otherwise. For if the venerable attributes of the Almighty stood opposed to the forgiveness of the penitent; if his holiness, for instance, admitted not of the exercise of his clemency; or justice, in regard to the whole of his moral creation, forbade the extension of mercy to a part; nothing could, nothing ought to prevent the punishment of offenders. In this case, the Divine goodness would acquiesce in the execution of a sentence calculated to repress disorders, and establish the influence of just and salutary laws. It is most certain that the covenant of mercy would never have been offered to the acceptance of sinners, if it were not strictly consistent with the natural principles of equity and justice. That men were unable to make this application of them, is a proof of the weakness of their judginent, rather than of any inherent intricacy or difficulty in the subject itself. Yet this fact of the hesitation of unassisted reason in regard to the forgiveness of the penitent, has often been adduced as an argument that the exercise of pardon is something extrinsic from the original plan of the Divine government, and that our Maker constructed his laws upon a principle that would have consigned us to hopeless perdition, had not other provisions been made, by which the strictness of the original law was modified and, as it were, evaded. Nothing can well be plainer (considered in the abstract) than that creatures who are by nature ignorant and imperfect, are by their very constitution intended for a state of trial, and therefore are of course proper objects of pardon upon repentance. It is true that when men have not enjoyed the blessing of revelation, their cruel rites have testified the fears with which their guilt has inspired them; but shall we argue that their fears were just in their full extent, and that the authors of such odious modes of worship are to be consulted for proper conceptions of that holy Being in whom all venerable and

all amiable attributes unite? Be cause poor ignorant Heathens, overwhelmed by a sense of the vast and irresistible power of the Deity, from which their fear taught them to argue the existence of cruel purposes and severe vengeance, have gone into his presence with every mark of terror and apprehension, and have sought to appease him by the immolation of innocent victims, and by the groans of their fellow-men inhumanly sacrificed upon their altars, are we to believe that God is really a Being of that implacable disposition, or that he regards his offending creatures with that severity, which is by these disgusting rites implied? God forbid. Reason overcome by fear might thus err; but the voice of revelation speaks very differently. Witness that noble passage in which Micah reports the answer of Balaam the son of Beor: "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God?" &c. Nothing can more finely or distinctly express the impartial goodness of God than this passage. And the Old Tes tament abounds in passages that express the same sublime and admirable sentiments: so that the Jews appear to have been preserved from entertaining any of those terrific conceptions of the Deity, which have given so much disturbance to the other nations of the world; or at least if in any case they gave way to them they generally fell into Heathenism, which afforded rites of worship more expressive of such terror than any thing contained in the Mosaic ritual. For, however burdensome, and even disgusting, some of the Mosaic ceremonies may appear, yet, when we compare them with the details of heathen worship, they will be found comparatively reasonable and becoming; and a just examination of them will shew them to have been framed on a model as rational and spiritual, as the crude, unformed dispositions of that stubborn and carnal people would admit of. Why even amongst the Jews, the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins was still attended with difficulties, admits of the following explanation: Moses was not commissioned to publish the doctrine of a resurrection from the dead. And when men were assured of no other state of being to succeed the present, there was some force in the objection,

"If our transgressions and sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?" The instances of the inevitable consequences of sinful courses, which are at all times melancholy and afflicting spectacles, must, in such circumstances, have been dreadfully perplexing. But under the Christian dispensation, the humble penitent who, though late, has fully discovered his errors, and has exercised himself in the painful road of amendment, acquiesces with submission, or even with gratitude, in those severe chastisements by which he has been reclaimed, whilst he looks forward with hope to that blessed change of being which shall relieve him from the burdens fastened upon him by sin, and shall admit him to that blissful state promised to all them that are purified from their iniquities through Jesus Christ.

SIR,

Н. Т.

