aside the intention of publishing this. Although many of the arguments and sentiments, and even some of the expressions here used, are very similar to some in the Appeal; yet as the subject appears here in a new form, and as no one sentence of it, I believe, is entirely the same, it appears to me, that it will both please and profit the readers, to whom the memory of that man of God is very dear, and every thing that dropped from his pen acceptable. I wish I could also furnish the remaining four parts.

J. BENSON.

A DIALOGUE

BETWEEN

A MINISTER AND ONE OF HIS PARISHIONERS.

PART FIRST.

Containing an account of the doctrine to be examined.

PARISHIONER.-Though I have hitherto avoided conversing with you on religious subjects, I hear you in the church, and am well acquainted with the doctrines you chiefly enforce. They always appeared to me so singular, (to use no harsher expression,) that I could not help being greatly prejudiced against you; but having at length reason to hope, from the exemplariness of your life, that you mean well, and are open to conviction, I come to lay my objections before you, with the freedom of a well wisher to your ministry, and the simplicity of an inquirer after truth.

Minister. The motive of your visit makes it doubly agreeable. One of my greatest pleasures is to converse with such of my parishioners as are willing to expostulate, or advise with me about spiritual things: but, alas! most of them, through strong prejudice or false shame, refuse me this satisfaction and delight.

Par. I never could prevail with myself to wait upon you before last Sunday; as you was then reading the twenty-fifth chapter of the Acts, I was struck with the 16th verse, where Festus says, "that it was not the custom of the Romans, [who were but heathens,] to condemn any man, before he had had his accusers face to face, with liberty to answer for himself, concerning the crime laid against him." And I concluded that I came short of heathen honesty, in condemning you as an enthusi astic preacher, before I had given you an opportunity of answering for yourself.

Min.-You see that "all Scripture is profitable for reproof, or for instruction:" may we in all cases apply it with as much candour as you have done in this! If you please, then, propose your objections; the more frank and open you are, the more I shall account you an advocate of truth, and a friend to me.

Par. Your request agrees with my design; and I shall, without apology, tell you what gives me offence in your doctrine. And to begin with what you often begin with yourself, let me ask, Do you not go much too far when you speak of man's depravity and danger?

You say that we are all in a fallen, lost, undone state by nature, that our understanding is blind in spiritual things, our reason impaired, our will perverse, our conscience defiled, our memory weakened, our imagination extravagant, our affections disordered, our members instruments of iniquity, and our life altogether sinful. You suppose that till a change pass upon us we remain dead in sin, under the curse of God's broken law, and exposed every moment to eternal destruction of body and soul. You repre

sent us as so amazingly helpless, that we can no more, without the power of Divine grace, recover ourselves out of this deplorable state, than we can raise the dead: and, in short, you declare, that unless we are duly sensible of these melancholy truths, we neither can truly repent, nor unfeignedly embrace the Gospel. Is not this a true account of your doctrine?

Min.-It is: I readily assent to it.

Par.-Believe me, the oddity, harshness, and uncharitableness of these tenets disgust the generality of your hearers, as well as myself. We live in an age when people have too much sense to imbibe such dismal notions, and too much wisdom to be frightened into godliness. Let me advise, let me entreat you to give over preaching damnation at this rate. Do but condescend to be more fashionable, and your character will be less offensive.

Min.-I thank you for your advice of becoming fashionable. I will follow it as soon as I am convinced that a preacher is to discard truth, and take fashion for his guide: but till then, "whether you will hear, or whether you will forbear, I must not shun to declare to you the whole counsel of God," Ezek. ii, 7; Acts xx, 27. And if some parts of it do not suit your taste, consider that, as the best medicines may be very unpalatable, so the most necessary doctrines may be extremely unpleasant. You value your physician for consulting your health rather than your taste; blame not me then for what you approve in him, and remember that our Lord himself, though filled with "the meekness of wisdom," could not avoid offending "many of his disciples;" for St. John says that when they heard him "they murmured and went back," with the usual complaint, "This is a hard saying: who can bear it?" John vi, 60.

Par.-If our Lord's doctrine was disagreeable to the Jews, it was true and salutary: but yours is generally supposed to be false and pernicious.

Min.-If the doctrine of our fallen state, as you have just now represented it, is not true, and conducive to spiritual health, I advise you my. self to reject it, though it were preached by an angel from heaven. But, should its truth and importance be asserted by the joint testimony of Scripture, reason, experience, and our own Church, I hope that you will receive it as a good though unpalatable medicine.

Par.-Reason and experience will convince a candid Deist, and the declarations of our Church, supported by revelation, will silence the objections of an honest Churchman: you may therefore assure yourself, that if your doctrine is confirmed by this fourfold authority, I shall oppose it no more.

The minister, having expressed the satisfaction which his visiter's answer gave him, and the pleasure he should feel in being directed right if he were wrong, resumed the subject in the

SECOND PART.

Wherein the apostasy and misery of man are proved from Scripture.

Min.-Let us first bring the doctrine of the fall to the touchstone of Scripture: "To the law and to the testimony, (says the prophet,) for if

we speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in us," Isa. viii, 20.

