which we find in fcripture. He intimates, that the comparing of these two together, will perhaps as much leffen our esteem for the one, as it will increase it for the other. In this comparison it is very obvious, that the advantage is entirely on the fide of fcripture, as to plainnefs, fimplicity, and useful inftruction; while he freely cenfures the impropriety of making abftrufe points the fubject of our folemn addrefles to heaven: which, as bifhop Taylor fpeaks in another cafe, is no better than deriving our opinions into our devotions; making school points become our religion; making God (fo far as we can) a party in, and entitling him to, our impertinent WRANG"LINGS.'

The defign of the fourth and laft letter, is to perfuade all christians, in their enquiries after truth, upon religious fubjects, to lay afide all other teachers befides the writers of the holy fcriptures; and that they would not take the sentiments or schemes of elder or later writers, whether schoolmen or fathers, or divines of any party, for a perfect teft of truth and of orthodoxy, where the facred fcriptures alone would lead them into the greatest truth, and the highest orthodoxy. We refer our readers to the author upon this head, as he endeavours by quotations from fome celebrated writers, to establish and illuftrate the affertions he hath advanced. We hope for a candid indulgence in fome additional hints in reference to the fubject of this article.

The intelligent reader will eafily difcern, that whatever characters of diftinction and equality are afferted, that the three perfons are but one individual numerical perfon, in the fame fenfe in which they are declared to be ONE God; whilst they are really and certainly three diftin&t Gods, in the fame fenfe in which they are afferted to be three diftinct perfons. From fcripture it is evident, that the titles of ONE GOD, ONLY TRUE GOD, are perfonal characters; appropriated and peculiar only to God the father: or the proper and unalienable prerogatives of him alone. And from reafon it is clear, that all qualities or predications which are properly perfonal, are individual and incommunicable. Now whatever fond esteem any may be difpofed to entertain for the Athanafian creed, yet it must be allowed, that in point of antiquity and dignity, it can claim no juft competition with the Nicene; which truly placeth the appropriate exclusive character of ONE GOD in the father alone. And bifhop Pearfon hath obferved, that the creed called the apostles, in the churches of the east, before the council of Nice, had the first article of it thus exprefied; I believe in ONE GOD, the father almighty. Expofition, &c. art. I. p. 23.

Dt. Wallis, notwithstanding his ardent zeal for the doctrine it is fuppofed to affert, was fo averfe to a rigid conftruction of the damnatory fentences, that he generously owned, that they were enough to make the creed too formidable to be approved of. Letters on the Trinity, lett. III. page 21.

The fentiments of the two great reformers upon unfcriptural phrafes, relating to this fubject, may be not unacceptable to fome perfons. Luther, in his Poftil. Major. Dominic. fays, "The word TRINITY founds oddly, and is a human invention. "It were better to call Almighty God, GOD, than trinity." The expreffions of Calvin, in Admonit. I. ad Polonos, are equally remarkable for their freedom and plainnefs. "I like "not this prayer, O holy, blessed, and glorious TRINITY; it fa"vours of barbarity;-the word TRINITY is barbarous, infi"pid, profane; a human invention, grounded on no teftimony "of God's word; the POPISH GOD, unknown to the prophets " and apostles."

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ART. XXIX. Sermons on various fubjects, with a prefatory dif courfe on mistake's concerning religion, enthufiafm, experiences, &c. By Thomas Hartley, A. M. rector of Winwick, in Northamptonshire. Printed for the author. 8vo. 5s. Manby, Whifton, &c.

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HO' there are many traces of a good heart, and of a pious temper and difpofition of mind, to be met with in the fermons now before us, yet the author's manner, and the general turn of fentiment that appears in them, will not, we apprehend, be very agreeable to the generality of readers. Such indeed as are fond of feeing human reafon debased and vilified, who are pleafed with declamations on the corruption and depravity of human nature, in confequence of the fall, and with the notions of divine impulfes, the wonderful and inexplicable influences of the fpirit, &c. will, no doubt, find great fatisfaction in the perufal of them: but those who look upon reafon to be the first and beft of God's gifts to men, and are defirous of building their religion on a rational foundation, will find lefs to admire in them. The following extracts will, we hope, be thought fufficient, as a specimen of the whole.

We call the fcriptures the word of God,' fays Mr. Hartley, ferm. 8th, inasmuch as they teftify of him who is the living word of God that abideth for ever, and as they were VOL. XI. S fpo

fpoken and written by holy men of old, as they were moved by the Holy Ghoft; if then we receive their teftimony, and the truth which they are appointed to convey, in demonstration of that fame power and infpiration by which they were given, they become really profitable for our inftruction in godlinefs; otherwife, whether they be preached or read, they are only founds and fyllables, we hear the voice of man but not the voice of God, we read language and propofitions, and annex our own ideas to them, but attain not to divine truth; for this lieth not in the conjectures, apprehenfions, or invented meanings which man's wifdom teacheth, but is of far more noble extraction, even the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence that floweth from the glory of the almighty, the brightness of the everlafting light, the undefiled mirrour of the majesty of God, which entering into holy fouls, maketh them the friends of God and prophets. This infpiration of the Almighty giving understanding, is the only true interpreter of fpiritual things, the living rule, the infallible guide: the words which I speak unto you, fays our Lord, they are spirit, and • they are life.

