A reverence for the memory of a worthy Prince, has occasioned the world's being troubled with a new history of king David, (which, otherwise might not have appeared) merely to shew how the memory of the British monarch is affected by the comparison.
"Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" is the language of Jesus Christ. "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good;" is the language of the apostle Paul. The liberty thus granted is unlimited; but it is more than mere grant of liberty, these are positive injunctions: let no one then be so timid as to resign an inclination to satisfy just doubts: in Britain, thanks to the obstinate heresy of our brave forefathers, no audacious Romish priest dare prescribe limits to the exercise of our reasoning faculties; and Protestant ones surely will not: nay, they cannot, consistently with those principles which justify their dissent from the Romish communion. An honest desire to obtain truth, will sanctify the most rigid scrutiny into every thing. An apostle has told us, that we are not to believe even an angel from Heaven, who should preach any other gospel than that of Christ;* and, no authority can be so sacred, as to set aside the most valuable distinction of humanity, with which our Creator has furnished us; or to give the lie to our most self-evident conceptions of right and wrong.
* Dr. Chandler, Mr. Palmer and others.
** George the IId.
If that liberty, of which Britons boast the possession, means any thing, it must primarily include freedom of thought; without which there can be no freedom of action. Thus it must mean an uncontrolled power to examine the validity of every proposition offered to our assent; without which power, and the due exercise of it, our assent cannot be the assent of rational beings. If the reformed religion means any thing, it must mean a religion founded by the authority, not of councils and synods, but of conviction, the result of private judgment. True Protestants do not puzzle themselves about the decisions of Trent, Constance, or Dort; they protest against all authoritative dictates; disciples of the meek, the lowly, the humane Jesus, they seek of themselves to judge of right or wrong. Who is most the Protestant, the friend to human kind, and to truth? Those who appeal to the human understanding, and submit to the public judgment whether things are really so or not; or those who say, they are so, they shall be so, you shall acknowledge them to be so, or else——?
* Galatians i. 8.
Let not weak-minded Christians who think truth not able to maintain its authority without legal enforcements, lament what they call licentious abuses of that liberty on which we are happy to congratulate ourselves: injudicious productions of the pen will always meet the treatment they deserve. Fallacious pretensions to reasoning cannot deceive mankind in these liberal times; nor can truth be obscured, when the attention of honest inquiries after it, is properly exerted. If the little historical sketch which follows, and which in fact, exhibits no more than what we have all daily read, without presuming to decide upon; if it really is that audacious calumny which many roundly affirm it to be; it will doubtless be considered as such: if, on the contrary, it contains undeniable matters of fact, fallaciousness will appear in the angry objections against it; and the writer trusts, the futility of such objections, have already been made sufficiently apparent.
The name of David has never been mentioned by divines but with the greatest respect, from the time in which he lived to the present day; and he is always quoted as an illustrious example of holiness! so illustrious, that the greatest instance of purity that ever existed on earth, was frequently saluted by way of eminence, in reference to him, Son of David! so illustrious, that on the death of the late king of Great Britain, many sermons were preached and published, in which, parallels are drawn betwixt him and this standard of piety, in order to justify encomiums on the former, by declaring how nearly he resembled the latter.
In what manner David first acquired, and has ever since maintained, this extraordinary reputation, is not difficult to deduce, he was advanced, by an enraged prophet, from obscurity to the Hebrew throne; and taught by the fate of the unhappy monarch who was raised in the same manner, whom he supplanted, and whose family he crushed, he prudently attached himself to the cause of his patrons,* and they were the trumpeters of his fame. The same order of men, true to their common cause, have continued to sound the praise of this church-hero from generation to generation, unto the present time: in like manner the grand violator of the English constitution obtained the epithet of holy Martyr.
A new scrutiny being made, however, into David's claim to sanctity, which, notwithstanding a very learned defence of him, turned out so greatly to his dishonour; the scene has been shifted by a few whose sense has overbalanced their bigotry by two or three scruples. Some such, like Sheba of old, blow the trumpet and cry, "We have no part in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse!" In this manner have some clerical weather-cocks veered about to an opposite point of the compass; and David, who, till now has been considered as a man who "did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite," has, by one stroke of politics, been resigned to the mercy of his detectors; and the importance of the detection endeavoured to be annihilated, as the easier task; all which appears with rather an ill grace, at a time when it is manifestly extorted.
* The Prophets and Priest.