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    privilege , * and to foTget that its real value consists in its improvement ? Have you not yourself , Sir , pointedly rebuked this very spirit at the close of your second Sermon on the Responsibility of the Heathen ? It was this spirit which I had in view , and against which my whole censure was

    directed , when I spoke of inconsistent and immoral Christians . You consider it , Sir , a very strange proposition that I should plead for the admissibility , or rather ( for that was my object ) for the non-exclusion of serious and moral Deists from our churches , and assert that , with equal propriety , the claims of a serious and moral Idolater might be maintained . Certainly I would exclude none who chose to come and listen seriously and decorously : at the same time , I must be permitted to say , that I do not consider the two cases exactly parallel . With serious Deists and with many

    Christians the object of adoration is the same , though approached through a different medium , which cannot be asserted of any idolaters , properly so called . The text of Scripture which I am represented as having so strangel y perverted , does appear to me , I must confess , from a careful perusal of the context , to refer solely and exclusively to idolaters , and hardly to admit of

    any direct and literal application to the present circumstances of Christianity . It will not , I think , be contended by any one at all acquainted with the state of manners and society prevalent in Corinth when the church of Christ was planted there , that any fair comparison can be drawn between the impure and voluptuous votaries of a heathen temple , and the serious and hesitating inquirers of modern times .

    The great end of Christianity , as I gather it from the teachings of Christ and his apostles , is , I humbly conceive , to bring men to God , as the sole fountain of all good and happiness to his creatures ; to penetrate the mind with a deep and awful sense of his presence and inspection ; to renew and sanctify the moral nature by procuring it the best and holiest influences , and thus to convert the whole of life into one perpetual act of service and dedication to God . A belief in the doctrines and promises of Jesus Christ appears to me the only certain and effectual means of accomplishing an

    entire conversion of the mind to God ; but still the end , to which the gospel itself is subservient as a means , is to have the mind so turned ; and surely , when we consider how worldly , thoughtless , and sensual , a very large majority of professing Christians are , we may , without any great inconsistency , rejoice that there aTe men who , even by the light of nature alone , have their minds seriously directed towards the Deity , and strongly impressed with a feeling of moral and religious obligation ; surely we may hope on behalf of such men , whose doubts and difficulties in regard to revelation are sincere

    and conscientious , that in the earnest pursuit of truth they are seeking the end of their being , and are so far on their road towards the attainment of all those moral and spiritual blessings which are comprised in Scripture under the term salvation . Virulent and hardened unbelief , hostility to the gospel as a moral and religious system , I have never once contemplated , and should myself be among the foremost to condemn : because I am persuaded that any one who reads

    the New Testament with candour , whatever doubts he may entertain of its divine authority , must admit its desigri and tendency to be most excellent . All the expressions which I have used on this subject in my discourse , ( though it was written with the usual haste of weekly preparations for the pulpit , and published verbatim as it was preached , ) are measured and cautious . I have spoken of those ' * who have never attained to a firm faith in

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    on the Admission of Deists into Christian Congregations . 299

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    Y 2

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1829, page 299, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2572/page/3/