We read, Gen. i, 26, that God made man not only in his natural image, with life, understanding, and will, which constitute the being of good or bad spirits: but also after his moral likeness, i. e. "in righteousness and true holiness," according to St. Paul's definition of it, Eph. iv, 24. In this moral resemblance of God consists the well being, or Divine life of good spirits. While man continued in it, his spotless soul was actuated by the Spirit of God, as our bodies are by our souls, and eternal truth itself pronounced him very good, Gen i, 31.

But how soon-how low did he fall! In the third chapter we see him .overcome by the tempter in disguise: he wickedly believes the father of lies before the God of truth: he proudly aspires to be equal with his Maker; and, in order to it, madly places appetite on the throne of reason. Thus unbelief, the besetting sin of man; pride, which the apostle calls "the condemnation of the devil," 1 Tim. iii, 6; and sensuality, the characteristic of the beast, invade his unguarded soul. And now, "when lust had conceived, it brought forth sin," Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, "and sin, when it was finished, brought forth death," James i, 15. It instantly quenched the Spirit, put an end to the breathings of prayer and praise in man's heart, defaced the image of God's moral perfections from his breast, "alienated him from the life of God," Eph. iv, 18, and infected his whole nature with the poisonous seeds of temporal and eternal death.

Par. So small a sin as that of tasting some forbidden fruit, could never have so dreadful an effect.

Min.-If Adam's transgression were small, as you say, I could put you in mind that the least spark can blow up the greatest ships, or fire the largest cities; and that the smallest drop of poison (for instance, the froth of a mad dog) can infect the whole animal frame, and communicate itself to millions of men and beasts, by means of the smallest bite.

But this is not the case with regard to that sin, under which "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now," Rom. viii, 22. I readily grant the prohibition was small; but this made the sin so much the greater: for it argues the height of rebellion, deliberately to refuse paying so insignificant a homage to so great a Being. Beside, if you consider all the circumstances of our first parents' disobedience, you will find in it a complication of some of the most heinous crimes. Not to mention again unbelief, pride, and sensuality: an unreasonable discontent in their happy condition, a wanton squandering away of the richest patrimony, a barbarous disregard of their offspring, a base ingratitude for the highest favours, and an impious confederacy with Satan against the kindest of benefactors, are some of the black ingredients of what you call a small sin, but might justly term an execrable transgression.

Par. Suppose Adam's offence was as great as you conceive it to be, you should not conclude, without strong proofs, that it totally destroyed God's moral image, in which his soul was at first created.

Min.-The sad effects which it had upon him, are such proofs as amount to a demonstration. Follow the wretch after the commission of his crime, and you will find him proud and sullen, in the midst of shame

and disgrace. So stript is his soul of original righteousness, that he feels, even in his body, the shameful consequence of his spiritual nakedness, Gen. iii, 7. So perverted are his affections that he dreads, hates, and runs away from his bountiful Creator, who was before the object of his warmest love and purest delight, Gen. iii, 8. So impaired is his boasted reason, that he attempts to hide himself from Him "who fills heaven and earth, and whose eyes are in every place." So amazingly weak is his understanding, that he endeavours to cover his guilt and shame with an apron of fig leaves, verse 7. So impenitent, so stubborn is his breast, that he does not vouchsafe to plead guilty, or once ask forgiveness, verse 10. So seared is his conscience, and malicious his heart, that he tries to excuse himself, by indirectly accusing his Maker, and turning evidence against the unhappy partner of his crime: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me," says he, "she gave me of the tree," I did not take of it myself, verse 11. Do you see, through all his behaviour, the least remains of God's moral image? For my part, I discover in it nothing but the strongest features of the fiend, with the stupidity of one of the silliest creatures upon earth.

Par."The stupidity of one of the silliest creatures upon earth!" What do you mean by this?

Min.-You might have read in natural history, that when the ostrich is closely pursued she hides her head in a bush, in hopes that the pursuers will not see her, because she does not see them. That creature, which, Job says, "God hath deprived of wisdom," is wise, if you compare her to Adam "hid among the trees of the garden;" for by this weak device she endeavours to trick only short-sighted man, but our first parent attempted to impose on the all-seeing God.

Par.-You are excessively severe upon Adam!

Min.-Not so severe as the just Judge, who, by driving him out of paradise, deprived him of a privilege which the very beasts enjoyed before the fall. See the apostate flying before the cherub's flaming sword; and in what a miserable condition! In what a wretched dress! Spiritually dead, according to that irrevocable sentence, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,”-dead to God," dead while he lives," 1 Tim. v, 6; "dead in trespasses and sins," Eph. ii, 1; he wears the badge of death, in the skins of those beasts which had probably bled in death in his stead, Gen. iii, 21. Happy, if going beyond the type, he apprehends, by faith, the righteousness of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," Rev. xiii, 8; and covers with that "best robe," the nakedness and shame of his fallen soul!

Par. If Adam was banished out of paradise, no other punishment was inflicted upon him.

Min.-You forget that beside the spiritual death he had already suf fered, he had two deaths more to undergo, the seeds of which already wrought in his breast: for pain, toil, sorrow, and sickness began to ripen his body for temporal death; while sin, guilt, remorse, and tormenting passions made him antedate the horrors of the "lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death," Rev. xxi, 8. Happy, if during his reprieve, the woman's promised seed took sin, the sting of death, out of his heart, and by regeneration fitted him again for paradise and heaven!