But we can in no wise agree with this. We find no authority for it in holy writ. So far from it, that we find there both our Lord and his apostles continually reasoning with their opposers. Neither do we know, in all the productions of antient and modern times, such a chain of reasoning or argumentation, so close, so solid, so regularly connected, as the epistle to the Hebrews. And the strongest reasoner whom we have ever observed, (excepting only Jesus of Nazareth) was that Paul of Tarsus; the same who has left that plain direction for all christians, In malice, or wickedness, be ye children; but in understanding, or reason, be ye men.
31. We therefore not only allow, but earnestly exhort all who seek after true religion, to use all the reason which God hath given them, in searching out the things of God. But your reasoning justly, not only on this, but on any subject whatsoever, presupposes true judgments already formed, whereon to ground your argumentation. Else, you know, you will stumble at every step: because ex falso non sequitur verum. It is impossible, if your premisses are false, to infer from them true conclusions.
32. You know likewise, that before it is possible for you to form a true judgment of them, it is absolutely necessary, that you have a clear apprehension of the things of God, and that your ideas thereof be all fixed, distinct, and determinate. And seeing our ideas are not innate, but must all originally come from our senses; it is certainly necessary that you have senses capable of discerning objects of this kind. Not those only which are called natural senses, which in this respect profit nothing, as being altogether incapable of discerning objects of a spiritual kind; but spiritual senses, exercised to discern spiritual good and evil. It is necessary that you have the hearing ear, and the seeing eye, emphatically so called; that you have a new class of senses opened in your soul, not depending on organs of flesh and blood, to be the evidence of things not seen, as your bodily senses are of visible things; to be the avenues to the invisible world, to discern spiritual objects, and to furnish you with ideas of what the outward eye hath not seen, neither the ear heard.
33. And till you have these internal senses, till the eyes of your understanding are opened, you can have no apprehension of divine things, no idea of them at all. Nor consequently, till then, can you either judge truly, or reason justly concerning them: seeing your reason has no ground whereon to stand, no materials to work upon.
34. To use the trite instance. As you cannot reason concerning colours, if you have no natural sight, because all the ideas received by your other senses are of a different kind; so that neither your hearing, nor any other sense, can supply your want of sight, or furnish your reason in this respect with matter to work upon: So you cannot reason concerning spiritual things, if you have no spiritual sight; because all your ideas received by your outward senses are of a different kind. Yea, far more different from those received by faith or internal sensation, than the idea of colour from that of sound. These are only different species of one genus, namely, sensible ideas, received by external sensation: whereas the ideas of faith differ toto genere from those of external sensation. So that it is not conceivable, that external sensation should supply the want of internal senses; or furnish your reason in this respect with matter to work upon.
35. What then will your reason do here? How will it pass from things natural to spiritual? From the things that are seen to those that are not seen? From the visible to the invisible world? What a gulph is here? By what art will reason get over the immense chasm? This cannot be, till the Almighty come in to your succour, and give you that faith you have hitherto despised. Then upborn as it were on eagle’s wings, you shall soar away into the regions of eternity; and your enlightened reason shall explore even the deep things of God, God himself revealing them to you by his Spirit.
36. I expected to have received much light on this head, from a treatise lately published, and earnestly recommended to me, I mean, Christianity not founded on argument. But on a careful perusal of that piece, notwithstanding my prejudice in its favour, I could not but perceive, that the great design uniformly pursued throughout the work, was to render the whole of the christian institution both odious and contemptible. In order to this, the author gleans up, with great care and diligence, the most plausible of those many objections that have been raised against it by late writers, and proposes them with the utmost strength of which he was capable. To do this with the more effect, he personates a christian: he makes a shew of defending an avowed doctrine of christianity, namely, the supernatural influence of the Spirit of God; and often, for several sentences together, (indeed in the beginning of almost every paragraph) speaks so like a christian, that not a few have received him according to his wish. Mean while with all possible art and show of reason, and in the most laboured language, he pursues his point throughout, which is to prove, “that christianity is contrary to reason;” or, “that no man acting according to the principles of reason, can possibly be a christian.”
37. It is a wonderful proof of the power that smooth words may have even on serious minds, that so many have mistook such a writer as this for a friend of christianity: since almost every page of his tract is filled with gross falshood and broad blasphemy: and these supported by such exploded fallacies, and common-place sophistry, that a person of two or three years standing in the university, might give them a sufficient answer, and make the author appear as irrational and contemptible as he labours to make Christ and his apostles.
38. I have hitherto spoken to those chiefly, who do not receive the christian system as of God. I would add a few words to another sort of men; (though not so much with regard to our principles or practice, as with regard to their own:) to you who do receive it, who believe the scripture, but yet do not take upon you the character of religious men. I am therefore obliged to address myself to you likewise under the character of men of reason.
39. I would only ask, Are you such indeed? Do you answer the character under which you appear? If so, you are consistent with yourselves. Your principles and practice agree together.