concern and amazement, that "the personal or sensible connection which Christ promised, was only to continue during the apostolic age, since which he is withdrawn from all sensible (and, by inference, all imperceptible) intercourse with the world; though, perhaps, he may be (wherever he is) still attentive to its concerns.'

" 1

Gentlemen, Can you consent to give up for yourselves and your children, and for the Christian world, all these mighty blessings? Will you consent to yield all the clear and express promises made of them in your Scriptures, without some resistance? The witnesses who have appeared before you this day have shown to demonstration, that the Apostles, one and all, speak and declare against this cruel and wicked plunder of our spiritual possessions. Upon what grounds do the Defendants set up their plea for this oppression and robbery? Will they venture to say that the inspired teachers of these doctrines were mistaken in these points? and that they have taught us not "the truth as it is in Jesus?" You would scarcely believe it possible, had you not heard it, that they do virtually assert this. They declare "that they utterly deny the universal inspiration of these writers, but they judge of the genuineness, the meaning, and the credibility of their works, exactly as they judge

1 Calm Inquiry, p.453.

of any other ancient writing:" that is, by the measure of their own reason crippled and paralysed by their peculiar prejudices and their erring will. Now, to this I answer by using the words and language of one of the witnesses, "You will esteem

it an objection of little weight, that the modern advocates of the Unitarian tenets cannot otherwise give a colour to their wretched cause than by denying the inspiration of the sacred historians, that they may seem to themselves at liberty to reject their testimony. You will remember that the doctrines of the Christian revelation were not originally delivered in a system, but interwoven in the history of our Saviour's life. To say, therefore, that the first preachers were not inspired in the composition of the narratives in which their doctrine is conveyed, is nearly the same thing as to deny their inspiration in general. You will, perhaps, think it incredible that they who were assisted by the Divine Spirit when they preached, should be deserted by that Spirit when they committed what they had preached to writing. You will think it improbable that they who were endowed with the gift of discerning spirits, should be endowed with no gift of discerning the truth of facts. You will recollect one instance upon record, in which St. Peter detected a falsehood by the light of inspiration; and you will perhaps be inclined to think that it could be of no less importance to the

Church, that the Apostles and Evangelists should be enabled to detect falsehoods in the history of our Saviour's life, than that St. Peter should be enabled to detect Ananias's lie about the sale of his estate. You will think it unlikely that they who were led by the Spirit into all truth, should be permitted to lead the whole Church for many ages into error; that they should be permitted to leave behind them, as authentic memoirs of their Master's life, narratives compiled, with little judgment or selection, from the stories of the day, from facts and fictions in promiscuous circulation. The credulity which swallows these contradictions, while it strains at mysteries, is not the faith which will remove mountains. The Ebionites of antiquity, little as they were famed for penetration and discernment, managed however the affairs of the sect with more discretion than our modern Unitarians. They questioned not the inspiration of the books which they received; but they received only one book, a spurious copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, curtailed of the two first chapters." 1

It is extraordinary with what pains and anxieties the Defendants labour to dishonour Him who claimed for himself the same honour that was due to his heavenly Father. With the same disregard of Scripture, the same aim to pervert it to a mean

Horsley's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 87.

ing suited to their own earthly notions, they pretend to show that Christ when he comes to judgment, that is, from his seat in heaven, with all the retinue of Angels and all the heavenly host, will come forth, not from the right hand of God, but from some uncelestial abode with a delegated power as a sort of puisne Judge of the great Assize, with the Apostles associated with him in the same commission. But let any one read only the latter half of the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, and say whether we have not, in that sublime Scripture, not only reason for the expectation of a very different advent, but a hope of the coming of such a judge, in that most awful and tremendous day of trial, of which no groveling scheme of rational religion can deprive us. With gratitude to the all-merciful Father in heaven, we accept the coming of the Son of Man as our great Judge, because he has been made flesh for us, and has taken a human body in which "he has been tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin."

Having made every attempt to lower the dignity of our Saviour, it is only mere consistency in the Defendants to deny that he can be a proper object of religious worship, although he himself said, "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." This denial and the grounds of it have been so fully and so com

1 Calm Inquiry, p. 453.

pletely refuted by the evidence of the witnesses, that it is unnecessary for me to attempt to add greater weight to their arguments; I shall, therefore, only observe, in passing, that St. John appears to me to establish the claim which the blessed Son of God demanded, when he required "that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father." "These things have I written unto you, that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. And this is the confidence we have in him, that if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us. And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions we desired of him." But in another part of the same epistle, the same precept is repeated, with this only difference, that the word "God" is used instead of "Christ." We have confidence towards God, and whatsoever we ask, we receive of him." 3 Now, I ask, can any man read these two passages, and doubt for a single moment whether his Saviour be the God that heareth prayer? 4 The witness Burton has shown that it was the practice of the earliest Christians to address prayer to Christ; and to his testimony I have only to add that of Justin Martyr. "We worship and adore," says he, "the God of Righteousness,

1 John, v. 23. 3 1 John, iii. 21.

4

21 John, v. 13, 14.

Bishop Horne's Sermon xxxiv.