M.DCC.LXXXVIII.
ADVERTISEMENT.
THE following Examination was drawn up in the country, from a casual perusal of Mr. Harris’s Scriptural Researches, with a view of putting them into the hands of any person, who might be employed in answering that very extraordinary work. But on coming up to town, and understanding that Mr. Harris’s reasoning had produced effects on certain people, who had not studied the scriptures, or attended to that spirit of freedom, which runs throughout the Old and New Testament, and who hitherto had suffered themselves to be reluctantly dragged along by the present prevailing enthusiasm in favour of freedom, but now eagerly seized on a pretence for abandoning the cause, it has been judged proper to give it at once to the publick. Mr. Harris affects to proceed mathematically in the treatment of his subject, and therefore establishes certain data. I had thought it sufficient to contradict their particular application, in my examination of the subject; but others thinking it necessary to take more direct notice of them, I have subjoined the following short observations.
Dat. 1, 2. “The scriptures of the Old and New Testament are of equal authority, and contain the unerring decisions of the word of God.”
Observation. Certainly: but it will not be disputed, that there are many things, not indeed deserving the name of decisions, but that pass without censure, and are seemingly allowed there, which we know to be forbidden to us, and which will not apply to the improved state of mankind. Laws must be adapted, not only to the state of society, but to the present state of the improvement of the human mind, which we know has been gradually advancing from the earliest ages.
Dat. 3, 4. “It is criminal to refuse assent to what the scriptures decide to be intrinsically good or bad.”
Obser. Suppose this. Yet may we not inquire if a thing or practice be really so declared, and if it concerns our salvation, to form a decided opinion on it? Are we not liable to mistake practices, arising out of circumstances connected with the first formation of society, and therefore not positively censured, for such decisions of intrinsical goodness? Thus the eating of swines flesh was allowed before the promulgation of the law of Moses; that law strictly forbad it; the Christian law allows it again as at the beginning: or, the Jews were alone restrained from the use of it; while they continued under a particular œconomy, and their transgression of this law was only a crime, because it was enjoined them; not because it was in itself a thing unlawful, as murder, adultery, and the like.