he is literally what he declared himself to be, God and Man, for whom the martyrs fuffered, whom the Chriftians adore, and to whom all knees are to bend one day.

If he is an impoftor, in vain has the blood of impure victims been drained; in vain have the altars of falfe deities been overturned; in vain have their idols been crushed, and their temples destroyed a new idol has been fet up in their room, and the worship due to the Sovereign Being has been transferred to an impoftor. If this be the cafe, God, then, must have deceived mortals, in investing an impoftor, during his life, and his difciples, after his death, with fuch extraordinary powers: And the miracles wrought in confirmation of their doctrine, and which could never be wrought but by his expreís and immediate power, must have been wrought with an express design to mislead his creatures into delufion and error. Reconcile this, if you can, to his goodness, wisdom, and providence ; and behold the abfurdities to which incredulity leads.

If you intend to reconcile those texts that attribute to the fame perfon, an eternal generation and birth in time,-tranfcendent glory and profound humility, the power and majesty of a God, with the fufferings and death of a man,

admit in the fame perfon, the Divine and human

human nature. Then, all feeming contradictions vanish. His infirmities and fufferings are applicable to him, as Man; whilft his glorious characters and titles are to be attributed to his Godhead, disguised under a human veil. Thus, in Jefus Chrift we find the God that created us, whereas he is the fame with his Father; the Redeemer who purchased us, by paying our ranfom; the spotlefs Pontiff, through whom we find access to the throne of mercy. His crofs is folly to the Jew, and a fcandal to the Gentile : but to the Chriftian it is the power and wisdom of God. For if he was not man, he could not fuffer; and if he were not God, his fufferings would not avail us. He becomes man, to fuffer for our fake: and, as God, he gives his fufferings an infinite price.

LETTER IV.

SIR,

IN the preceding letters, we have touched upon the weakness and the neceflity of revealed religion; the obfcurity in which mortals were involved, and the incongruity of denying religious myfteries, when the book of nature, open to our eyes, is scarce legible; our fall in Adam, and our restoration in Chrift.

It is now time to examine your opinion concerning the foul of man: an opinion which you deliver in the seventy-fecond page of your work, in these words: "Hence, I conclude that "the foul dies with the body. It is an opinion "conformable to reason, observation, and to the

doctrine taught by Jefus Chrift and his apof"tles." Whatever arguments you might have drawn from obfervation, you fhould have paffed over the authority of Chrift and his apoftles: an authority never adduced before in fupport of a doctrine which in every page they condemn. Or at least, you should have first a Bible of your own, and forced it on the world, as handed to you by the angel Gabriel.

Man

Man must certainly be liable to error, when, in the blaze of revelation, and after the progress philofophy has made in the world, he still cries out, with the disciple of Epicurus:

"We know not yet how our foul's produc'd, "Whether by body born, or else infus❜d : "Whether in death, breath'd out into the air, "She doth confus'dly mix and perish there, "Or through vast shades and horrid filence go "To vifit brimstone caves and pools below."*

Your obfervation must be quite different from the observations of the greatest men the faculty of phyfic ever produced: men who were, and are ftill, as great ornaments to the literary world, as they are useful to mankind.

We obferve, fir, within ourselves, a principle that is obeyed as a fovereign; that now finds fault with what it before approved; that covets with paffion what it defpifes after enjoying; that now rejoices and then mourns; that reasons and judges. I confult my reafon and it informs me, that this principle, fo noble, and, at the fame time, fo liable to fuch conflicting agitations, cannot be a particle of matter, round or fquare, red or blue; a volatilized vapour diffolvable into air; a contexture of atoms interwoven or feparated by a sportive brain.

E 2

* Creech's Lucretius, Book 1.

My

My reafon informs me, that a being, capable to take in hands the government of a vaft empire,-to form projects, the fuccefs whereof depends on an infinity of different fprings, whofe motions and accords must be ftudied and combined,-is fomething more than a little fubtilized mud.

Í observe matter with all its mutations and refinements: and I perceive nothing but extension, divifibility, figure, and motion.

My reafon tells me, that the combinations of the different particles of matter, let their velocity be ever fo great, can never reveal the facred myfteries of faith, the holy rules of equity,→ the ideas of piety, order, and juftice,

Moreover, reafon informs us, that matter is indifferent to motion or reft, to this or that fituation. When moved in any direction, the fmalleft particle of any body or mafs of matter, muft yield to the motion of the whole. On the other hand, in our temptations and struggles, amidft the folicitations of fenfe, and the cravings of appetite, we can fay, with St. Paul, that we feel an interior conflict and two oppofite laws in ourfelves the law of the body warring "against the law of the mind, and attempting "to captivate us to the law of fin." Under the inconvenience of fuch ftruggles and conflicts, a

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