important truths revealed by God, and committed to ourselves for unreserved acceptation and belief. Therefore it is, that although the most particular and cardinal points of their system have been repeatedly discussed and overthrown by far more able defenders of our faith, it may yet be useful to have taken a comprehensive view of the whole, and shortly to have demonstrated the fallacy of each peculiar doctrine which that sect has avowed. The indolent may not be terrified at so short a discussion of the matter; and since the proofs on which I have insisted have been chiefly drawn from passages of holy Writ, whose authenticity is not denied, even by our adversaries, a demonstration of the falsehood of their tenets is thereby afforded, which must carry conviction to any unbiassed mind, whether of the learned or unlearned. The Apostle exhorts us to "prove all

66

things, and hold fast that which is good." I have proceeded so to do, upon that which, in spite of whatsoever presumption may suggest to the human mind, ought ever to be esteemed the best proof: I have proved

the truth of those doctrines which we hold and they refuse, by the word of him whose word is truth. Such evidence as this lies well within the compass of the most ordinary capacity, and is at the same time the most convincing testimony which can be laid before the brightest and most cultivated abilities. The inductions which appear at first sight to be reasonable, may upon farther examination be found to have been unfairly drawn: the course of an argument may be warped, and its result unfairly stated. Of abstract reasonings, the unlearned are not competent judges; neither are those, who, with better abilities and means of information, neglect to give the subject a full investigation. Whether they do thus from presumption or negligence, or from a prejudice previously conceived in favour of new and strange doctrines, and what are falsely called liberal ideas in religion; neither of them is more likely to convince the gainsayer, or themselves, to learn and to hold fast that which is good. The word of God, however, on this as well as on all other points of vital importance,

is clear to all who do not seek to wrest it to their own purposes. To that we must all bow, and on its foundation may securely make our stand, and defy alike the snares and assaults of the infidel.

And let it be remembered, that we enter upon this controversy, not as on one which we have provoked by any novel opinions of ours, but in defence of that which has been the Christian faith from the first: which was, with very few exceptions, universally held in the earliest and purest ages of the Christian Church, the age of the Apostles themselves, and of their contemporaries and immediate successors. The Unitarian, proud in his own conceit of his own reason, will tell us, when he finds that venerable authority to be against him, that it is of no value compared with the discoveries which the freedom of religious inquiry has now made known. But that freedom is not now for the first time so employed; for we all know, that in the earliest times there were a few who erred, and overthrew the faith of some: there were those who, being unlearned and un

stable, wrested the Scriptures, as these do now, to their own destruction. The Unitarians indeed still tell us, that they were the primitive Church, who did thus, though their assertion has long ago been most triumphantly refuted, by the learning and abilities of a distinguished Prelate of our own days. They still keep alive the dispute, and hazardous as controversy is to the truly Christian spirit, yet it does not therefore become us to permit their dangerous doctrines and fallacious assertions to pass unheeded, dispersing their mischief, and scattering their snares on every side, to poison and entrap the unwary. All Christians, but particularly those dedicated to the sacred office, are called upon to come forward; to take to them "the "whole armour of God," and " fight the

66

good fight of faith;" but never let us forget that which in the heat of controversy is too often allowed to escape our recollection, that "the weapons of our "warfare are not carnal." If it be almost impossible to suppress indignation at the coarse and profane manner in which things

the most sacred are occasionally treated by the adversary, yet should a strict guard be kept over the mind of him who engages in the question, lest his indignation degenerate into anger and personal animosity.

But whatever be the dangers which this controversy shares in common with all others, still it is not to be considered as altogether unproductive of good. The mercies of God are never more conspicuous, never more loudly call for our gratitude, than when, from the evil attempts of his enemies, he produces good to his faithful servants; when he makes those questions which the unbeliever agitates, in the hope of disturbing the belief of Christians, the means of strengthening and confirming that faith; by causing its evidences, and the immoveable authority on which it rests, to be laid in every possible form before the eyes of the world. of the world. Controversy on the great fundamental articles of our religion, like the moving of the waters at Bethesda, excites a salutary influence, of which those who go fairly into it, to seek the good which God has sent to man, be