276 Dissertation concerning the Power and Authority by which Moses acted. had propagated such stories to dis- But what will the objector say to the many material circumstances in which the Hebrew migration totally differs from all others? Those related in profane history are all of a free, armed and warlike people, issuing from barren. or uncultivated regions under the command of some experienced general, to invade a rich and cultivated country, and to attack a people weak and defenceless, or not in a condition to repel the invaders. That of the Hebrews was in all these respects the reverse. They were a weak and timid people, held in slavery by a powerful monarch, destitute of arms and military command, inhabiting a cultivated and plentiful country; yet they all at once relinquish their habitations, transport themselves, families and effects out of the kingdom, by a most difficult and dangerous passage, and pursue their course where they must immediately be reduced to the dreadful dilemma, either of attacking warlike nations and fortified cities, or of wandering with extreme fatigue through desarts, with almost continual hazard of perishing by hunger or thirst. In their state of slavery they might indeed be disposed to catch with eagerness at any prospect or hope of a deliverance; but what hope could they conceive from the utmost efforts of a person destitute of all visible power and means to accomplish the design? How could they be persuaded to place so unbounded a confidence in Moses as to trust wholly to him both for present deliverance and for future safety and support? With what treasures could he bribe the court of Egypt to connive at their departure? or what force could he use at the head of an unarmed, dispirited multitude of slaves? or, by what power of persuasion or authority of command did he inspire the passive Hebrews with such active resolution and vigour ? or, which is more and greater, held them in an almost uninterrupted submission and obedience, for such a length of time, though their sufferings extorted from them, as was natural, some exclamations and wishes that they had died in Egypt? Or, by what means could he deter them from those alluring modes and customs of superstition to which they were fondly addicted, convert them to a religion to which they were disaffected, and impose upon them a multiplicity of duties and services, many of which were both strange and burdensome ? or, how could he secure or restore their veneration and deference, when he most strenuously opposed their favourite prejudices and passions; as for instance, when he seized the golden calf which they had set up in his absence and worshiped as their Egyptian idol, ground it to powder and threw it into the water, which supplied the camp? All this seems ab. solutely inexplicable, if we exclude that awful authority which he derived from above; but if we admit it, all follows in a natural course. Or, how will the objector account for the solemn, pathetic, repeated appeals to the people's experience and perfect remembrance of those miraculous events, intermixed with upbraiding and provoking reflections on their insensibility and stubbornness of temper, expressed with a native dignity and force of language equal if not superior to the most animated strokes of Roman or Grecian eloquence? In these we find an appeal to their consciousness of a continued miracle, not so much as mentioned in the historical part, viz. that neither their clothing nor their shoes or sandals were gone to decay in forty years. Deut. xxix. 5. The Address of Joshua, after his recapitulating the capital facts, seems to merit a particular recital, Joshua xxiv. 14, to the end of the 24th. verse. "And now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt: and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served, that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord. And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For the Lord our God, he it is that brought us up, and our fathers, out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and which did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the people through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out from before us all the people, even the Amorites which dwelt in the land: therefore will we also serve the Lord; for he is our God. And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the Lord; for he is an holy God he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions, nor your sins. If ye forsake the Lord, and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that he hath done, you good. And the people said unto Joshua, Nay, but we will serve the Lord. And Joshua said unto the people, Ye are witnesses against your selves, that ye have chosen you the Lord, to serve him. And they said, We are witnesses. Now therefore put away (said he) the strange gods which are among you, and incline, your heart unto the Lord God of Is rael. And the people said unto Joshua, The Lord our God will we serve, and his voice will we obey." Will the unbeliever fly to the subterfuge of supposing that these addresses were the forgeries of after ages? Till some face of probability be put upon that supposition, to use it for an evasion seems not very consistent with an ingenuous mind. It is the office of an impartial writer to give all the weight he is able to the arguments on both sides. 