into truth, and that corrupt affections never lead a man into error, from which (had his heart been more upright,) he might easily have been preserved, you contradict not only yourself, (compare p. 63, 64.) but the common sense and experience of mankind; and introduce an universal fatality, that worst of monsters, which will swallow up virtue and religion together, and leave the mind an easy prey to every error, and to every vice, which will owe its cheap victory to the air of irresistibility, with which it makes its appearance. And is this, Sir, after all, the situation, in which you would wish to leave the mind of your reader? or is it such a situation that a wise and benevolent man, would think it worthy of his time and labour, to endeavour to bring his own mind, and that of others into it; I would intreat you, Sir, at parting, seriously to consider, how far you would have reason to rejoice in the success of what you have written, if it should be thus successful. I should think nothing more instructive and edifying to you, than to pause on the consequences. You would indeed thereby gain a triumph But would you if you were a soldier, for the sake of that, lay your country in ruins? And what else would your success in this controversy do? Let us suppose men convinced, that neither christianity, nor natural religion, are capable of being rationally defended, or (if you like the expression better,) are not founded on argument: And what follows? You would indeed thereby free some, for whom it is possible you may have some peculiar concern, from the anxiety which the secret apprehensions of religion give them, in the pursuit of their prohibited pleasures: Yet could you not secure them entirely from some recoilings of heart, and anguish of conscience, which will sometimes be thrown into convulsions even by these very opiates. At least, in the intervals of these agonies, you would embolden them to lay the reins on the neck of appetite and passion, which, where human laws, or an innate generosity of temper did not restrain, would trample down every other obstacle, and drive on to the ruin of society. And as for those who are truly religious, you would, as Tully speaks, on supposition of a much sinaller evil, (the ruin of friendship,) take the very sun out of their heaven. You would destroy the entertainment of their solitude, the cement of their friendship, the joy of their prosperity, the support of their adversity, the light of their life, the hope of their death; and would leave the most pious mind, of all others the most desolate. For what desolation can be imagined equal, or comparable, to that of falling from so high a hope, from so glorious a prospect, into the gloomy, cheerless, and hopeless state, in which a mind destitute of religion must of necessity find itself? If this, Sir, were to be the certain effect of reading your book, (as I think it must be, if the principles of it were to be admitted, and its consequences pursued ;) what a calamity must it have been to any wise and good mart to meet with it? I shall not aggravate at large, but only add, that to have been, though ever so undesignedly, the instrument of such mischief, the fatal occasion of grieving the good, of hardening the bad, of subverting religion, and, by an inseparable consequence, of dishonouring God, and of ruining men, is certainly to be numbered among the most lamentable evils. It is possible, indeed, that you did not lay a plot for all this. If you will permit me, Sir, to speak with all plainness and freedom, I am ready in my own judgment to conclude, from comparing one thing with another, that you are a kind of humorous sceptic, who intended chiefly to amuse the world, and to shew your address in puzzling the cause, and attacking christianity in a peculiar disguise, which you apprehend you could manage artfully, on a side which seemed to you most open. Perhaps you attended to no farther consequence, than that some of your readers would smile, and some of them would be confounded, and many say you had played your part in a dexterous manner, and cut out work for divines, who, amidst the variety of forms you assume, might find it more difficult to deal with you, than with an enemy who more openly declares war, and wears a habit by which he may more certainly be known. Views like these may amuse and animate a light imagination, and it may look no farther. But the effect of action depends not on our foresight. This is certain; either religion, both natural and revealed, must be judged irrational; or your book, whatever were meant by it, must be judged pernicious, and must draw after it a very solemn account in the presence of God. I heartily pray, you may be thoughtful of that account in time, and dismiss you, as you did your young correspondent, with a text of scripture, which contains an admonition, the weight of which no intelligent heathen could question. How gaily soever you may have affected to sport yourself, with these important topics, Be not deceived, for God is not mocked; but whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. A harvest of future glory, I suppose, no man in our age and country expects to secure by opposing christianity; and I will venture to say, that, so far as I can learn, few of its enemies, various as their forms, and specious as some of their pretences may have been, have for the present raised the character of their knowledge, or of their virtue, among the best judges and examples of both, by any attack they have made upon it. And if you, Sir, how considerable soever your natural talents may be, should prove the first exception to this general remark, it will be a great surprise to Your most humble Servant, P. DODDRIDGE. Northampton, March 4, 1742-3. |