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    proceeded to ask myself upon what evidence the doctrines which are usually termed mysteries are admitted . The evidence in favour of Christianity

    snail now be allowed to be as strong as it has at any time been represented by its mast confident advocates . Is this evidence more satisfactory than those conclusions of the human mind

    ^ vhich these mysterious doctrines would set aside ? Can lever be more certain that Christianity is divine than I am that what I taste to be bread is bread and not flesh , and that what

    my senses inform me to be wine is wine , and not blood ? How far the same mode of reasoning will apply to certain Protestant mysteries it will become those who receive them to

    inquire . But it will be said , does it not fevour scepticism thus to balance the doctrines of revelation with its evidences , and to admit nothing that we do not conceive more likely to be true than that revelation itself should

    be false ? I answer that the evidences of Christianity are , in my opinion , strong enough to support what I consider as the Christian doctrine , but not strong enough to support any mass of absurdity which the folly of man may choose to erect upon them .

    jhxperieuce indeed has shewn that that , faith in Christianity which is the result of education and prejudice is strong enough to . bear the most cumbrous load of error that the imagina *

    tion of man has ever piled together ; but the intelligent inquirer who should come to the , study of Christianity without any prepossession in its favour would certainly demand that when from its external evidence he had seen

    reason to admit it to be divine he should not be driven by its internal evidence to a contrary conclusion , that when he had thought it morally impossible that this religion should be frtlse he should not find it absolutely impossible that it should be true * But

    whoever may charge the above Hjode of reasoning with being favourable to scepticism , it is to be hoped that this charge will not be brought by the advocate of mystery . Not to dwell on the consideration that the mysteries

    which have been annexed to religion have been the fruitful source of scep * - ticism and infidelity , the admission of what has usually been termed a mystery shakes the very foundation of all human reasonings , and affords cause

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    to suspect that those conclusions of the understanding which we should deem most clear and certain may nevertheless be false . 1 am , Sir , yours , &c .

    E , COGAN . P . S . Allow me to thank year correspondent W . D , ( p . 358 ) for hi * information respecting the passa <^ from Heliodorus . Just before I read his communication , I had found by looking into a Number of the Classical Journal , that I had been anticipated again and again .

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    5 O& Bei ^ eus on the preaching of the earlier Unitarians .

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    Sir , Aug . 6 , 1815 . SEE with some satisfaction at I p . 429 , that my letter ( p . 233 ) has been noticed by , at least , one of your readers , I can easily believe that he " knows nothing of Bereus . " Yet , on consideration , he will , I think , admit that whether Bereus be " a

    young man , * ' or have seen many days ; whether " health and prosperity ' have been his portion , or he have known their reverses ; whether his ministry have been in the world , or in the church j his facts and arguments are all that concern your readers , while the inquiry of first moment to himself is whether in his situation ,

    whatever it may have been , * he have endeavoured , to serve his generation according to the will of God . I considered myself employed in that service when I took occasion from the letter of Scrutator ( p . 95 )

    to call the attention of your readers to the state of Christian teaching , especially from the pulpit , among thosewho , on satisfactory evidence , as I believe , have exploded the theology called orthodox . An education and continued

    intimacy among those who retain that theology had often painfully assured me how our preachers , by moralizing Christianity , rather than Christianizing morality , had retarded the progress of scriptural , which must be

    rational , views of religion , and" suffered their good to be evil spoken of . It has indeed been my opinion for several years , an opinion formed , by some reading and observation , before the existence of the Unitarian Fund ,

    which I hailed as a powerful engine of reform , that our art of preaenmg is yet in its infancy . Nor can it be expected to advance towards maturity unless we allow ourselves freely * though fairly , to estimate the men *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1815, page 502, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1763/page/38/