So, if without detriment to piety great things may be compared with small, I would contend, that every intelligency, descending by way of emanation or impartition from the Godhead, must needs be a personality of that Godhead, from which it has descended, only so vastly unequal to it in personal perfection, that it can form no part of its proper existency.

It is enough, it seems, that all the disorderly classes of mankind, prompted as they are by their worst passions to trample on the public welfare, should know that they are, what every one else is convinced they are, the pests of society, and the evil is remedied. They are not to be exhorted to honesty, sobriety, or the observance of any laws, human or divine—they must not even be entreated to do their best. "Just as absurd would it be," we are told, "in a physician to send away his patient, when labouring under some desperate disease, with a recommendation to do his utmost towards his own cure, and then to come to him to finish it, as it is in the minister of the Gospel to propose to the sinner to do his best, by way of healing the disease of the soul—and then to come to the Lord Jesus to perfect his recovery. The only previous qualification is to know our misery, and the remedy is prepared." See Dr. Hawker's Works, vol. vi. p. 117.

Whatever these new Evangelists may teach to the contrary, the present state of public morals and of public happiness would assume a very different appearance if the thieves, swindlers, and highway robbers, would do their best towards maintaining themselves by honest labour, instead of perpetually planning new systems of fraud, and new schemes of depredation.

Not for the revenues of an Archbishop would he exhort them to a duty unknown in Scripture, of adding their five talents to the five they have received, &c.

The complaints of the profligacy of servants of every class, and of the depravity of the times are in every body's hearing:—and these Evangelical tutors—the dear Mr. Lovegoods of the day—deserve the best attention of the public for thus instructing the ignorant multitude, who are always ready enough to neglect their moral duties, to despise and insult those by whom they are taught.

It must afford him (Rowland Hill) great consolation, amidst the increasing immorality * * * that when their village Curate exhorts them, if they have faith in the doctrine of a world to come, to add to it those good works in which the sum and substance of religion consist, he has led them to ridicule him, as chopping a new-fashioned logic.

Tom Payne himself never laboured harder to root all virtue out of society.—Mandeville nor Voltaire never even laboured so much.

They were content with declaring their disbelief of a future state.

When the populace shall be once brought to a conviction that the Gospel, as they are told, has neither terms nor conditions * * *, that no sins can be too great, no life too impure, no offences too many or too aggravated, to disqualify the perpetrators of them for—salvation, &c.

"In every age," says the moral divine (Blair), "the practice has prevailed of substituting certain appearances of piety in the place of the great duties of humanity and mercy," &c.

He will preface it with the solemn and woful communication of the Evangelist John, in order to show how exactly they accord, how clearly the doctrines of the one are deduced from the Revelation of the other, and how justly, therefore, it assumes the exclusive title of evangelical. And I saw the dead * * * and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead * * and they were judged every man according to his works. Rev. xx. 12, 13. Let us recall to mind the urgent caution conveyed in the writings of Paul * * Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. And let us further add * * the confirmation * * of the Saviour himself:—When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, * * * but the righteous into life eternal. Matt. xxv. 31, ad finem. Let us now attend to the Evangelical preacher, (Toplady). "The Religion of Jesus Christ stands eminently distinguished, and essentially differenced, from every other religion that was ever proposed to human reception, by this remarkable peculiarity; that, look abroad in the world, and you will find that every religion, except one, puts you upon doing something, in order to recommend yourself to God. A Mahometan * * A Papist * * * It is only the religion of Jesus Christ that runs counter to all the rest, by affirming—that we are 'saved' and called with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to the Father's own purpose and grace, which was not sold to us on certain conditions to be fulfilled by ourselves, but was given us in Christ before the world began." Toplady's Works: Sermon on James ii. 18.

The sacred volume of Holy Writ declares that true (pure?) religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. James i. 27

There is no one whose writings are better calculated to do good, (than those of Paley) by inculcating the essential duties of common life, and the sound truths of practical Christianity.

Eventually the whole direction of the popular mind, in the affairs of religion, will be gained into the hands of a set of ignorant fanatics of such low origin and vulgar habits as can only serve to degrade religion in the eyes of those to whom its influence is most wanted. Will such persons venerate or respect it in the hands of a sect composed in the far greater part of bigotted, coarse, illiterate, and low-bred enthusiasts? Men who have abandoned their lawful callings, in which by industry they might have been useful members of society, to take upon themselves concerns the most sacred, with which nothing but their vanity and their ignorance could have excited them to meddle.

They never fail to refer to the proud Pharisee, whom they term self-righteous; and thus, having greatly misrepresented his character, they proceed to declaim on the arrogance of founding any expectation of reward from the performance of our moral duties:—whereas the plain truth is that the Pharisee was not righteous, but merely arrogated to himself that character; he had neglected all the moral duties of life.

—and from thence occasion is taken to defame all those who strive to prepare themselves, during this their state of trial, for that judgment which they must undergo at that day, when they will receive either reward or punishment, according as they shall be found to have merited the one, or deserved the other.

—a swarm of new Evangelists who are every where teaching the people that no reliance is to be placed on holiness of life as a ground of future acceptance.

He that doeth righteousness is righteous. Since then it is plain that each must himself be righteous, if he be so at all, what do they mean who thus inveigh against self-righteousness, since Christ himself declares there is no other?

If the new faith be the only true one, let us embrace it; but let not those who vend these new articles expect that we should choose them with our eyes shut.

The catalogue of authors, which this Rev. Gentleman has pleased to specify and recommend, begins with Homer, Hesiod, the Argonautics, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Theognis, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus. * * *. This catalogue, says he, might be considerably extended, but I study brevity. It is only necessary for me to add that the recommendation of these books is not to be considered as expressive of my approbation of every particular sentiment they contain. It would indeed be grievous injustice if this writer's reputation should be injured by the occasional unsoundness of opinion in writers whom it is more than probable he may never have read, and for whose sentiments he ought no more to be made answerable than the compiler of Lackington's Catalogue, from which it is not unlikely that his own was abridged.

These high-strained pretenders to godliness, who deny the power of the sinner to help himself, take good care always to attribute his saving change to the blessed effect of some sermon preached by some one or other of their Evangelical fraternity. They always hold themselves up to the multitude as the instruments producing all those marvellous conversions which they relate. No instance is recorded in their Saints' Calendar of any sinner resolving, in consequence of a reflective and serious perusal of the Scriptures, to lead a new life. No instance of a daily perusal of the Bible producing a daily progress in virtuous habits. No, the Gospel has no such effect. —It is always the Gospel Preacher who works the miracle, &c.

But their Saints, who would stop their ears if you should mention with admiration the name of a Garrick or a Siddons;—who think it a sin to support such an infamous profession as that through the medium of which a Milton, a Johnson, an Addison, and a Young have laboured to mend the heart, &c.

In the Evangelical Magazine is the following article: "At —— in Yorkshire, after a handsome collection (for the Missionary Society) a poor man, whose wages are about 28s. per week, brought a donation of 20 guineas. Our friends hesitated to receive it * * when he answered * *—Before I knew the grace of our Lord I was a poor drunkard: I never could save a shilling. My family were in beggary and rags; but since it has pleased God to renew me by his grace, we have been industrious and frugal: we have not spent many idle shillings; and we have been enabled to put something into the Bank; and this I freely offer to the blessed cause of our Lord and Saviour. This is the second donation of this same poor man to the same amount!" Whatever these Evangelists may think of such conduct, they ought to be ashamed of thus basely taking advantage of this poor ignorant enthusiast, &c.

It behoved him (Dr. Hawker in his Letter to the Barrister) to show in what manner a covenant can exist without terms or conditions.