An Expostulatory Letter to the Rev. Dr. Priestley,

AN EXPOSTULATORY LETTER TO

THE REV. DR. PRIESTLEY,

OCCASIONED BY HIS HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTIONS

OF CHRISTIANITY.

REV. SIR,—While you invite archdeacons and bishops to defend their Church, and the divinity of their Saviour, may the voice of a poor country vicar be heard amidst the groans of the press, which repeats your challenges? Will not your sense of honour feel too great a disappointment in seeing so mean a person step forth to present you with an expostulatory letter, and to break a spear with you on the very ground where you think yourself invincible—philosophy, reason, and common sense? Conscious of the variety of your learning, and the greatness of your reputation, I apologize for my boldness, by observing, that the Church is my mother: that the feeblest child has a right to cry out when his mother is stabbed to the heart; and that when the Divine crown of our Lord is publicly struck at, the least of believers may show his astonishment at the antichristian deed. Nay, he is bound to do it by the two tables of the law: for the first bids him manifest his zeal for the Lord God his Saviour, who, by the Gospel, brought him out of spiritual Egypt, out of the house of heathenish and Popish bondage; and the second table enjoins him to expostulate with his brethren when they sin through inattention, perverseness, or ignorance.

FIRST EXPOSTULATION.

When the Socinians of the last century said that it was impossible to believe that God and man were united in the person of our Lord, the Catholics replied, It was as easy to believe that God and man make one Christ, as to believe that the immortal soul and the mortal body are one man. And Dr. Sherlock added, that the best way for the Socinians to set aside this argument against the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation, was to deny the union of soul and body, because they could not understand it; and openly to maintain that man is a body without a soul, a compound of mere matter.

When that judicious divine dropped this hint, he little thought that some philosophers of our day would be so desperately bent upon divesting Christ of his Divine glory, that if even their own souls, and the souls of all mankind, stood in the way, they would freely give them up—they would run into Fatalism and Materialism—they would absolutely renounce the immortality of the soul, and even be content to die like dogs, without leaving any surviving part of themselves, so they might win the day against the catholic Church, and the divinity of our Lord.

I am sorry to observe, Rev. sir, that you have the dangerous honour to be at the head of these bold philosophers. Dr. Berkley was so singular as to deny the existence of matter; and so bold as to obtrude upon us a system which annihilates the bodies of all mankind: according to his doctrine, there is nothing but spirit in the world, and matter exists only in our ideas. As a rival of his singularity, you run into the opposite extreme; you annihilate our souls; you turn us into mere machines: we are nothing but matter; and if you allow us any spirit, it is only such as can be distilled like spirits of wine. Thus (if we believe you both) being ground, not only to atoms, but to absolute nonentity, between the two mill stones of our preposterous and contrary mistakes, we have neither form nor substance, neither body nor soul!

Glad am I, sir, that when you made so free with the souls of men, you did not pass your philosophical sponge over the existence of “the Father of spirits,” the great Soul, which gives life and motion to the universe. But, though you spare the Father’s dignity, you attack the Son’s divinity: you deny the sanctifying influences of the Holy Ghost, and, by hasty strides, you carry us back to (what appears to me) a dwarf, mongrel Christianity, made up of Materialism, Judaism, and the baptism of John. To gain this inglorious end, in your History of the Corruptions of Christianity, you collect the capital errors invented by fallen Christians in the corrupt ages of Christianity; then, taking some of the most precious Gospel truths, you blend them with those errors; and, rendering them all equally odious, you turn them promiscuously out of the Church, as “the corruptions of Christianity.” Thus you cleanse the temple of truth, as our Lord would have cleansed that of Jerusalem, if he had thrown down the tables which bore the shew bread as well as the tables of the money changers; and if he had turned out the cherubim of glory as he did the beasts which defiled that holy place: in short, you treat our Lord’s divinity as the Jews treated his humanity, when they numbered him with felons, that the hurrying mob might cry with a show of piety, “Away with him! Crucify him,” with the thieves, his accursed companions!

