friend Mr. Hallet did not adopt his opinion; and several letters were exchanged between them on the subject. Their different views with regard to what they apprehended to be divine truth, did not, however, produce the least diminution in their mutual affection. One of Mr. Hallet's letters was concluded in terms which reflect honour on his character. The consideration of these matters,' says he, is so far from lessening my friendship and regard for you, that I reverence ' and esteem you more than ever; and you shall never find me say one word inconsistent with the highest respect and friendship.-May God long preserve your usefulness!' h

I do not recollect that the letter on the Logos made any great impression at the time of its first publication. The sentiments advanced in it were then confined to a few persons; and others were not readily disposed to embrace them. It is not necessary to inform my readers, that a period of less than thirty years has produced a surprising alteration in this respect. The fact is equally allowed by those who rejoice in, and by those who deplore, the progress of Socinianism. What are the doctrines of the New Testament, with regard to the person and pre-existence of Christ, is the grand controversy of the day; a controversy that is warmly agitated, and which is not likely to be soon brought to a conclusion. Were I to indulge to the observations which arise to my mind on this occasion, I should be led into a digression incompatible with my present undertaking. If Providence should spare my life, it is my wish, when certain pressing engagements are discharged, to impart to the public a few candid reflections on some late, and indeed still subsisting theological disputes. I cannot, however, dismiss the subject, without remarking the coincidence of opinion which sometimes takes place between persons extremely different in their religious professions and connections. The celebrated Father le Courayer, author of the Dissertation on the Validity of English Ordinations, continued to the end of his life in the communion of the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, in the declaration of his last sentiments on the doctrines of religion, recently published, he has delivered such views of things respecting the Trinity, as Dr. Lardner himself must have highly approved. The passage is so striking, and breathes so liberal a spirit, that I shall insert it below.

The doctrine of the unity of God, so true, and so evident, has served for a pretext to many, to try to inspire aversion at Christianity, as if it affected this truth by its doctrines of the Trinity, and the Incarnation. The writings of

d

A second volume of Sermons, on various subjects, was published by our author in 1760. The discourses in this some of the fathers, and the wretched philosophy of the schools, may, in fact, have given ground to some people to draw such a consequence: but there is nothing in the gospel which does not tend, on the contrary, to confirm us more and more in the knowledge and worship of one God; and nothing is less opposite to this truth than the doctrines which are thought to destroy it effectually.

Of all the modes of explaining the doctrine of the Trinity, I know of none more contrary to the true doctrine of christianity, than that which supposes in the Deity an existence of three substances distinct, however collateral, however subordinate. It is, in my apprehension, to re-establish Polytheism, under the pretext of explaining a mystery. The unity of God is the foundation of the gospel; and every thing that may in any way affect this truth is dangerous. As Jesus Christ and his apostles have laboured, on the one hand, to reclaim the gentiles from the belief and from the worship of many gods, and have supposed, on the other hand, that the Jews thought soundly in the article of Deity, in which they never distinguished different substances; it seems to me a departure from the simplicity of the gospel, and a voluntary inclination to corrupt the idea of a clear truth, by singular explications, which it becomes necessary to abuse at least, in order to combat.

I believe, therefore, that there is but only one God; that his Spirit is not a substance distinct from him; and that Jesus Christ, to whom divinity was very intimately united, is his Son in virtue of that union. This is all the Trinity that I find in the gospel; and I cannot conceive that any other Trinity can accord with the Unity of God. I know that many ancient writers have had recourse to the multiplication of substances, to give us an idea of this mystery; and others have imagined other systems, more philosophical than evangelical, that have less served to clear up this matter than to obscure it. But I distinguish these systems from that of the gospel: and, inasmuch as I find this last worthy of respect, it therefore appears to me little essential to adopt notions which often have much obscurity, and sometimes are even involved in contradiction.

