and even supporting the missions of those self-created apostles, who are undermining this Church on every side, and who are nowhere more active than in our sequestered valley.

With these differences among us, on the most interesting of all subjects, we cannot help having frequent religious controversies: but reason and charity enable us to manage these without any breach either of good manners, or goodwill to each other. Indeed, I believe that we are, one and all, possessed of an unfeigned respect and cordial love for Christians of every description, one only excepted. Must I name it on the present occasion? -Yes, I must; in order to fulfil my commission in a proper manner. It is then the Church that you, Rev. Sir, belong to; which, if any credit is due to the eminent divines, whose works we are in the habit of reading, and more particularly to the illustrious Bishop Porteus in his celebrated and standing work, called A Brief Confutation of the Errors of the Church of Rome, extracted from Archbishop Secker's Five Sermons against Popery (1), is such a mass of absurdity, bigotry, superstition, idolatry, and immorality, that to say we respect and love those who obstinately adhere to it, as we do other Christians, would seem a compromise of reason, scripture, and virtuous feeling.

And yet even of this Church we have formed a less revolting idea, in some particulars, than we did formerly. This has happened from our having just read over your controversial work against Dr. Sturges, called Letters to a Prebendary, to which our attention was directed by the notice taken of it in the Houses of Parliament, and particularly by the very unexpected compliment paid to it by that ornament of our Church, Bishop Horsley.

(1) The Norrisian Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, Dr. Hey, speaking of this work says: 'The Refutation of the Popish errors is now reduced into a small compass by Archbishop Secker and Bishop Porteus.'-Lectures in Divinity, vol. iv. p. 71.

We admit then (at least, I, for my part, admit) that you have refuted the most odious of the charges brought against your religion, namely, that it is necessarily, and upon principle, intolerant and sanguinary, requiring its members to persecute with fire and sword all persons of a different creed from their own, when this is in their power. You have also proved that Papists may be good subjects to a Protestant Sovereign; and you have shown, by an interesting historical detail, that the Roman Catholics of this kingdom have been conspicuous for their loyalty from the time of Elizabeth down to the present time. Still most of the absurd and anti-scriptural doctrines and practices, alluded to above, relating to the worship of Saints and Images, to Transubstantiation and the half Communion, to Purgatory and shutting up the Bible, with others of the same nature, you have not, to my recollection, so much as attempted to defend. In a word, I write to you, Rev. Sir, on the present occasion, in the name of our respectable Society, to ask you whether you fairly give up these doctrines and practices of Popery, as untenable; or otherwise, whether you will condescend to interchange a few letters with me on the subject of them, for the satisfaction of me and my friends, and with the sole view of mutually discovering and communicating religious truths. We remark that you say in your first Letter to Dr. Sturges: Should I have occasion 'to make another reply to you, I will try if it be not pos'sible to put the whole question at issue between us into 'such a shape as shall remove the danger of irritation on 'both sides, and still enable us, if we are mutually so dis'posed, to agree together in the acknowledgment of the same religious truths.'

If you still think that this is possible, for God's sake and your neighbour's sake, delay not to undertake it. The plan embraces every advantage we wish for, and excludes every evil we deprecate. You shall manage the discussion in your own way, and we will give you as little interruption as possible.

Two of the essays above alluded to, with which our worthy Rector lately furnished us, I will, with your permission, enclose, to convince you that genius and sacred literature are cultivated round the Wrekin, and on the banks of the Severn.

I remain, Rev. Sir, with great respect,

Your faithful and obedient servant,

JAMES BROWN.

ESSAY I.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, AND OF NATURAL RELIGION.

By the Rev. SAMUEL CAREY, LL.D.

FORESEEING that my health will not permit me, for a considerable time, to meet my respected friends at New Cottage, I comply with the request which several of them have made me, in sending them in writing, my ideas on the two noblest subjects which can occupy the mind of man: the Existence of God, and the Truth of Christianity. In doing this I profess not to make new discoveries, but barely to state certain arguments, which I collected in my youth from the learned Hugo Grotius, our own judicious Clark, and other advocates of Natural and Revealed Religion. I offer no apology for adopting the words of Scripture, in arguing with persons, who are supposed not to admit its authority, when these express my meaning as fully as any others can do.

The first argument for the existence of God is thus expressed by the Royal Prophet: Know ye that the Lord He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves. Ps. c. 3. In fact, when I ask myself that question, which every reflecting man must sometimes ask himself: How came I into this state of existence?

Who has be

stowed upon me the being which I enjoy? I am forced to answer: It is not I that made myself; and each of my forefathers, if asked the same question, must have returned the same answer. In like manner, if I interrogate the several beings with which I am surrounded, the earth, the air, the water, the stars, the moon, the sun, each of them, as an ancient Father says, will answer me, in its turn It was not I that made you; I, like you, am a creature of yesterday, as incapable of giving existence to you as I am of giving it to myself. In short, however often each of us repeats the questions: How came I hither? Who has made me what I am? we shall never find a rational answer to them, till we come to acknowledge that there is an Eternal, Necessary, Self-existent Being, the author of all contingent beings, which is no other than God. It is this Necessity of being, this Selfexistence, which constitutes the nature of God, and from which all His other perfections flow. Hence, when He deigned to reveal Himself, on the flaming mountain of Horeb, to the holy legislator of His chosen people, being asked by this prophet what was His proper name, He answered: I Am That I Am. Exod. iii. 14. This is as much as to say: I alone exist of Myself: all others are created beings, which exist by My will.

From this attribute of Self-existence, all the other per fections of the Deity, eternity, immensity, omnipotence, omniscience, holiness, justice, mercy, and bounty, each in an infinite degree, necessarily flow; because there is nothing to limit His existence and attributes, and because whatever perfection is found in any created being, must, like its existence, have been derived from this universal

source.

This proof of the existence of God, though demonstrative and self-evident to reflecting beings, is, nevertheless, we have reason to fear, lost on a great proportion of our fellow-creatures; because they hardly reflect at all: or, at least, never consider, who made them, or what they were made for. But that other proof, which results

from the magnificence, the beauty, and the harmony of the creation, as it falls under the senses, so it cannot be thought to escape the attention of the most stupid or savage of rational beings. The starry heavens, the fulminating clouds, the boundless ocean, the variegated earth, the organized human body, all these, and many other phenomena of nature, must strike the mind of the untutored savage, no less than that of the studious philosopher, with a conviction that there is an infinitely powerful, wise and bountiful Being, who is the author of these things: though, doubtless, the latter, in proportion as he sees more clearly and extensively than the former the properties and economy of different parts of the creation, possesses a stronger physical evidence, as it is called, of the existence of the Great Creator. In fact, if the Pagan physician, Galen (1), from the imperfect knowledge which he possessed of the structure of the human body, found himself compelled to acknowledge the existence of an infinitely wise and beneficent being, to make the body such as it is; what would he not have said, had he been acquainted with the circulation of the blood, and the use and harmony of the arteries, veins, and lacteals! If the philosophical orator, Tully, discovered and enlarged on the same truth, from the little knowledge of astronomy which he possessed (2), what strains of eloquence would he not have poured forth upon it, had he been acquainted with the discoveries of Galileo and Newton, relative to the magnitude and distances of the stars, the motions of the planets and the comets! Yes, all nature proclaims that there is a Being who is wise in heart and mighty in strength :—who doeth great things and past finding out; yea, wonders without number:—who stretcheth out the north over the empty places and hangeth the earth upon nothing.-The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His reproof. -Lo! these are a part of His ways; but how little a por

(1) De Usu Partium.

(2) Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 1. ii.