Christianity to vindicate, in the manner best adapted to his abilities and opportunities, its controverted truth, and insulted honour; and if I shall be fortunate enough to communicate one suggestion to the wavering mind, which may conduce to this great purpose, my labour will not be in vain, nor my undertaking rashly adventurous. I shall have accomplished my wish. To diffuse the sunshine of religious hope and confidence over the shadowy path of life; to dissipate the gloom of despair; to contribute, in the smallest degree, to the salvation of a fellow-creature: objects so desirable inspire an ardour which enables zeal in a good cause to triumph over timidity.

The

That unbelief in Christ is increasing in the present age, and that the spirit of the times is rather favourable to its increase, has been asserted by high authority, and is too notorious to admit denial. apostasy of a great nation, in the most enlightened and polished part of Europe; the public, unblushing avowel of atheism among some of its leaders; the multiplication of books on the Continent, in which Christianity is treated as a mere mode of fanaticism; all these circumstances have combined, with others, to cause in many persons not only an indifference to the religion of Christ, but contempt and aversion to his very name. It were easy to cite contumelious reproaches of his person, as well as audacious denials of his claim to divine authority. But with such citations I will not pollute my page, which, however it may be deformed by error, shall not be stained with the transfusion of blasphemy. It is to be wished that all such works could be consigned to immediate and everlasting oblivion; but, I am sorry to say that they are diffused with an industry, which, if it appeared in making proselytes to truth, would be in the highest degree meritorious. Almost every in

dividual in our own country can now read; and manuals of infidelity, replete with plausible arguments, in language level to the lowest classes, are circulated among the people, at a price which places them within reach of the poorest member of the community. They may indeed be despised by the rich and neglected by the learned, but they fall into the hands of the poor, to many of whom any plausible opinion in print bears the stamp of authority. At the same time, it must be lamented that there are treatises of a higher order, on the side of infidelity, which come recommended to the superior ranks, to men of knowledge and education, with all the charms of wit and elegance.

But it cannot be said that in this country the apologists and defenders of Christianity have been few, or unfurnished with abilities natural and acquired. Great have been the efforts of our profoundest scholars, both professional divines and laymen, in maintaining the cause of Christianity, and in repelling, by argument, by ridicule, by invective, by various and deep erudition, the assaults of the infidel. Yet what shall we say? Notwithstanding their stupendous labours, continued with little intermission during many centuries, the great cause which they have maintained, is evidently, at this moment, on the decline. Though many of them, not contented with persuasion and argument, have professed to DEMONSTRATE the truth of the Christian religion, it is certain that a very great number of men in Christian countries continue unpersuaded, unconvinced, and totally blind to their demonstration. Such being the case, after all their voluminous productions, is it not fair to conclude that their defences, however celebrated, are either erroneous in the mode, or defective in the matter? Had their success been equal to their

labours and pretensions, infidelity in Europe must now have been utterly exterminated.

For the learned labours of theologists, the subtility of schoolmen, the erudition of critics, the ingenuity of controversialists, I feel a sincere respect; but I cannot help thinking that their productions have contributed rather to the amusement of recluse scholars already persuaded of Christianity, than to the conversion of the infidel and the instruction of the people. It appears to me, that some of the most elaborate of the writings in defence of Christianity are too cold in their manner, too metaphysical or abstruse in their arguments, too little animated with the spirit of piety, to produce any great or durable effect on the heart of man, formed as he is, not only with intellectual powers, but with fine feelings and a glowing imagination. They touch not the trembling fibres of sensibility.* They are insipid to the palate of the people. They have no attractions for the poor, the great multitude to whom the gospel was particularly preached. They are scarcely intelligible but to scholars in their closets, and while they amuse, perhaps, without convincing the understanding, they leave the most susceptible part of man, his bosom, unaffected. The busy world, eager in pursuit of wealth, honour, and pleasure, pays them no regard; though they are the very persons whose attention to religion, which they are too apt to forget, ought, in such books, chiefly to be solicited. The academic recluse, the theologist by profession, may perhaps read them as a task or as an amusement. He may consider them as works of erudition and exercises of

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ingenuity, claiming great praise as the product of literary leisure, and affording models for imitation to himself, who is in pursuit of similar praise. In the mean time the people are erring and straying like lost sheep, and cannot in these calls recognise the voice of the good Shepherd. Such works indeed seldom reach the people; and while they are celebrated in academic cloisters, their very existence is unknown among the haunts of men, in the busy hum of cities; where it is most desirable that they should be known, because there the great majority of human creatures is assembled, and there also the poison of temptation chiefly requires the antidote of religion. What avails it that defences of Christianity are very learned and very subtle, if they are so dry and unaffecting as to be confined in their effects to sequestered scholars, far removed from the active world, and some of them probably so firmly settled in the faith, as to require no new persuasives, no additional proofs to render them faithful followers of Jesus Christ.

Apologies and defences of this kind have very little effect in silencing infidel writers or changing their opinions. They frequently furnish fresh matter for dispute, and put polished arms into the hands of the enemy. By provoking discussion on points which were at rest, they raise sophistry from its slumbers, and blow the trumpet of controversial wars, which do great mischief before the reestablishment of peace. In the issue, the contending parties are silenced rather from weariness in the contest, and inattention of the spectators, than from conviction; and Te Deum, as in other wars, is sung by those who are said to be vanquished, no less than by those who claim the honour of a complete victory.

Thus it has often happened that the writings of

men, sometimes no less benevolent in their intentions than able in their exertions, have not only done no good to the cause of religion, but great injúry. They have revived old cavils and objections, or invented new, in order to display ingenuity in refuting them; cavils and objections which have frequently been answered, or which might never have occurred; but which, when once they have occurred, produce suspicion and unsettled notions on topics never doubted,* and among honest men whose faith was firmly established. Such conduct is like that of a physician, who should administer doses of arsenic to his patients, in order to prove to them, at their risk, the sovereign power of his nostrum. The venom, finding a constitution favourable to its operation, triumphantly prevails over the antidote, and the preventive remedy cannot rescue the sufferer from his hapless fate.

I am persuaded, that even a sensible, thinking, and learned man might live his whole life in piety and peace, without ever dreaming of those objections to Christianity, which some of its most celebrated defenders have collected together from all ages and a great variety of neglected books, and then combined in a single portable volume, so as to render it a convenient manual or synopsis of infidelity. What must be the consequence? It must at least disturb. the repose of the sensible, thinking, and learned man; and if it should be read and understood by the simple, the unlearned, the unthinking, and the ill

*"The laboured productions," said a very popular deist, "of Dr. Clarke himself, on the existence of a Deity, have rather contributed to make for the other side of the question, and raised a thousand new doubts on the reader's mind." Wherever a very laborious effort seems to be made to defend a doctrine, the appearance of a great struggle in its defence leaves a suspicion that it is Scarcely defensible.