THE END

OF

RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY.

LETTER I.

From JAMES BROWN, Esq. to the Rev. J. M. D. D. F S A

INTRODUCTION.

New Cottage, near Cressage, Salop, Oct. 13. 1801

REVEREND SIR,

I SHOULD need an ample apology for the liberty I take, in thus addressing you without having the honour of your acquaintance, and still more for the heavy task I am endeavouring tc impose upon you, if I did not consider your public character, as a pastor of your religion, and as a writer in defence of it, and likewise your personal character for benevolence, which has been described to me by a gentleman of your communion, Mr. J. C-ne, who is well acquainted with us both. Having mention ed this, I need only add, that I write to you in the name of a society of serious and worthy Christians, in different persua sions, to which I myself belong, who are as desirous as I aın, to receive satisfaction from you, on certain doubts, which your late work, in answer to Dr. Sturges, has suggested to us.

*

However, in making this request of our society to you, it seems proper, Reverend sir, that I should bring you acquainted with the nature of it, by way of convincing you, that it is not unworthy of the attention, which I am desirous you should pay to it. We consist ther. of above twenty persons, including the ladies, who, living at some distance from any considerable town, meet together once a week, generally at my habitation of New Cottage, not so much for our amusement and refection, as for the improvement of our minds, by reading the best publications of the day, which I can procure from my London bookseller, and sometimes an original essay written by one of the company.

Letters to a Prebendary, in answer to Reflections on Popery, by the Rev. Dr. Sturges, Prebendary and Chancellor of Winchester

I have signified that many of us are of different religious persuasions this will be seen more distinctly from the following account of our members. Among these I must mention, in the first place, our above named learned and worthy rector, Dr. Carey. He is, of course, of the church of England; but like most others of his learned and dignified brethren, in these times, he is of that free, and as it is called, liberal turn of mind, as to explain away the mysteries and a great many of its other articles, which, in my younger days, were considered essential to it. Mr. and Mrs. Topham, are Methodists of the Predestinarian and Antinomian class, while Mr. and Mrs. Askew are mitigated Armin an Methodists, of Wesley's connection. Mr. and Mrs. Rankin are honest Quakers. Mr. Barker and his children term themselves Rational Dssenters, being of the old Presbyterian lineage, which is now almost universally gone into Socinianism. 1, for my part, glory in being a stanch member of our happy establishment, which has kept the golden mean among the contending sects, and which I am fully persuaded, approach. es nearer to the purity of the apostolic church, than any other which has existed since the age of it. Mrs. Brown professes an equal attachment to the church; yet, being of an inquisitive and ardent mind, she cannot refrain from frequenting the meetings, and even supporting the missions of those self-created apos les, who are undermining this church on every side, and who are no where 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 of either good manners or good will 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 V. SERMONS AGAINST POPERY,* is such a mass of absur

* The Norisian professor of divinity, in the university of Cambridge speaking of this work, says, "The refutation of the P. pish errors is now reduced into a small compass by archhishop Secker and bishop Porteus.* -Lectures in Divinity, Vol. IV. p. 71.

dity, 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, Scrip ture, 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 hap pened, from our having just read over your controversial work gainst Dr. Sturges, called LETTERS TO A PREBENDA RY, 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. 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, 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 possible 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 disposed, 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 neighbours' sake, delay not to undertake it. The plan embraces every advantage we wish for, and excludes every evil we deprecate. You sahll 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, 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 wring, my ideas on the two noblest subjects which can occupy the mir 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 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, not ve ourselves. Ps. c. 3. In fact, when I ask myself that question, which every reflecting man must sometimes ask himself: How came 1 into this state of existence ? Who has bestowed 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 1 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 ; 1, 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 question: 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 self-existence, which constitues 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, wha was his proper name? he answered: I AM THAT ! AM Exod. iii. 14. This is as much as to say: I alone exist of my self: all others are created brings, which exist by my will.

From this attribute of self-existence, all the other perfections of the Diety, 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 boundles 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,* from the imperfect knowledge which he possessed of the structure of the human body, found himself compelled to acknowledge the existence of an infiritely wise and benificent Being, to make it such as, what would he not have said, had he been acquainted with the circulation of the blood, and the uses and harmony of the arteries, veins, and lacteals! If the philosophical orator, Tully, discovered and enlarged on the same truth, from the little

* De Usu Partium.