SECOND EXPOSTULATION.

If this method should fail, you seem determined to carry your point by pressing the primitive Church into the service of your cause. In the fourth century the Christian world was astonished to see itself Arian: but, if we believe you, there was no reason for this astonishment, for in the second century it was Socinian already.

Happily for your attentive readers, your zeal has outrun your prudence; for in your eagerness to heap up the testimonies of the fathers, which you thought would prove that the primitive Church was a stranger to the catholic doctrine of the trinity, you have produced some which (if I mistake not) are alone sufficient to overthrow all your historical proofs. To instance only in one particular. In your History (page 60) you quote Tertullian, a learned and pious father of the second century. And the two passages you produce from him are some of the strongest that could be brought to prove, that in his time none but stubborn Jews, and stupid or perverse hearers of the Gospel, objected to the doctrine of the trinity. Permit me to lay those passages at full length before the English reader, who is desired to remember that they are a part of Tertullian’s defence of the sacred trinity against Praxeas, a man who, by the antichristian manner in which he stood up for the Divine unity, may be called the Priestley of that age.

“It is the property of the faith of a Jew (says the learned father) so to admit the Divine unity, as not to include therein the Son, and after him the Spirit. For what difference is there between the Jews and us but this? What need of the Gospel, if it do not dearly hold out to us the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, as constituting the Divine unity? God [by changing circumcision for baptism] has so ordered this new sacrament, that his unity should now be believed in a new [that is, in a far more explicit] manner, as inclusive of the Son, and of the Spirit; and that God, whose unity was not clearly apprehended, as comprehensive of the Son, and of the Spirit, when he was preached in time past [to the Jews] might now be openly known according to his proper names and persons.”f71 [Namely, according to the names and persons of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.] Tertullian pursues: “When I say that the Father is one, the Son another, and the Spirit another, a sottish, or a perverse man, takes that expression in a wrong sense, and supposing that it implies a diversity [of gods,] from this mistaken diversity, he pretends that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are separate.”f72

Should you, sir find fault with my translation of these two passages, you will not dispute the exactness of your own translation of a third passage from Tertullian’s works, which is a glorious testimony, that (according to the catholic faith, the Regula Fidei,) the Son not only pre-existed, contrary to your favourite error, but was with the Father, the Maker of the world. You give us this wholesome antidote in your Remarks on the Rev. Mr. Badcock’s Review of your Letters to Dr. Horsley, p. 18.

Regula Fidei (the Rule of Faith; you say after Tertullian in the Treatise De Præscriptione) “by which we are taught to believe, that there is but one God, and this no other than the Maker of the world, who produced every thing out of nothing, by his own Word then first sent down; that the Word was called his Son; that he appeared variously in the name [that is, in the character] of God to the patriarchs; that he was afterward conveyed by the Spirit and power of God the Father, into the Virgin Mary; that he was made flesh in her womb, and from her appeared in the person of Jesus Christ,” &c. We, worshippers of God the Son manifest in the flesh, are much obliged to you, sir, for thus informing your readers, that the rule of faith taught the primitive Christians, first, that the Word and Son of God was sent out from the Father to produce the world out of nothing: secondly, that this very Word or Son appeared variously to the patriarchs in the character of God: and thirdly, that he afterward was made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and appeared in the person of Jesus Christ. This is all we contend for: you prove that it was the catholic faith, and yet you are so forgetful of your own quotations as to pretend to prove from the fathers, that our Lord was a mere man.

From these three quotations it appears that Dr. P., instead of demonstrating that the primitive Church was, in general, of his way of thinking, has only proved that the primitive rule of faith was against him, and that in Tertullian’s days, about two hundred years after Christ, some mistaken persons took exception against the doctrine of the trinity: but who were these persons, beside the unbelieving Jews and the heretic Praxeas? Truly the stupid or perverse people, who chanted to hear the Gospel; and Dr. P. is welcome to all the weight they can add to his cause, and to all the honour they can confer upon his party.