Edinburgh, January 13, 1821. THE paragraph numbered 5, in

to want some explanation: "The probability is that he," Luke, "used a former and more concise edition, as we may term it, of his predecessor's Gospel." Yet, a little farther on, the writer seems to assert, that Luke's Gospel was written first. I shall feel obliged to him for an explanation of the sentence I have quoted. I think also that he will find it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile Matt. i. ii. with the first two chapters of Luke, or with the genealogy in Luke iii., or the fact that Jesus was thirty years old in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. The arguments which have been offered by Dr. Priestley and others, I think, fully prove that Matthew i. ii. are spurious. But I cannot perceive any sufficient proof of the first two chapters in Luke being spurious. There is nothing that deserves to be called external evidence against them. According to them, the appearance of the angel to Zacharias might happen a very short time before the death of Herod, and Jesus might be born a year and a half after Herod's death. All the other difficulties in these chapters may, I think, be satisfactorily explained by those who believe that Luke wrote, like any other biographer, from the best information

prevailed in the world at the time of its promulgation, and to establish in its stead the knowledge and worship of the one living and true God. And this object has been gloriously accomplished. That this was one of the great purposes which Christianity was intended to answer, is explicitly stated by the Apostle Paul, in his manly address to his auditors at Athens, an address which may almost be considered as prophetic of the extensive diffusion of Christianity, and of the effects by which its propagation would be followed. It may, perhaps, be said, that nature so clearly teaches the being, unity and perfections of God, that, without the aid of revelation, mankind must in time have emancipated thenselves from idolatry and superstition, and have attained to all necessary and useful knowledge of the Creator. What they could have done for themselves is by no means certain; what has been done for them is manifest and unquestionable. And it is also indisputable, that, where the light of revelation was withheld, they had made but very small advances towards the attainment of the knowledge in question. On such a point it would be folly to speak with confidence; but I doubt exceedingly,

whether, without the assistance of revelation, the bulk of mankind would at any period have arrived at the conception that there is one God only, and that God a being of infinite perfection. This conception seems to us easy and simple, and the evidence on which it rests to be irresistible. But the arguments by which it is supported, exclusive of revelation, are not adapted to the level of every mind. The fundamental proposition that contrivance implies a contriver, is indeed a proposition of which every man can perceive the force; but much more than this must have been apprehended before we could have reached the sublime view of the Deity which is conveyed in the volume of revelation. Perhaps it will be objected, that the great majority of Christians do not, properly speaking, believe the unity of God, and that their views of his character are far from being consistent and honourable. This is unhappily too true. But the Christian Scriptures contain the remedy for the evil; and the time cannot fail to come when the evil will be remedied. Nor can it reasonably be doubted but that the time will also come when idolatry in every form will be banished from the face of the earth, and that by the sole influence of the Christian revelation.

But another avowed object of Christianity was to teach the doctrine of future life and retribution; and this object it has most fully accomplished. Wherever its light has been diffused, it has shed its beams over the darkness of the grave, and has inspired not only the hope, but the assurance of immortality. And this may be regarded as some presumption of its truth, if we reflect, that were we now, for the first time, informed that God had given a revelation of his will to men, our first inquiry would probably be, whether this revelation professed to solve the grand problem, Is man intended to survive the grave? And if he is in truth born for immortality, it surely were not unworthy of the Deity to interfere in an extraordinary manner to acquaint him with his high destination. It is indeed sometimes said, that a revelation was not wanted to teach the doctrine of a future life, since this is taught with sufficient clearness in the volume of nature, and was confidently maintained by the philosophers

of old. On this subject I have given my opinion very explicitly on several occasions, and shall, therefore, not enlarge upon it now. I shall only remark, in relation to the ancient philosophers, that we have their arguments in our hands, and can therefore judge for ourselves of the conviction which they were likely to produce. I cannot, however, help adding an observation, in which I am confirmed by that great master of reasoning, Dr. Priestley, that the ancients did not employ the hope of immortality either as a motive to duty or as a topic of consolation in those cases where its influence would have been most seasonable and useful.* The inference from this fact (and a fact it is) is obvious and certain.