1: is the business and duty of the reader' to hold the balance with a steady hand, and to decide with an impartial eye which scale preponderates." Probably the balance may seem like that in Milton, where one side quick flew up and kicked the beam. Or the author may be accused of partiality on both sides, which would be no weak argument, in proof of his perfect integrity, in offering this summary or abstract of all that hath been or may be written by ingenious authors on each side. 1 Dr. Parr on the first Crusade against France. tween the crusade now projected HERE is some resemblance be against France, and that which was attempted in vain in the year 1793; and the spirited and eloquent language of Dr. Parr against the one may perhaps be applied to the other: we therefore copy the following passage from a pamphlet, (pp. 72, 73) published in 1792, entitled, A Sequel to the printed Paper, &c. to the Preface of which (p. x.) the subscription is S. Parr. "After all the intrigues of politics, all the devastations of war, and all the barbarous excesses of despotism which disgrace the annals of mankind, the black and lowering storm which threatens soon to overspread the face of all Europe, and to overwhelm in one common ruin every loose rem 278 Mr. Belsham's Reply to Mr. Frend, on the term " Unitarian." nant and every faint vestige of liberty, constitutes a spectacle equally new and tremendous. "Even the tenets of Mr. Paine himself are yet less novel in theory, and yet less pernicious in practice, than the counsels of those sanguinary fanatics, who would unblushingly and unfeelingly rouse the unsparing sword of foreign potentates, and point it without provocation, without precedent, without any other plea than will, without any other end than tyranny, against the bosoms of Frenchmen contending with Frenchmen alone, upon French ground alone, about French rights, French laws, and French government alone. "When it is urged, that princes from their relation to princes have a common cause, and a cause, too, it is meant, virtually paramount to the rights of subjects and of men, the obvious answer is, that they who are not princes have also a common cause, and the obvious consequence of that answer is, that if they are true to themselves, to their neighbours, and to their posterity, confederacy is to rise up against confederacy, and deluge the world with blood. 66 If indeed the threatened crusade of ruffian despots should be attempted, it will, in my opinion, be an outrageous infringement upon the laws of nations; it will be a savage conspiracy against the written and the unwritten rights of mankind; and, therefore, in the sincerity of my soul, I pray the righteous Governor of the Universe, the Creator of men and the King of kings, I pray HIM to abate the pride, to assuage the malice, and to confound all the devices of ALL the parties, directly or indirectly leagued in this complicated scene of guilt and horror! This insult upon the dignity of human nature itself! This treason against the majesty of God's own image, rational and immortal man." but one God," to the Mahometan, who professes that "there is no God but God," I have distinctly stated that I use in the sense in which it was used by Dr. Lardner, Dr. Priestley, Mr. Lindsey, and other eminent Unitarians of the last century. To this siguification of the word I have adhered throughout. And till your learned correspondent has obtained an act of parliament to compel all persons to employ the term Unitarian according to his definition of it and no other, I mean to continue to use the term in the same definite and restricted sense; and am contented to share with those great and venerable men all the obloquy which attaches to this practice. I am indeed threatened that I shall be left in an “inconsiderable minority." It may be so: but I am not alarmed at the predicted effect. I have never courted the multitude. And ever since I began to think for myself it has always been my lot, like that of many wiser and better men, to be found in what has been generally esteemed, an "inconsiderable minority." Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the church.' With this article let us compare the twentieth, which has for its title, Of the Authority of the Church. "The church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith: and yet it is not lawful for the church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's word written, neither may it so expound one place of scripture that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the church be a witness and a keeper of holy writ, yet as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation." Under the imagined shelter of these two articles, but especially of the lat ter, many persons have subscribed the whole thirty-nine; though, at the same time, they have rejected the literal, grammatical sense of all which are most disputable in the number, and though their private sentiments are notoriously in opposition to this formulary of the church's faith. Such a plea for ministerial conformity is utterly invalid it may be respectable for its sincerity, but for nothing more. The framers of the articles firmly believed that they were, without exception, agreeable to the word of God. Therefore these persons in tended to say, and have in effect said, that they deduced their faith from the scriptures, instead of taking it, like the Romish church, from tradition, bulls and councils. They claim to be authorized interpreters of the Bible: and, what is more, they enforce their interpretations upon at least every minister in their communion. Every such minister also, before he can hold a benefice, and after his subscription to the sixth and to the twentieth article, solemnly promises an implicit ecclesiastical obedience, and signifies his unfeigned assent and consent to the whole of the Book of Commou Prayer. These remarks will prove that the articles which I have quoted contain no saving clauses; that they are but apparently and not really Protestant; that general expressions do not countervail specific prohibitions and statements; and, consequently, that no legal security whatever is here afford ed to the subscriber who conceives that he may retain his station and his benefice, notwithstanding the contradiction of his individual sentiments, respecting the object of worship and other points of faith and practice, to the declared opinion of his church. The case is analogous to the situation and duties of the fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge: in the oath which they take upon their admission, they swear that they "will prefer the authority of the scripture to the determinations of men;" yet did they offend against the University statute, de concionibus, did they “teach, treat of or defend any point contrary to the religion, or any part of it, which hath been received and established by public authority in this realm," they would, in the event of their not retracting and publicly confessing "their error and temerity," be for ever excluded their college and banished from the university. Nor are these words a brutum fulmen; as is plain from the issue of the trial of Mr. Frend. Several other facts will shew that our first reformers, while they professed the utmost reverence for the scriptures, believed that the doctrines set forth by the articles are strictly agreeable to the word of God, and would not suffer the truth of any of them to be called in question. In the reign of Edward the Sixth the articles had been forty-two: in that of Queen Elizabeth, the Convocation reduced the number to thirtynine. The sixth is pointed directly and forcibly against the Romanists, and is indeed not so much the declaration of a religious doctrine as a representation of the standard by which all such doctrines should be tried. Both verbally and substantially, therefore, it might be subscribed by every Protestant, if, unfortunately, it did not stand amidst articles which render it a dead letter. The twentieth is more memorable in regard to its history as well as its construction. It has been denied that the clause, "The Church has power to decree rites or ceremonies and authority in controversies of faith," was a part of the original instrument, or that it existed in 1562, or even in 1571. The genuineness of these words, is at least doubtful. It is not without reason that they are suspected of hav ing been fabricated at a more recent 280 Remarks on Mr. B. Flower's Letter concerning Unbelievers. period, at a season when the dread of being thought to advance claims resembling those of the Church of Rome was much diminished.* Taking the article, however, as we find it, I proceed to a concise examination of its clauses. The Church has power to decree rites or ceremonies. Whence has it this power? Is the prerogative derived from Christ or from the civil magistrate? If from Christ, let the grant, let the commission, be produced: if from the civil magistrate, let us learn in what passage of the New Testament a record may be seen of the delegation of this authority to the State. Further, It is assumed that the Church has authority in controversies of faith, that she is a ustness and a keeper of holy writ. Now, receiving this statement in the most favourable sense, we have here a pretension on the part of the Church to be an interpreter of scripture; and not only so but to enforce its interpretations upon its ministers and members. In the language then of the venerable Lardner,† Can this be justified? Is the claim vindicated by any thing which fell from our Saviour and his apostles? Assuredly not. But the article goes on- "and yet it is not lawful for the church to ordain any thing contrary to God's word written; neither may it so expound one place of scripture that it be repugnant to another." Who, however, can secure bodies of men more than individuals from fallibility? And who is to be the judge of the Church's ordinances and expositions? In her sound: and she punishes those of her officiating members who say that they are otherwise. We read, moreover, that " as the Church ought not to decree any thing against holy writ, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation." Now this extract admits of the same questions which were occasioned by the foregoing. But, without repeating them, how, let us inquire, stands the fact? Is the practice of the Church in this instance consonant with her profession? Would God it were! At least, the creed purporting to be that of Athanasius would not then find a place in her service-book. That neither the sixth nor the twentieth article of the Church of England can furnish a salvo for latitude of subscription, appears from a judgment at common law, reported by Lord Chief Justice Coke. "One Smith subscribed to the thirty-nine articles, with this addition, so far forth as the same were agreeable to the word of God. Whereupon, it was resolved by Wray, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and all the judges of England, that this subscription was not according to the statute of 18 Eliz, because the statute required an absolute subscription, and this subscription made it conditional; and that this act was made for avoiding diversity of opinions, &c., and by this addition, the party might, by his own private opinion, take some of them to be against the word of God, and by this means diversity of opinions should not be avoided, which was the scope of the statute, and the very act itself made, touching subscription, of none effect."I Such was the decision of "all the judges of England," at a period not exceedingly remote from the date of the statute of 13 Eliz. :—such is the law of the land at the present day! In strict conformity with it, I presume, is the above exposition of two of the thirty-nine articles. N. SIR, Bristol, April, 1815. Mand ards; it may be so; I say still, however, that to write books in support of Christianity, when the law of the land prohibits any rejoinder, is to play the part of a braggadocio and coward. Mr. Flower says that misrepresentation is misrepresentation, to which I agree. Mr. Flower says he has now heard for the first time, that “modern Infidels had their hands tied behind their backs," &c. I admit this, the gag, and so forth, to be mere amplification, but Mr. Flower should know, that death is a very probable consequence of long imprisonment, Note. Blackburne's Works, Vol. v. 301. |