SIR EDWARD STANLEY.
"Why, then, the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open!"
"God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because His ordinary works convince it."—Bacon.
"No man doubts of a Supreme Being, until, from the consciousness of his provocations, it becomes his interest there should be none."—Government of the Tongue.
"Men are atheistical because they are first vicious, and question the truth of Christianity because they hate the practice."—South.
The following will, perhaps, be thought misplaced as a polemical subject. But in relating what may be conceived as the true motive that incited Sir Edward Stanley to the founding of that beautiful structure Hornby Chapel, we may be allowed to show the operation as well as the effect—to trace the steps by which his conversion from an awful and demoralising infidelity was accomplished.
We have borrowed some of the arguments from "Leslie's Short Method with the Deists," condensing and illustrating them as the subject seemed to require. We hope to be pardoned this freedom; the nature of the question would necessarily refer to a range of argument and reply in frequent use; and all that we could expect to accomplish was to place the main arguments in such a position as to receive the light of some well-known and self-evident truth.
The dark transactions to which the "Parson of Slaidburn" obscurely refers may be found in Whitaker's "Whalley," pp. 475, 476.