But again, Christianity has established a pure and perfect system of morality. This, I trust, I may consider as granted. And it deserves observation, that the moral precepts which are laid down in the Christian Scriptures are delivered with a tone of authority which admirably accords with the supposition, that they who taught them were inspired. No premises are laid down from which certain conclusions are drawn; there is no trace of an intellectual process by which the truth of certain principles had been ascertained, but every precept is left to rest either on its own evidence, or on the acknowledged claims of the teacher by whom it is inculcated. And little as Christians in general have been disposed to practise the morality of their religion, that man must have been very unfortunate in his social intercourse, who has not seen many instances in which the principles of Christianity have trained the sincere believer to as high a degree of moral excellence as human nature could be expected to attain. Some will object, that were Christianity divine, its efficacy would

*I do not mean that in the cases alluded to, they never make mention of a future existence. But when they make mention of it, it is merely as one branch of an alternative by which they endeavour to prove that death is not to be regarded themselves impressed with it, may be as an evil. And how little they were inferred with sufficient certainty from the stress which they lay on other considerations which they conceived were calcu lated to mitigate the poignancy of grief.

be more generally felt, and that its celestial origin would clearly manifest itself in the lives of the great majority of its professors. Not now to inquire into the causes why its moral influence is not greater than it is, it will be sufficient to observe, that had it been the Divine intention that the human race at large should rapidly attain to the perfection of moral excellence, they would have been differently constituted to what they are. Forgetting the manifest plan of Providence, we demand more from revelation than we had any just reason to expect from it, and then are apt to conclude that Christianity cannot be divine, because our demands have not been satisfied. But what I wished principally to remark in relation to the present subject was, the advantage of having a perfect standard of morality which is acknowledged to be divine. To say nothing of its influence upon individuals, it must have a happy effect in modifying the public opinion on all subjects connected with morality; and he who knows the mighty influence which public opinion has upon human conduct will not think lightly of any thing by which this powerful engine can be controlled and regulated. Will it be said that this high standard of morals has not governed public opinion in the degree which might have been expected from its divine authority? I have virtually replied to this objection already. Suffice it then to say, that it has been the means of effecting a happy change in the manners and condition of mankind, and that it has a certain operation even upon those who know little of its nature, and who feel no solicitude to conform their lives to its requisitions. But if the perfection of this standard be granted, the question may be put with irresistible force in relation to our Lord, Whence had this man this knowledge?

My last observation respects the spirituality of the religious worship which is prescribed by Christianity. How prone mankind have ever been to attach forms and ceremonies to religion, or rather to place religion in them, their history most fully shews. Even Christians, with the Scriptures in their hands, and in direct defiance of the genius of their religion, have appended numerous frivolities to the simple worship which alone can plead

the authority of their great Master. He merely taught that God, as a Spirit, should be worshiped in spirit and in truth. Beyond this he enjoined nothing. But who was Jesus Christ as far as he was not a teacher sent from God? A Jew, nursed in the bosom of a religion abounding with ceremonies, ceremonies to which he might have been expected to feel the same attachment with the rest of his countrymen. Yet, without questioning the divinity of the Mosaic ritual, without casting any reflection on the formalities which he dismissed from his more pure and exalted system, he simply enjoins that God should be worshiped, and prescribes no formalities with which his worship should be accompanied. With what hypothesis, but that of divine illumination, such a conduct can accord, I am altogether at a loss to conceive. Imposture is, I think, confessedly out of the question; and that would be a very singular enthusiasm which should reject every thing that could kindle the imagination, and which in its operation should surpass the ordinary effects of the most sober and enlightened reason. Upon the whole, the simplicity of the Christian worship is as strong a presumption of the divine origin of the religion as can well be imagined, and must surely have its weight with every mind to which all presumptive reasoning is not addressed in vain.

SIR,

E. COGAN.

N opinion prevails generally, that

Matthias was made by election and lot one of the apostles; and when I have controverted it, the answer has most frequently been, that, as the apostles were inspired persons, the propriety of their actions could not be called in question. If this is allowed, and it cannot be allowed, I think, by those who attend to the early propagation of Christianity, it may still be asked on what grounds are we to believe that at that time they acted by inspiration. When our Saviour ascended from this earth, he gave them a charge to remain at Jerusalem, till they received authority from on high; and this authority was made manifest on the glorious day of Pentecost. Before that time it does not appear that they publicly proclaimed the truths of