a

The Incarnation has nothing any more contrary to the doctrine of the Unity of God, than the Trinity. Accordingly, it is extremely remarkable, that neither Jesus Christ nor his apostles have ever represented to us these mysteries as including incomprehensible things, and which it was impossible to reconcile to reason. God, willing to draw men from their errors and to purify them from their sins, filled Jesus Christ with his wisdom, invested him with his power, communicated to him his authority, and gave him his spirit, not by measure, as to the prophets, but united himself so intimately with him, that Jesus Christ appeared in the form of God; that he was made Lord and Christ; Prince and Saviour; that he was filled with wisdom and with grace; that all the fulness of the godhead resided corporeally in him; and that he received the glory, the honour, the virtue, the strength, and the blessing, of his Father; who, by the participation which he gave him of his power and authority, made him enter, at the same time, into a participation of his glory, in such a manner, that he who honours the Son, honours the Father who sent him. Thus God, referring always every thing to himself, and not terminating in Jesus Christ, who is no otherwise regarded than as the organ and the instrument of the mercy of his Father, is always God alone, who is the

e

d

d Acts v. 31.

a John iii. 34. Luke ii, 40.

b Phil. ii. 6.
f Coloss. ii. 9.

Acts ii. 36.
Apoc. v. 12.

h John v. 23.

volume, though always applied to practical purposes, are more curious and critical than those which he gave to the object of our adorations; and there is nothing that shocks us in conceiving, that he can communicate himself to a man as fully, and as intimately, as he judges it necessary for his own glory, and for the salvation of mankind.

This is the explication of that intimate union of divinity with humanity in Jesus Christ, which, perfectly simple as it is, has so much divided all Christendom. From a willingness to find, in this intimate union of divinity with humanity in Jesus Christ, all that we experience in the union of the body with the soul, we have been thrown into embarrassments and contradictions, which it is impossible either to explain or to conciliate. We talk of hypostasies, of personalities, of idioms, and of every thing that a dark philosophy could imagine, to render things credible, of which it was unable to give us any notion. Some have made a ridiculous mixture of the divinity with the humanity. Others, in discriminating too nicely the difference, have seemed to place Jesus Christ only in the rank of ordinary prophets. Hence the Nestorianism, the Eutycheism, the Apollinarism, and the Monothelisme, which have excited such fatal schisms in the church, and which have perhaps as much favoured the progress of Mahometanism in the east, as the ignorance of these nations, and the victorious arms of the Saracens.

To avoid these excesses, we must abide in the simplicity of the gospel, and content ourselves with acknowledging, that God, to bring the world back to his knowledge and to his worship, gave birth to Jesus Christ in a miraculous manner, and united himself to him in a way the most close and intimate, so that it might be said, that Jesus Christ was in God, and God in him; that all that appertained to the Father was in the disposition of the Son, by the communication which the Father had given him of his power; that he had resigned all judgment to him; that, as the Father could raise the dead to life, the Son could do so also; that the doctrine of Jesus Christ was not his own, but that of his Father who sent him;" that he was only the same thing with him;° that it was the Father who abode in him, and who did all his works; P in one word, that he was the Son of God, because, that God, on sending him into the world, had sanctified him to such a degree, that he who saw him, saw his Father, and that he who believed in him, believed also in God.

חו

When one has once acknowledged the truth and the holiness of the gospel, all this doctrine concerning the person of Jesus Christ appears to me so simple, that I cannot conceive how it was possible to corrupt it by so many explications, which are good for nothing but to make christianity appear less reasonable, and full of contradictions. In consequence of a continual desire to find new mysteries, an infinitude of imaginations have been consecrated; and it is still more lamentable that these imaginations are become a part of religion, by the authority of some, and by the acquiescence of others; so that a man passes for an unbeliever, or an irreligious person, if he does not subscribe to the predominant system, and if he happen to have too much understanding to submit to received prejudices, or too much fortitude to be overawed by violence. It is not so much the person of Jesus Christ as his doctrine, that is the object of the christian religion; and though we ought to honour the Son as we honour the Father, because he had his mission, and was clothed with his authority, it is, however, to God only that Jesus Christ reclaims our attention; and he assumes no other consequence to recommend himself to the Jews, than as having been sanctified by his Father, to come and announce his doctrine, and

i John x. 38. m John v. 21.

John xiv. 10.

* John xvii. 7, 10.

John vii. 16.

John x. 36.

John v. 22. • John x. 30.

