course with men, are adviseable or necessary for men to know. If we have really any means of ascertaining his intentions in these respects, it must be by the observation of what truths are revealed in Scripture; nor has our Maker ever shewn himself so prodigal of the tree of knowledge, as to induce us to believe that any thing is thus revealed which it does not greatly concern us to examine.

The assumption, then, on which the whole of those arguments proceed, which seek to deter us from all discussion of the Christian mysteries, in itself is, apparently, such as no system can safely repose on. For, if it be shewn that the knowledge of such truths is important to man, (and their importance may be fairly inferred from the circumstance that God has thought fit to make them known to his creatures,) if this importance be demonstrated, it must follow that, on this ground alone, it is our duty to state them fully and fairly to mankind, without perplexing ourselves farther as to their absolute necessity, or attempting to decide how far or in what manner the ignorant

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norant or incredulous may be saved or punished. To us these truths are revealed, for we acknowledge them; and, if they are parts of that revelation of which we are, professedly, God's messengers to the world, remains to be shewn on what pretence we conceive ourselves at liberty to intercept or suppress any part of our commission; what right we can plead to establish a distinction which God has, certainly, not appointed between esoteric and exoteric Christianity.

We are told, indeed, that it is incumbent on Christians of all classes and denominations to sink their minor differences in the common and glorious defence of those leading features of revelation in which all acknowledge themselves concerned, and which infidelity has attacked with a violence which calls on the united efforts of all to repel.

If there be any meaning whatever in this assertion, it must be that, until the opposers of Revealed Religion in general are answered, it is unwise and unchristian to enter into the discussion of any topic on which all Christians are not agreed. And

for

for this restriction, (which, if it be allowed at the present moment, must, to all human appearance, by a parity of reason continue in force till the final victory of Christ in the valley of Armageddon,) for this restriction two reasons are alleged: the first, that the defence of universal Christianity is more necessary than the detail of its subordinate features;-the second, that the heathen and infidel are scandalized by our divisions, and that we cannot make converts to a Religion of which the leading tenets are, even with ourselves, the subject of doubt and disputation.

But unless it can be proved, that the service of no single labourer can be spared, even a moment, from defending the boundary of the common vineyard, though it be to root out the tares which threaten to make that vineyard little worth defending; unless a necessity can be shewn that every sermon which we preach, and every essay which we publish, should be devoted to the confutation of Deism, this argument can hardly be considered as worth a serious answer.

We do not consider ourselves as called upon to settle the precedence of duties of which, as we contend, neither the one nor the other should be neglected. We do not pretend to derogate from the merited honours of those illustrious vindicators of our common Faith, within whose scope and compass it did not fall to notice the shades of difference which unfortunately prevail among the professed disciples of our Messiah.

But this we do maintain, and we maintain it, as we apprehend, on every principle both of reason and Revelation, that he who honestly and earnestly, and in the spirit of Christian meekness, contends for any single circumstance of Revealed Religion, is as laudably though not so conspicuously diligent in his Master's service, as those superior spirits whose wisdom and experience have battled with the rage of the Pagan Dragon, or unravelled the serpentine wiles of Atheistic seduction.

But further the argument which is thus deduced, a majore et instantiore periculo, requires the supposition of a case, which,

if it be not impossible in itself, has never been for a moment possible since the first promulgation of Christianity; that the individual to whom it is applied is the solitary defender of our common Faith, and of his own peculiar confession. It supposes that the Deist and Atheist have never yet received a sufficient answer to their objections; that if we, unfit as we may conceive ourselves for such a struggle, do not buckle on our armour for this particular quarrel, and to the neglect of every other Scriptural inquiry, we shall find, like the warriors of Ai, that our successes in other quarters have only served to draw us farther from the defence of our citadel; that, while we chase the Socinian on one side, the more formidable Deist advances on the other; and that we shall be called, ere long, from the exultation of fancied victory, by the crash of falling towers, and the smoke of our expiring temple*.

Yet, surely, that vanity is little short of ludicrous, which supposes itself, like Elijah,