are taught with these, yet these are such as so pervert Christianity itself, as scarcely to leave what de

serves the name.

When, therefore, such errors are encouraged, what Protestant is there who will not justly feel an alarm for those, who are exposed to its contagion? for the young, for the ignorant, who by their situation may be forced to an association with those who are indefatigable in their endeavours to lead them astray?

How, it may be asked, comes it to pass, that we now look for assistance by the encouragement of error? Are we retracing back wards the steps of the Revolution and the Reformation, and not unwilling to see the cloud of ignorance, that is now rising like a hand, overspread our horizon? Can the assistance sought by such means be expected to relieve? If the blessing of God has been conspicuous on this nation, it has been so because it has served him truly, and not turned aside; and as to the strength, which is acquired by a sacrifice of religious principle, it will come impaired in itself.

There was a time when preserving religion safe was considered as essential; when there was a reliance upon God sufficiently firm to believe, that he would not suffer the nation to fall that was steadfast to his truth. Whether that time is completely past or not, the voice of the public at large must give a better evidence than it has hitherto done, before it can be determined. Whether it be ready to undermine and subvert its constitution, religious and civil, I now leave to it, with the admonition of the Prophet upon a

similar occasion:

"The Lord is with

"The Lord is with you while ye

be with him-but if ye forsake him, he will forsake

you."

* 2 Chron. xv. 2.

APPENDIX.

OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION.

AS this doctrinal point is one of the principal causes of difference between Protestants and the church of Rome, it may be permitted to add a few more words, more particularly in answer to what has been said by Bossuet on the subject. He says—

*"As for us, who find nothing in the words, which Jesus Christ makes use of for the institution, obliging us to take them in a figurative sense, we think that a sufficient reason to determine us to the literal."

If it were not that eloquence and sound reason are not necessarily concomitant, one must be astonished that Bossuet could argue thus. What! is it not sufficient that the literal sense would convey not only an impossibility; but an absurdity, to which all those of Polytheism were as nothing, to oblige us to interpret them figuratively? The Heathens could believe, and, with their obscure notions of a Deity, not very irra tionally, that there was a multiplicity of gods; but even they never went so far as to imagine, that one deity could be in ten thousand places wholly and

See Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church, ed. Lond. 1688, p. 109. or Exposition de la Foi, p. 116. ed. Paris, 12mo. A. D. 1730, for the same purport.

distinctly at one and at the same time. Why would Bossuet, or any of the church of Rome, attempt to reason on the subject, which, according to their idea of it, defies all reasoning? They would perhaps say that it is part of a revelation. To this it may be most decisively answered, it is so impossible it could be such, as to compel human reason, if reduced to the alternative, to deny that to be a revelation from the Deity, which insists upon it. For the reception of any laws or doctrines, as revealed, depends upon the evidence, internal and external, that they are revelations, as these evidences convince the understanding and the senses. These, then, being the only means with which the Deity has endowed man to distinguish between truth and falsehood, it follows necessarily, that man is bound to use them to avoid falling into error; and also that the Deity, when he proposes any thing to man as an article of belief, does not propose what is inconsistent in itself, because this would be to subvert the understanding itself. To propose to man to believe that one person, corporeal or spiritual, may be wholly and distinctly at two different places, at one and the same time, is only an amplification of the proposition, that two and one are, or may be, the same, in the same sense. Now, we are either certain that this cannot be, or we are certain of nothing. If the latter, we cannot be convinced of the truth of any thing. If the former, then the doctrine of transubstantiation cannot be true. This simple mode of stating the subject is chosen, because absurdities, like the fabled giants of antiquity, increase their influence with their growth; and that they who would readily

agree that two and one are not the same, in the samé sense, lose, in the amplification, all sight of the same impossibility attending the proposition, that one and one million are the same, in the same sense. These considerations, to a rational being, would be amply sufficient to compel him to look for a figurative sense in the words of our Saviour, if there were no other reason; to pass over the minor absurdities of our Saviour's being supposed to take himself in his own hand, to sit before his disciples and break himself to pieces with his own hands, to distribute twelve himselves to his disciples besides, all which thirteen real himselves were but one himself, in the same sense, and at the same time. What (might a Heathen justly say) is there so absurd or incredible as this in all our mythology? Certainly, nothing.

As to the arguments from Omnipotence, it is time enough to consider them when it is first proved that the words must not, and cannot, be understood in a figurative sense; though, reverentially be it said, Omnipotence itself does not extend to the identification of one and more in the same sense. But, says Bossuet,*"In establishing a sign, which has no relation to the thing, as, for example, a morsel of bread to signify the body of a man, the name of the thing signified should be given to it without any explication, and before any agreement, as Jesus Christ has done in his last supper, is a thing unheard-of, and of which we find no example in holy writ, not to say in any

* Exposition de la Foi, p. 129; or the Translation, p. 114.

t