John xi. 44, 45.

t

world ten years before. Several important circumstances, relative to the history of our Saviour, and the doctrines of the gospel, are considered and explained; and it would not be easy to find in the same compass, a greater treasure of christian knowledge. This year a second edition was demanded of the eleventh volume of the Credibility, and of the two first volumes of the Supplement. The fifth volume had been reprinted in 1756, and the fourth and sixth in 1758.

Deeply engaged as Dr. Lardner was, in preparing his own works for the press, he could not resist the solicitations which were made to him to revise occasionally the productions of other persons. About this time, at the request of his friend, Mr. Caleb Fleming, he corrected the manuscript of 'A Criticism upon modern notions of Sacrifices; being an examination of Dr. Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement, examined.' The author of the tract here mentioned, was a Dr. Richie, a physician, and a dissenting minister, somewhere in the north of England. By the same gentleman was afterwards published, in two volumes, quarto, an elaborate work concerning the peculiar doctrines of revelation, relating to piacular sacrifices, redemption by Christ, and the treatment of moral characters by the Deity. It was the production of a man who had applied himself diligently to the study of the scriptures, and who has taken immense pains to ascertain his own views of things; notwithstanding which, it is now little known, and still less read. The different fate of books would furnish matter for a curious and a copious disquisition.

Another work, the manuscript of which Dr. Lardner revised, at the desire of the writer, for whom he had a particular esteem, was a Treatise on the true Doctrine of the New Testament concerning Jesus Christ. This treatise, which has come to a second impression, was the composition of the Rev. Mr. Paul Cardale, a dissenting minister at Evesham, in Worcestershire. It is introduced by a long discourse on free inquiry in matters of religion, and contains a full defence of what is called the Socinian scheme. I believe that it has been of some considerable influence in drawing over persons to the author's opinion. Mr. Cardale, I remember, is very large in endeavouring to show, that the great blessings of the gospel do not depend upon the question concerning our Lord's pre-existence; and that no stress is laid upon it, in the account which is given in the New Testament of the benefits we deto instruct us in truths unknown to the Gentiles, and very much altered by the Jews.-Le Courayer's " Declaration of his last Sentiments on the different Doctrines of Religion." The English Translation, p. 14—26.

rive from our divine Master. A sentiment which I should earnestly wish to be generally impressed is, that the glory of our holy religion stands firm on every scheme. Writers are apt to express themselves, as if the christian revelation would be of little value, unless their particular systems are adopted: but this is a kind of language which is extremely injudicious, and which ought to be avoided and discouraged. The apostle St. Paul, speaking of Jesus Christ, saith: "Who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." To this account of things every christian, of every denomination, gives a most ready and cordial assent. But can any man be said to think meanly of the evangelical dispensation, or to detract from its excellence and dignity, who believes that God is the author of it, that it was communicated by Jesus Christ, and that he conveys to us knowledge, pardon, holiness, and eternal life? These are blessings of unspeakable importance; blessings which render the gospel a pearl of invaluable price: and such it will be esteemed by all who assent to its truth and divine authority, whatever sentiments they may embrace concerning matters of more doubtful disputation.

In 1761, and 1762, Dr. Lardner condescended to make some communications to a periodical work, then carrying on, entitled The Library,' which consisted entirely of original pieces, and was conducted by some of the younger dissenting ministers of the city of London. His papers, which were four in number, are inserted at the end of the volume of tracts, in the present collection.1 A new edition of the tenth volume

of the second part of the Credibility came out in 1761, and of the twelfth volume in 1762. Not again to resume the subject, it may here be mentioned, that the eighth volume was reprinted in 1766.

It was in 1762 that our author published his Remarks on the late Dr. Ward's Dissertations on several Passages of the Sacred Scriptures; wherein are shown, beside other things, that St. John computed the Hours of the Day after the Jewish Manner; who are the Greeks, John xii; who the Grecians, Acts vi; the Design of the Apostolic Decree, Acts xv; that there was but one sort of Jewish Proselytes; wherein lay the Fault of St. Peter; and how St. Paul may be vindicated.' Of these remarks it is sufficient to say, that they display Dr. Lardner's usual skill in whatever relates to the critical knowledge of the New Testament. He has particularly confuted the notion of two kinds of proselytes, which had k1 Corinth. i. 30.

1 Vol. x. of this edition.