What effect the learned doctor’s book will have upon the unwary, and upon those who take his partial quotations upon trust, I do not know. But I can say with truth that the sixtieth page of his long History has confirmed me in the faith which I vowed to Christ at my baptism, and seems to me sufficient to prevent the mischief of the whole. When God suffers us to be tempted to dangerous errors, he always opens, with the temptation, a door that we may escape. Through his overruling providence the learned doctor himself has here opened us the door, by informing us that it was NOT judicious and good Christians, but SOTTISH and PERVERSE people, who formerly mistook and cavilled at the catholic doctrine of the trinity. We thank the doctor for the door; and making our easy escape at it, we bless the Keeper of Israel, who takes the wise in their own net; and adapting the second Psalm to the builders, who, in our day, reject the Head Stone of the corner, we sing, The wise ones of the earth “stand up, and take counsel together against the Lord, and against his Anointed. But he that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.” Be wise now, therefore, ye philosophers: be learned, ye that are doctors in Israel. “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry,” and so ye perish in the sottishness or perverseness of your unbelief.

THIRD EXPOSTULATION.

Bear, dear sir, with the plainness of this application. Did you err only in the less important truths of the Gospel, we would pass over in silence your theological mistakes, as resulting almost necessarily from your numerous avocations, and from the intenseness of your philosophical studies. But is this the case? Do you not bend yourself against the fundamentals of Christianity, against those very doctrines which (excepting Mohammed’s mission) most peculiarly distinguish the Bible from the Koran? Mohammed forbids us to pay Divine honours to any but the Father; whereas our Lord teaches us to honour the Son as we honour the Father, and to honour the Holy Ghost as we do the Son; enjoining us to be equally “baptized in the name [equally consecrated to the service] of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;” commanding us to receive, with the same reverential awe, the testimony of the “Three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit;” and directing us to pray and wait equally for “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the love of God the Father, and for the fellowship of the Holy Ghost.” But, endeavouring to break the sacred bonds of this adorable trinity, you indirectly exhort us to make void the covenant of our baptism; urging us to renounce the adoration of the Son, together with all dependence on his merits, and to disclaim all expectation of the influences of the Holy Spirit. And if he that “honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father;” and if we have liberty of access to the Father only “through the Son and by the Spirit,” Ephesians 2:18, then, it appears, if we follow you, we shall not even worship the Father, but shall in truth be aqeoi en kosmw, Atheists in the world, rejecting altogether the one true God, who, from the first step of our Christian race, manifests a trinity to us, as the grand object of our religious confidence. Nor do we advance a groundless charge, when we complain, that you weaken or destroy the foundations of Christianity: for when you assert that the Son is a mere man, you indirectly tell us, that he is as improperly joined with the Father to be the great object of our faith in baptism, as a taper would improperly be joined with the sun to enlighten the universe. And when you represent the Holy Ghost as a senseless power, and a power whereby we must not now hope to be influenced, you might as well tell us, that he is as unfit to have a place among the “Three who bear record in heaven,” as your power of motion, or the energy of your mind, would be absurdly mentioned as parties in a contract, where your name and person are particularly specified. Thus, you take from us the two Comforters, with whom we are particularly blessed under the Gospel. If we believe you, the one is a mere man, who cannot hear us; and the other is a mere property, or an unconscious energy, by which we shall be no way benefited, and as insensible to our faith as to our unbelief. And when our Lord bids all nations to be “baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” (if the word Son does not mean the proper Son of God; if it mean only the son of the carpenter Joseph, and if the Holy Ghost be only the Father’s energy, and an energy whereby we can neither be quickened nor comforted,)this Gospel charter is far more extraordinary, than would be the royal patents, by which gentlemen are created lords, if they all began thus, “Be it enacted in the name, or by the supreme authority, of King George the Third, of Joseph the carpenter’s son, and of the royal power or energy, that A. B. Esq., be numbered among peers of the realm.” Such is the wisdom displayed by the philosophers, who call the divinity of the Son the leading corruption of Christianity, and who pretend to reform all the Reformed Churches!

