[381] Professor Kingsley's Sermon,—"Why should we pray for fair Weather?"
[382] See at the foot of p. 53, [note (a) [our 330].
[383] Jer. iv. 19.
[384] The complaint is a very old one. See Pearson's Minor Works, vol. i. pp. 429-30.
[385] It becomes necessary to explain, that on the Sunday after the delivery of the foregoing Sermon, a Sermon was preached directly contravening its teaching. Next week, it became the present writer's duty to address the same auditory,—which will explain as much of what follows in the present Sermon, (including something at p. 79,) as may seem to require explanation. It was impossible to proceed with the argument, until what had been advanced of a directly opposite tendency had been thus disposed of.
[386] St. Luke xviii. 8.
[387] Davison's Discourses on Prophecy,—p. 7.
[388] Ibid.
[389] Davison's Discourses on Prophecy,—p. 8.—The following passage is from Bp. Horsley's Primary Charge to the Clergy of Rochester, (1796,):—"The question in this case is not abstract,—what Reason may have the ability to do. The question is upon a matter of fact,—what she did. Were these things, in point of fact, man's own discovery?—The sacred history is explicit that they were not. And notwithstanding the many useful lessons of Morality we find in the writings of the heathen sages,—the many eloquent discourses upon providence, and the immortality of the soul,—the many subtile disquisitions upon the great questions of necessity and moral freedom, upon fate and chance,—I am persuaded, that had it not been for the early communications of the Creator with mankind, Man never would have raised the conceptions of his mind to the idea of a God; he never would have dreamt of the immaterial principle within himself; and he never would have formed any general notions of Right and Wrong in the abstract; he would have had no Religion, perhaps no Morality.... The prudent dispensers of the Word will resort to Revelation for his first principles, as well as for more mysterious truths. He will not trust to philosophy for any discoveries. He will suffer philosophy to be nothing more than his assistant in the study of the inspired Word. She must herself be instructed by those lively oracles before she can be qualified to take part in the instruction of men. To lay the foundation of Revelation upon any previous discoveries of Reason, is in fact to make Reason the superior teacher. It is not improbable, that Idolatry itself had its first beginning in an early adoration of this phantom of Natural Religion,—the idol, in later ages, of impolitic metaphysical Divines."—Charges, pp. 50, 51.—Bp. Butler says the same thing, but more briefly, in his Analogy, P. II., c. ii.: also P. I., c. vi.