The application of this fcene (fays he) is fufficiently obvious for he fondly fuppofes, that his Philofophical and Historical difquifitions are the fire of truth, burning up the doctrine of the foul's immortality, of the divinity of Chrift, and of the Trinity; which doctrines he compares to wood, hay, and stubble. Far from thinking, as he does, about his frontispiece, to us it is fufficiently obvious, that the Catholic Faith is the fire, which, fooner or later, will burn up Materialism, Socinianifm, and Anti-chriftian Philofophy, like thorns,

briars and chaff

9. Judicious Reader, come and fee who mif takes in a point of such vaft importance. Pro vidence has given you two lights, Reafon and Revelation: take the hint of the Doctor's frontifpiece; bring them near, and use them instead of touch-ftones. Touch the adamantine pillars of truth, and they shall shine. Touch the mountains of error, which bear the Socinian temple, and they fhall fmoke. Touch the ftately dome, and it fhall blaze. Nor let a mistaken refpect for the learned Architect, make you fpare the wall, if it be daubed with untempered morter. When the whole fhall come down, the Builder fhall gain more than tongue can tell for if he lose a little of his reputation, he will get a foul and a Saviour, yea, an immortal foul, and a divine Saviour, to whom, with the rapturous joy of St.Matthew, St. Thomas, and St. Stephen, he will fay, Emmanuel, God with us! My Lord, and I fhall not die like a brute; I have a foul! Lord, fave it to the uttermoft, fave it for ever! Into thy hands i commit it, for thou haft redeemed it, O Lord, thou God of truth!-May it be the fincere, with of, the Reader, as it is of the Author, that all who name the name of Chrift, may foon agree in fuch an evangelical confeffion; and that the names of Unitarian, and Trinitarian, may for ever be lost in the sweeter names of Chriftian, and Brother I

my

God!

A N

AN

EXPOSTULATORY LETTER

то THE

Reverend Dr. Priestley,

OCCASIONED BY HIS

Hiftory of the Corruptions of Chriftianity.

Reverend Sir,

W to defend their Church, and the Divinity WHILE you invite Archdeacons and Bishops

of their Saviour, may the voice of a poor CountryVicar be heard amidst the groans of the Prefs, which repeats your challenges. Will not your fenfe of honour feel too great a disappointment, in feeing fo mean a perfon ftep forth, to prefent you with an expoftulatory letter, and to break a fpear with you, on the very ground where you think yourself invincible- Philofophy, Reafon, and common Senfe?

Confcious of the variety of your learning, and the greatnefs of your reputation, I apologize for my boldnefs, by obferving, that the Church is my mother, that the feebleft child has a right to cry out when his mother is ftabbed to the heart; and that, when the divine crown of our Lord is. publicly ftruck at, the leaft of believers may fhew his aftonishment at the Anti-christian deed. Nay, he is bound to do it by the two tables of the law: for he first bids him, manifeft his zeal for the Lord God his Saviour, who, by the gospel, brought him out of fpiritual Egypt, out of the houfe of Hear

thenifh

thenifh and Popish bondage; and the fecond table enjoins him to expoftulate with his brethren, when they fin through inattention, perverseness, or ignorance.

FIRST EXPOSTULATION.

When the Socinians of the last century faid, that it was impoffible to believe, that God and Man were united in the person of our Lord, the. Catholicks replied, It was as easy to believe that God and Man make one Chrift, as to believe that the immortal foul and the mortal body are one. And Dr. Sherlock added, that the best way for the Socinians, to fet afide this argument. against the mystery of our Lord's incarnation, was to deny the union of foul and body, because they could not understand it; and openly to maintain, that man is a body without foul, a compound of

man.

mere matter.