FOURTH EXPOSTULATION.

Permit me, sir, to say one word more upon your last grand publication. Our Reformers had sufficiently proved, that the worshipping the Virgin Mary, saints, and angels, is an antichristian practice; and we English Protestants, for whom you chiefly write, had no need to be reclaimed from that idolatry. If, then, you spend so much time and paper in exposing the Christian idolatry, it is evident, that your chief design is to attack the Divine honours which we pay to the Lord Jesus; and that your account of the Popish errors, &c, comes in only, by the by, to mask the battery, from which you think you can attack our faith more decently, and with greater advantage. Hence, through nine hundred pages, you chiefly labour to prove, that our Saviour is a mere creature, and that the blood of the Son of God hath no more atoning virtue than the blood of the sons of Zebedee. Had you been as open as you are prudent, you would at once have called your History of Corruptions, “an attempt to prove that all Christians are cursed idolaters, if they trust in Christ for salvation;” for it is written, “Cursed is the man that trusteth in man” for that salvation which God alone can bestow.

Your friend, Mr. Lindsey, to whom you dedicate your work, may praise you for it; but will you, sir, have any thanks from HIM, who said on the banks of Jordan, and upon the holy mount, “This is my beloved Son, hear ye him” with a believing confidence? Will you have any thanks from HIM, who said, “Ye believe in God [the Father,] believe also in me?” Will you be praised by St. Paul, who gloried in his being of the number of those “who first trusted in Christ?” Will you even be exculpated by one of those martyrs, confessors, or believers, who, for 1700 years, have said to Christ, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life!” But how do you prove, sir, that this cloud of godly witnesses is a company of idolaters, who trusted in a mere arm of flesh, when they believed in Christ? Truly, by three assertions, as paradoxical as the arguments by which you would prove that we have no souls, or only such as turn to a mephitic vapour when we die. The first of those assertions is, that the doctrine of the trinity is irrational; the second is, that the doctrine of our Lord’s divinity has no proper foundation in the Old Testament; the prophets speaking of the Messiah only as of a man like themselves; and the third is, that Christ’s Deity is likewise unsupported by the New Testament—the apostles never giving our Lord any higher title than that of a man approved of God.

In opposition to the first of these assertions, I here present you, sir, with a rational, as well as Scriptural, vindication of the doctrine of our Lord’s divinity; and in opposition to the two last, (as my health shall permit,) I design to prepare a work which shall, I trust, fully rescue the prophets and apostles from the antichristian service to which you continue to press them. In reply to the History, where you try to prove from the fathers that “the doctrines of the divinity of Christ, and of his being any more than a man, are an innovation, and the dreadful corruption of Christianity, which has been the fruitful source of many others,”f73 I designed to add a fourth part; but considering that you have already refuted your own error, (witness your quotations from Tertullian, p. 60,) I shall spare myself the trouble of doing it otherwise than indirectly.

Though I am conscious that all the fathers are, upon the whole, against you, with regard to the charge of innovation, I choose to meet you chiefly upon Scripture ground,

(1.) Because, having chosen it yourself, you nobly defend it against Deists and Atheists.

(2.) Because, being firm and holy ground, it can be fully trusted.

(3.) Because it is a ground open to all our readers: the Bible is in every house, but the fathers are in few libraries.

(4.) Because this field hath proper limits, and a strong inclosure. The works of the sacred writers are short and concise, but those of the fathers are so voluminous and diffuse, that an unfair disputant may turn, wind, and hide himself in them, as a fox in a great forest full of dens and lurking holes.

(5.) Because the fathers themselves, by their constant appeals to Scripture, invite us to make choice of that solid and Divine ground. And, lastly, because Dr. Horsley, and the Monthly Reviewers, who have entered the lists against you, have already sufficiently exposed your mistake, with respect to the fathers.

If this little work, which I inscribe to you, sir, because you have been the occasion of it, do not soften your prejudices against what appears to me the capital doctrine of Christianity, I hope it will confirm some wavering