Thus, instead of searching for the truth in figure, Mr. Sullivan, for the better interpretation of the scriptures, would read them backwards, (for I know no better expression for it) and search for figure in truth. How far this mode of reasoning has caused him to deviate from the true sense of them, he soon allows us to determine; for speaking of the fall of man, a few pages afterwards, he tells us," that it has ever been the received doctrine, "that this guilt has been transferred to the whole of "Adam's posterity, and that on his account alone we 66 are obnoxious to the Divine wrath. But whoever could "consider guilt otherwise than as a personal thing, or

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any more to be transferred, than one man's being can "be transferred to another?" After pursuing the subject farther, "How are we to conceive," says he, " that "GOD Almighty himself should be so unmerciful, as to "call us to an account for the crime of an old forefather, "committed nearly six thousand years ago? I would "not willingly offend in speaking of original sin; but I 66 can no more be persuaded that sin can descend in the "blood, than I can that a man's knowledge and abilities

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can run in the veins; for I believe a man may be as 66 easily born a ready-made philosopher or divine, as he

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can be born a ready-made profligate or sinner. But supposing there was such traductive guilt, the child, "surely, could no more deserve punishment for it than " he could for inheriting his father's distempers; which, "in charity, one would suppose would deserve pity rather

"than punishment. Nay, it would seem altogether in"consistent with Divine justice and mercy, because the "guilt must have been infused into the soul by God, "when he originally made it, which would argue a double

degree of pravity; first, to implant sin in man, and "then to punish him for it. How tremendous! to ima66 gine God inflicting conscious misery, and that eternally, "on millions and millions for a single sin committed be"fore they were brought into existence. How frightful "to suppose, that he takes the sweet infant by death from "the affectionate mother's breast, almost as soon as it "becomes capable of casting its innocent smiles in her

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face, and the still more advanced little prattler from the "father's knee, and cast them both into hell, to suffer "conscious misery without end, for they know not what."

Far be it from me to mean the smallest disrespect to Mr. Sullivan, but really this language of the nursery, this lullaby sort of reasoning, puts at defiance all serious refutation. It first creates a frightful image, and then tells those, whom it might fill with apprehension, not to be afraid. If Christ died for all; if as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive; and if, moreover, our Saviour himself took little children and blessed them, and even declared, (with an emblem borrowed from their simplicity) that of such was the kingdom of heaven; there is surely more consolation to be derived from these words than from any arguments Mr. Sullivan could supply. But from what page of the holy scriptures does

he draw his terrific imagery? They plainly tell us, that man fell from his primitive state, and that through Christ he was to be restored; that he had become subject to sin and death, and from that bondage he was to be released. Granting, therefore, the child could not personally sin, he must personally die, and the resurrection unto eternal life was to be the free gift of God through Jesus Christ.

In the personal offences, which Mr. S. justly applies to every individual, the child could not be implicated; but these were the consequences of a corrupted nature, of which he equally partook, and which was only to be purified through Him who was to redeem, to regenerate, and to restore.

We beseech Mr. Sullivan, therefore, to consider, that with this rust and refuse he is sweeping away all the doctrines of Christianity. That the whole of them depend upon man's lost and helpless condition, and look to his recovery and pardon. But upon his own assumption, also, and according to his own measure of faith, what defence of revelation (and he professes to undertake it) has he left? He may, and indeed does, stand up as an advocate for the necessity and dignity of religion; but then he is only an advocate for his own religious system, and which the doubts and cavils of others may claim a right to cleanse of many of its corruptions, till at last the book, which the pilgrim, just escaped from atheism, saw with joy in the hands of rational Christianity, because apparently so like his own, shall appear with half its leaves

cut out as useless, and with so many words erased in the others, as to render the residue no longer intelligible.* The whole of scripture is true, or none. And the temporising soldier, who concedes any part of the Christian territory, only gives a footing to infidelity, which will soon rob him of the rest.†

PAGE 41, LINE 9.

We should have found the inspired author of the Pentateuch to be the most faithful historian, the wisest of legislators, and the soundest philosopher.

WE have been so accustomed to read the history of nations in the recorded annals of Greece and Rome; we are taught to humble ourselves with such devotion before this intellectual period of the world, and to gather from their exhaustless stores all our hoards of literature and science; that we scarcely deign to cast a look upon remoter ages, or to busy ourselves with any enquiry farther than the progress of their civilization, and the boundaries of their conquests lead us.

* Lest the reader should be at a loss to comprehend this allusion, we refer him with pleasure to a most beautiful and interesting publication, which has just appeared under the title of the "New Pil. grim's Progress." In pages 48, 49, &c. the objections to and doubts about scripture are treated with the most amusing irony.

† Vide Sullivan's "View of Nature," vol. v. letter 82.

But though we may dwell with pleasure, and with profit, on these historical details; though the pages of Herodotus and Livy, of Thucydides and Tacitus, may furnish interesting memorials of a people whose fame then filled the world; yet be it remembered, that they present us with nothing but profane errors and human passions; that they have no other foundation but a human, and consequently a fallible, authority; and however profound in their researches, or solid in their reasonings, that they are standing only on a little spot of the universe, and bidding us admire its temporary fertility and cultivation.

Not so the faithful Historian of GOD; plain and simple in his narrative, he embraces in it the whole system of the universe, he gives us the origin and progress of a kingdom that never was to be destroyed, but which was to support itself through all the changes and vicissitudes of states and empires. Without staying to remark on the events, or entering into any reasonings or discussions on the facts he relates, he carries us through a period of upwards of two thousand years, every where creating an interest proportioned to the glorious work he had to reveal, and every where exhibiting proofs of such revelation by miraculous interpositions of Providence, that signalized and confirmed his authority, and by a prophetic spirit that divinity only could bestow. "To him we owe the "knowledge of the beginning of the world, the forming "and the fall of man, the promise of the Messiah, the deluge, the renewed propagation of mankind; the in

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