When that judicious Divine dropt this hint, he little thought that fome Philofophers of our day, would be fo defperately bent upon divefting. Chrift of his divine glory, that if even their own fouls, and the fouls of all mankind, stood in the way, they would freely give them up--they would run into Fatalifm and Materialifm-they, would abfolutely renounce the immortality of the foul, and even be content to die like dogs, without leaving any furviving part of themfelves, fo they might win the day against the Catholic Church, and the Divinity of our Lord.

I am forry to observe, Rev. Sir, that you have the dangerous honour to be at the head of these bold Philofophers. Dr. Berkley was fo fingular, as to deny the existence of Matter; and fo bold, as to obtrude upon us a system, which annihilates the Bodies of all mankind: according to his doctrine, there is nothing but Spirit in the world, and Matter exifts only in our ideas. As a rival of fingularity, you run into the oppofite extreme; you annihilate our fouls; you turn us into mere machines

machines: we are nothing but Matter; and if you allow us any Spirit, it is only such as can be diftilled like fpirits of wine. Thus (if we be. lieve you both) being ground, not only to atoms, but to abfolute non-entity, between the two millftones of your prepofterous and contrary mistakes, we have neither form nor substance, neither body nor foul!

Glad am I, Sir, that when you made so free with the fouls of men, you did not pafs your philofophical fpunge over the existence of the Father of Spirits, the great Soul, which gives life and motion to the universe. But, though you spare the Father's Dignity, you attack the Son's Divinity you deny the fanctifying influences of the Holy Ghoft, and, by hafty strides, you carry us back to, (what appears to me) a dwarf, mongrel Chrif tianity, made up of Materialifm, Judaifm, and the Baptifm of John.

To gain this inglorious end, in your Hiftory of the Corruptions of Chriftianity, you collect the capital errors invented by fallen Chriftans in the corrupt ages of Chriftianity; then, taking fome of the most precious gofpel-truths, you blend them with thofe errors; and, rendering them all equally odious, you turn them promifcuoufly out of the Church, as the Corruptions of Chriftianity. Thus you cleanse the temple of truth, as our Lord would have cleanfed that of Jerufalem, if he had thrown down the tables which bore the fhew-bread, as well as the table of the moneychangers; and if he had turned out the Cherubim of glory, as he did the beafts which defiled that holy place: in fhort, you treat our Lord's Divinity, as the Jews treated his Humanity, when they numbered Him with felons, that the hurrying mob might cry with a fhow of piety, Away with him! Crucify him with the thieves, his accurfed companions.

SECOND

SECOND EXPOSTULATION.

If this method fhould fail, you seem deter. mined to carry your point by preffing the primitive Church into the service of your cause. In the fourth century, the Chriftian world was aftonished to fee itself Arian: but, if we believe you, there was no reason for this aftonishment, for in the second century it was Socinian already. Happily for your attentive readers, your zeal has out-run your prudence; for in your eager. nefs to heap up the teftimonies of the Fathers, which you thought would prove, that the pri mitive Church was a ftranger to the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, you have produced fome, which (if I mistake not) are alone fufficient to overthrow all your hiftorical proofs.

To inftance only in one particular. In your Hiftory (page 60.) you quote Tertullian, a learned and pious Father of the fecond century. And the two paffages you produce from him, are fome of the ftrongeft, that could be brought to prove, that, in his time, none but ftubborn Jews, and ftupid or perverfe hearers of the gospel, objected to the doctrine of the Trinity. Permit me to lay those paffages at full length before the English Reader, who is defired to remember, that they are a part of Tertullian's Defence of the facred Trinity against Praxeas, a man who, by the Anti-christian manner, in which he stood for the Divine Unity, may be called the Priestley of that age.

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"It is the property of the faith of a Jew," (fays the learned Father) "fo to admit the Divine Unity, as not to include therein the Son, and after him the Spirit. For what difference is there between the Jews and Us but this? What need of the Gospel, if it do not clearly hold out to us the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, as con. ftituting the Divine Unity? God," (by changing Circumcifion for Baptifm) "has fo ordered this

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