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We know you well,' fays he in fermon 9th, ye fons of reafon, in your full ftrength, and have weighed every argument and plea you have to offer for your infidelity in the balance of the fanctuary, and found them wanting us, you fay, a religion which we can comprehend, and doctrines which will quadrate with our reafon, and we will believe them; but as to these unintelligible myfteries, we ⚫ cannot away with them: but herein you err, not knowing your own weakness, in that you fet up a fufficiency as of yourselves, whereby to judge and determine concerning the deep things of God; but as foon may you hope to mete out the heavens with a span, or to gather the wind in your fift, for these things knoweth no man of himself, but God revealeth them to us by his fpirit. Reason can indeed speculate upon the works of God in the creation, and frame arguments and conclufions from fuch ideal knowledge; but the things of the fpirit of God, the natural man, even of the greatest and most approved abilities, as fuch, cannot receive them, nay, counteth them foolishness, for there is an infinite difproportion betwixt his faculties and these objects, and therefore an utter impoffibility to difcern fupernatural things, but by a fupernatural light: confequently, all reli⚫gion that hath no deeper foundation than in the reasonings of the earthly understanding, must be attended with doubts

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and diffatisfaction, as wanting evidence and influence fufficient for the mind to reft on with any tolerable comfort: all that men build hereon is no better than a Babel of opinions and conjectures, and all their zeal and knowledge in religion, but walking in the light of their own fire, and in the fparks that they have kindled.'

In fermon tenth we find the following paffage, with which we shall close this article. To the divine prohibition given to Adam, concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and * evil, was annexed the denunciation of the fatal confequence of difobedience.-In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt furely die. But Adam and Eve did eat thereof, and in that day they did furely die; for they not only became mortal or fubject to a bodily death, but they actually fuffered a fpiritual death, by the lofs of that holy, heavenly life and nature, in which confifted the happiness and perfection of their state. In the image of God created he man, as a creatural reprefentation of the glorious and ever-bleffed deity: but man divided his will from God, caft his imagination and defire into a state of felf-dependance, and, led by a fatal curiofity, became miferably wife, through a diftinct knowledge of the good he had loft, and a fad experience of that evil into which he had plunged himself. Nor was it only in a dreadful feparation from God, that the human nature ftood in the hour of its apoftacy, but the wicked feducing fpirit alfo entered into it, and infected it with the poifon of his own * hellish nature, and so it became enmity against God. From the time of this woeful covenant, entered into by our first parents with fin and death; from this unnatural agreement ⚫ with hell and hostility against heaven, we date the origin of Satan's accefs to the fouls of men, and lament, among other difimal effects of the fall, the many deplorable inftances of perfons poffcffed of devils, inftead of being temples of the • Holy Ghost, an habitation of God through the fpirit.'

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ART. XXX. Two Differtations: the first on the fuppofed fuicide of Samfon; wherein the part he bore in his own death is vindicated from the imputation of felf-murther; and the nature and heinoufness of that crime are fully fet forth. The fecond on Jephtha's vow; wherein is proved, that his vow was fulfilled and his daughter not facrificed. 8vo. 2s. Innys.

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N the firft of thefe differtations the author, who appears to be a plain well-meaning perfon, confiders the two following questions, viz. ft. Whether fuicide is lawful or unlaw

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ful?

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ful? dly. Whether the acceffion Samfon had unto his own death, (we use the writer's own words) is to be condemned or vindicated.

Suicide, he tells us, is of two different kinds: the firft he defines thus, Afuicide wilfully, intentionally acted, by a perfon having the exercife of reafon, with a defire and defign to be rid of life. This he affirms to be not only criminal, but a möft heinous and attrocious guiltinefs. The fecond is, according to his definition, when the felf-flayer, having the exercife of reason, wilfully and intentionally adventures upon an action, attended with an extremity of danger, and out of the way of his lawful bufinefs and duty, by which his life perisheth, altho' he has neither a defire nor defign to be rid of life. This too he affirms to be highly criminal, tho' far from being of the heinous nature of the abovementioned confummate and most attrocious fin of fuicide.

He goes on to point out the proofs of the flagitious finfulness of the first kind of fuicide, and then examines what has been pleaded in defence of it; telling us, as he goes along, that the many inftances of it are, in a great measure, owing to the writings of deifts, who have taken upon them to justify it. With regard to Samfon, he confiders him as acting in the last fcene of his life by a divine impulfe; and endeavours to fhew, at the fame time, that he may be vindicated from all criminal fuicide, even without having recourse to a divine motion.

He introduces the fecond differtation with telling us, that the deifts endeavour to fhew, that the offering of human facrifices is countenanced by the holy fcriptures, from the command given to Abraham to offer his fon Ifaac, and the cafe of Jephtha's vow. The first of these he promises to clear fufficiently in another differtation: as to Jephtha's vow, he gives us the fentiments of Jewish and chriftian writers concerning it; fets down the words of the text, and fhews the different ways in which interpteters expound it. The Hebrew particle vau, we are told, which in our bibles is tranflated and, in the laft clause of verse 31ft Judg. 11. ought, according to fome learned rabbies, to be tranflated or; and upon this point our author thinks the difpute turns: hear what he fays.

Having ftated the queftion in controverfy in this manner, as it arifeth from the two different ways of tranflating the Hebrew particle vau, there are two things very remarkable, which the reader is defired to obferve with a special attention.

First, that even the patrons of the barfb fentiment, who think Jephtha did vow, so as to bind himself to facrifice his daughter, and that he actually did fo; yet neither do nor can deny, that the particle vau doth fignify or, as well as and,

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