guage. There are a set of disputants who are distinguished as the sons of truth and liberty-worthies, whose services, under all disadvantages, have been so great an honour and ornament to the church*. In this class of worthies we find Dr. Sykes, who undertook to hold up the credit of Arian subscription, in answer to Dr. Waterland. He is farther ornamented with the honourable titles of an acute writerthis ingenious person-the ingenious author of the Case t. We shall see how justly Dr. Sykes is celebrated for his acuteness and ingenuity, if we venture to take a nearer view of him, 1. as a reasoner, 2. as a writer, and 3. as an historian, or relater of facts. When Dr. Waterland had charged the Arian party with fraud and prevarication in subscribing Trinitarian articles; his adversaries endeavoured to recriminate, accusing the orthodox clergy with subscribing Calvinistical articles, although they were well known to dissent from Calvin's doctrine. Dr. Waterland clears the orthodox, by shewing that the articles of the Church of England were purposely framed to a neutral sense; neither affirming nor denying Calvin's doctrine, that offence might be taken by neither party; and he affirms it to have been "abundantly proved, "that the articles are NOT CALVINISTICAL." Here Dr. Sykes changes the state of the question, and declares Waterland not to have been convinced of his own proofs of the ANTICALVINISM of the articles. Not calvinistical is altered into anticalvinistical. The former of these terms implies neutrality, the latter opposition. Dr. Waterland's defence rests entirely upon this plain distinction, which Dr. Sykes either did or did not understand; and I shall not stay to enquire which part of the dilemma will consist with his acuteness and ingenuity. In another place, he sets down the words "well proved to be Anticalvinian," referring to them as if they were the genuine words of Dr. Waterland: but, in the place referred to, it is only said to be "well proved "that our articles were not drawn up by Calvin's scheme §." Confess. p. 171. 173. Ibid. p. 186. 190. See Sykes's Case of Subs. p. 31, 32. § See Waterland's Supplement, p. 51, and Sykes's Reply, p. 36, 37. The same mistake occurs in other places, not worth our notice. All this will appear less wonderful, when it is compared with the same author's account of the Trinity in Unity, which he calls, " Dr. Waterland's notions of three equally "supreme intelligent agent, and of one intelligent agents *." But neither Dr. Waterland, nor any other Christian, ancient or modern, orthodox or heterodox, did ever believe the Holy Trinity to be three and one in the same respect. Arians of all sizes have indeed made a common practice of imputing this absurdity to us; though they have generally been content with making us weak enough to believe Three Gods (in the plural) to be one God (in the singular.) But Dr. Sykes is not satisfied without carrying quite out of the precincts of grammar, having invented a new transformation of the terms into three agent, and one agents; which if the Printer can get over without an error of the press, he will have better fortune with his types, than I have had with my pen. If we consider the Doctor as an orator, we shall find his style distinguished by a certain inharmonious repetition, which shews the writer to have laboured under the most extreme poverty of diction, of which, the following are a few examples-so apparently so-this is just such a pretty way of reasoning as this. This gave me occasion to demand what were the criteria by which we might judge which those particular articles are, which leave a latitude +. As an historian, he imagined himself to have found Dr. Waterland guilty of a gross anachronism; and while he is correcting him for it, observes, with an air of triumph, that Samuel Hubert's book "was written forty years after the "articles were made, and near forty after Cranmer was rot"ten in his gravet. If it be remembered that archbishop Cranmer was a person of the first ecclesiastical character in this kingdom, a man of exact learning, great piety, and venerable in the eyes of all good men, as a martyr to the • See Waterland's Supplement, p. 33. + See p. 42. 4. 33. Waterl. Suppl. p. 44. protestant cause, the language with which his memory is here treated is consistent neither with decency nor charity, nor indeed with common humanity. But that this same Cranmer should be rotten in his grave, whom all the world knows to have been publicly burnt to ashes at a stake, and sent to Heaven in a fiery chariot, is a discovery, of which the whole merit is due to the acute Dr. Sykes*. I do not. take upon me to say, that this is the particular merit which recommended him to the author of the Confessional, for I rather suppose it to have been that of disbelieving the Creeds, which is a sufficient recommendation with him, who judges of every man's wisdom or folly, by first observing whether he is for, or against the church. In this practice he brings to my mind the character of Georgius Trapezuntius, a scholastic doctor of eminence in the 15th century.Aristotelis admirator summus; Platonis contemptor maximus. When a critic is thus unhappily swayed by the summus on one side, and the maximus on the other, his accounts are to be taken with very great abatements. If his admiration and contempt are each of them misplaced, and have exchanged their proper objects, the matter cannot then be rectified by any discountings. This spirit of partiality hath filled the Confessional with malignant ridicule and fulsome panegyric, of which it is not necessary, in this place, to produce any more examples, because some of them will meet us of course in the ensuing Remarks: from which the reader may form a judgment of all the rest, as safely and surely as he may know the taste of sea-water, without being obliged to drink up the ocean. It may be proper to observe, that the Confessional is referred to in its original form of the first edition; and it ought to be known, for the author's vindication, that these papers might have appeared many months ago, if politics, &c. had not taken off the Printer's attention from works of divinity. * If the reader will please to consult a Letter to the Common People, published with the last edition of the Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity, he will find some account of another acute writer, who, in this author's vapouring style, is invested with all the terrors of controversial ability. See Confess. p. 320. REMARKS ON THE CONFESSIONAL. CHAPTER I. A SHORT VIEW OF THE GROUNDS OF THIS AUTHOR'S WHEN a controversy is started in which the spiritual interests of Christian people are nearly concerned, it is their duty to inquire, as far as they are able, into the real merits of the cause; and to consider the question, if possible, in the same naked and simple state in which it existed in the head of an author, before it was disposed according to the rules of art, and disguised under the rhetorical furniture of a large book, comprehending an hundred different subjects wrought up into one mass. In conversation, it is not unusual to hear two persons disputing fiercely for a long time, without gaining an inch of ground on either side: because it is the practice of reasoners, who are deficient either in respect of a sound cause, an upright intention, or a clear head, to wander far and wide from the subject in debate. Every subject is so nearly related to other subjects, that the mind of an undesigning reasoner will sometimes slide from one to another, without being sensible of it: but an artful man will rarely fail to be shifting about to all the adjuncts and relatives within his reach, till he can fix upon such as will enable him to make a plausible appearance. He that is in wrath with another, of whom he knows no evil, will asperse his character indirectly, by railing at his connexions, his friends, his family, his ancestors, his children, or even his country itself; all of which are but little to the purpose, and can only shew, that the accuser is equally irritated and unprovided. In the accusation lately revived against our forms and doctrines by the Author of The Confessional, the real grounds of his discontent are comprehended in two short arguments: and I hope I shall be pardoned for throwing them into a logical form, because I do it merely for the sake of brevity, that I may save trouble to the reader as well as to the writer. The first of these arguments stands thus: The Church of Rome hath established false doctrine; The Church of England hath established false doctrine; Therefore the Church of England wants reforma tion as much as the Church of Rome. That the Church of Rome hath established false doctrine, and doth stand in need of reformation, is readily allowed by all Protestants, because it hath been demonstrated for these two hundred years: but the second proposition, on which the conclusion depends, is not true; and the author, as we shall see presently, waves the proof of it, supposing that we shall take it upon his bare word. Where this second proposition is assumed, as by the Arians, Socinians, |