Gentiles consoled themselves at least with the immediate prospect of Elysium; Dr. Priestley solaced himself with the thought that hell was but a temporary purgatory, from which we should all escape sooner or later. "We shall all meet finally; we only require different degrees of discipline, suited to our different tempers, to prepare us for our final happiness."

All Dr. Priestley's canons of criticism are favourable for wide and liberal interpretation. "The language of the Scriptures is often highly figurative, which may account for the unknown source of evil being personified in them, so as to be called Satan in Hebrew, and Diabolus in Greek." "The fall of the angels appears to me to be very problematical, and though it cannot be said that the thing is absolutely impossible, it seems upon the face of it to be very improbable." Many a doctrine is condemned by Priestley, merely "on the face of it." Questions too are tried by the number of witnesses, not by their competence. Priestley rejects "a story," because "it is only found in one of the evangelists."

Sacrifices arose from "the notion that consumption by fire, was the manner in which God took things," and that the only way of offering a present to the Deity was to destroy it. Of the doctrine of the Trinity he makes short and easy work, "if it had been found there," that is in the Scriptures, "it would have been impossible for a reasonable man

to believe it, as it implies a contradiction which no miracles can prove!" Hence, the Socinians might save themselves all trouble in wresting the Script→ ures, and the Trinitarians might be left to themselves, since their great error consists in believing that which "it is impossible to believe.” "The

doctrine of Christ's having made the world is not expressed by any of the Apostles in a manner so definite and clear, or so repeatedly, as its magnitude naturally requires." "It is not certainly from casual expressions which so easily admit of other interpretations, and especially epistolary writings, which are seldom composed with so much care as books intended for the use of posterity, that we can be authorised to infer that such was the serious opinion of the Apostles. But if it had been their real opinion, it would not follow that it was true," -a declaration which might supersede any discussion upon the subject.

As to the Fathers, though Priestley is fond of citing any thing from them which wears even a doubtful aspect towards his cause, he easily gets rid of their testimonies against him, by calling out loudly "interpolation, which few writings of so early an age have escaped."

"It is even doubtful," says Priestley, "whether in some cases what are called angels, and had the form of men, who even walked and spoke like men, were any thing more than temporary appearances.

and no permanent beings,-the mere organs of the Deity, used for the purpose of making himself known and understood by his creatures."

Priestley was as great a Unitarian in philosophy as in religion; he was as much offended at the notion of two substances as of two Gods; " even when I first entered upon metaphysical inquiries, I thought that either the material or immaterial part of the universal system was superfluous," it mattered not which remained, provided only one was left. "If they say that upon my hypothesis there is no such thing as matter, and that every thing is spirit, I have no objection, provided they make as great a difference in spirits, as they have hitherto made in substances." The Deity himself must be material, according to Priestley's philosophy, for "how an immaterial substance can act upon matter, is a difficulty which, in my idea, amounts to an absolute impossibility." Besides, if God is not extended, hebears no relation to space, and therefore, cannot properly be said to exist any where." But as matter consists, according to Priestley, of nothing more than points and " powers of attraction and repulsion," the Deity of Priestley, being material, could only be a huge congeries of attracting and repelling points, so that, in strict reasoning, Priestley, far from upholding the unity of the Deity, deprived him of all unity whatsoever. Not content, however, with depriving his imaginary Deity of

unity and spirituality, he makes him in express terms the author of sin; in this only does the God of Priestley differ from wicked men, that he commits sin (for he is the only agent, men are but machines,) from a "good motive," and thus the end justifies the means. With this blasphemy, we conclude the self-drawn likeness or portrait of the chief and representative of the Socinians.

XI. The Latitudinarian divines, from the variety of their shades of difference, and from their being the offspring of our own times, or of the later ages that followed the Reformation, excite more attention than perhaps they merit. They are insignificant, both in point of numbers and weight of talents, when compared with the sages and poets who established polytheism, or with the philosophers and priesthoods who diffused the emanative system, over so vast an extent of countries. Heterodoxy is transient as well as limited. It is for ever changing its form, and varying in the number of individuals that compose it, like the flowing stream, ever receiving fresh accessions without any enlargement, and bearing, in its ceaseless progress, whatever enters its current, into the great receptacle of infidelity or indifference. Heterodoxy has no positive existence; its whole being and action consist in the negation of the truth. It has no peculiar principles on which it rests, save the trite and everrecurring sophism of reason being the judge of re

velation. The absurdities of the Latitudinarian writers have been so well characterised in a variety of publications, and, above all, in the work of Archbishop Magee, that little new can be said on the subject, till a new race of heretic writers arise, as fertile in blunders as their predecessors. It has been said, that the vigorous race of polemic divines, which the church of England so long armed and accomplished for spiritual warfare, had perished with Warburton and Horsley; but there are giants still in the land, and no work has surpassed in vigour the admirable publication of Magee, in which he overwhelms with irresistible learning, argument, and derision, the sophisms of the self-entitled rational divines. Without noticing those egregious mistakes which have already been so fully commented on, we may merely remark, that no set of writers are so irrational as those divines who are so continually appealing to reason, and that, in trusting to their own understanding for their guide, they have been most miserably deceived. conceited and rash spirit, which leads them astray in Christianity, exerts the same baneful influence over them in the discussion of secular truth; and shallow and preconceived opinion, and partial induction, are their constant companions, whether they turn their view to nature, or to the study of the mind. It is striking to see how the shallow and degrading tenets of materialism seem to be

The