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    as hold faith to be meritorious in proportion as it is above reason , and esteem mystery one of tlie marks of revealed truth . We are not ashamed or afraid to avow that we think that the " Rector of Kil ^ e and Stringston" has made

    out his case , and proved " the necessity of Philosophy to the Divine . " By " philosdphy" we would be understood to mean reason or good sense , and by the " Divine" the Christian student . Mr . Matthew indeed takes narrower ground , and is somewhat

    hampered by the limits which he sets to himself- He deduces from his argument the indispensableness of a sacred order of teachers , prepared for their function by a peculiar education : but if it be necessary that all Christians should understand their

    religion and receive it , not in implicit faith , but from the conviction of the understanding , it is equally necessary that all Christians should use their reason in the interpretation of their religion , and in judging- of the interpretations of it by its professed

    teachers : and to this point we humbly think the preacher would come , if he were at liberty to follow up his thoughts and lay open his whole mind . Mr . Matthew argues "the necessity of philosophy to the Divine ' whether he treat of the Characters ,

    the Precepts or the Doctrines of Revelation ; since , without philosophy , or as we would rather say , good sense , he may mistake the examples set forth in holy writ , ruay take peculiar rules for general laws , and may receive as articles of faith tenets which

    contradict both reason and the senses and tend at once to dishonour God and mislead man . It will be seen by the following extracts that the preacher before the

    Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells did not fear ecclesiastical censure or confutation from his own acknowledged articles of faith , in disavowing and reprobating the doctrines of personal election and of the depravity of human nature .

    You will allow me to apply a similar mode of reasoning to another tenet , which i « cherished with as fond an affection by a different class of Literal Religionists ; I mean , the shocking and tremeudous doctriue of ah eternal and an irrespective

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    Predestiuatioiu That a human being ought nvt 9 without any demerit of his own , to be consigned , by an absolute and au irreversible decree , to eternal and intolerable torments , is as immediately evident to our understandings , as any fact attested by our senses , or anv

    proposition that our imaginations are capable of forming . And , if this truth is so manifest to minds like ours , it must , at least , be equally clear to intelligencies of greater strength and of more accurate discernment . If , then , the Supreme Ruler of the Universe could be conceived

    to be the author of a dispensation so repulsive even to our inevitable judgnient , as this , with which Enthusiasts charge him , he must act in opposition to his sense of justice , to his moral nature , to his clear perception of what is right , I had almost said , to his conscience . And he must , in that case , be worse than the

    most corrupted of his creatures . For he cannot be tempted with evil : he cannot be seduced by passion , or blinded with ignorance . He must , therefore , be cruel from the mere love of cruelty , unjust from a cool preference of injustice . He must find amusement in beholding the tortures , and his ears must be delighted with the wailings of his unoffending and

    unresisting victims .- —Now this is a cousequence too horrible to be steadily contemplated . Let tJ'eu the construction of those texts of St . Paul , on which this execrable doctrine is founded , be as plain and as simple as it may ; yet are we quite certain , that this could never be the real meaning of the Apostle .

    Because the tenet is , in its nature , palpably false , intuitively absurd , metaphysically impossible . And we ought to feel our common sense arid our reason affronted and degraded by the attempt to establish it on the authority of divine inspiration . " —Pp . 24—26 .

    * ' And I will only advert to one opinion more , of a similar character , flowing from the same prolific source of error ; the conviction that is so tenaciously embraced by some elementary expositors of scripture , concerning the radical corruption , the utter depravity of our common nature . —This doctrine the man whose

    attention has been at all directed to the Philosophy of Mind , immediately and confidently pronounces to be untrue ; because he knows it to be contrary to fact and to experience . Fallen , as he allows himself to be ; yet does his unerring consciousness perceive within him many a generous , many a noble quality : he feels in his bosom a multitude of kindly affections both private and public : he knows that he is influenced in his cou-

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    lieview *—Matthew * & Primary Visitation Sermon * 239

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1826, page 239, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2547/page/51/