Such, I think, is the outline of what must be thought the duty of a reasonable inquirer into the pretensions of Christianity. To fill up this sketch would require a volume: but you see from these hints that here is room enough for the exercise of the understanding, for the full display, indeed, of its best faculties. If Christianity, which invites, will stand the test of this inquiry, you cannot complain that Reason has not enough to do, or that your reception of it, as a divine revelation, is not founded on reason. Only, let me caution you against coming hastily to a conclusion from a slight or summary view of the particulars here mentioned. You must have the patience to evolve them all; to weigh the moment of each taken separately, and to decide at length on the united force of these arguments, when brought to bear on the single point to which you apply them, the DIVINE AUTHORITY of your religion.
To grasp all these considerations in one view will require the utmost effort of the strongest mind: And, when you have done this, you will remember that very much (so widely extended and so numerous are the presumptions on this subject) has probably, nay, has certainly, escaped your best attention.
However, on these grounds, I will now suppose that a serious man, who would be, and is qualified to be, a believer on conviction, has fully satisfied himself that Christianity is true, and that the Scriptures, in which the whole of that religion is contained, are of divine authority.
II. A second and very momentous use of Reason will then be, To scrutinize these Scriptures themselves, now admitted to be divine; that is, to investigate their true sense and meaning. For, whatever their authority be, as they were written for the use of men, they must be studied, and can only be understood, as other writings are, by applying to them the usual and approved rules of human criticism.
I have already supposed, that you have seen enough of these Scriptures to be satisfied of their containing no contradictions to the clear intuitive principles of human knowledge. For this satisfaction must precede the general conclusion, that the Scriptures are divinely revealed; all truth being consistent with itself, and it being impossible that any evidence for the truth of revelation should be stronger than that of Intuition. Still, it remains to inquire of doctrines taught in these books, and apparently, as to the general sense of them, not inadmissible, what is their precise and accurate interpretation.
And here, besides the use of languages, antiquities, history, and such other helps as are necessary to the right understanding of all ancient books, you will have ample scope for the exercise of your sagacity in studying the character of the sacred writers, the genius and views of each, with the peculiarities of their style and method; in tracing the connexion of their ideas, the pertinence and coherence of their reasonings; in comparing the same writer with himself, or different writers with each other; in explaining the briefer and darker passages by what is delivered more at large and more perspicuously elsewhere; in apprehending the harmony of their general scheme, and the consistency of what they teach on any particular subject.
In all these ways, and if there be any other, your Reason may be and should be employed with all the attention of which ye are capable. And when this task is now performed, and you have settled it in your own minds what the true genuine doctrines of Christianity are; what our religion teaches of divine things, and what it prescribes to us in moral matters; What more remains to be done? Clearly, but this—To BELIEVE, AND TO LIVE, according to its direction.
But, instead of acquiescing in this natural and just conclusion, the curiosity of the human mind is ready to engage us in new and endless labours. “The wise in their own conceits will examine this Religion, and see if it be REASONABLE: for surely nothing can proceed from Heaven but the purest and brightest reason.”
Here, first, they perplex themselves and others, by the use of an ambiguous term: for, by reasonable is meant, either what is not contrary to the clearest principles of reason, or what is clearly explicable, in all respects, by those principles. In the former sense, it must be maintained that Christianity is a reasonable Religion, and that no such contrariety to reason is to be found in it. In the latter sense, it may be true that Christianity is not reasonable, I mean, that the reasons on which it is founded are not always apparent to us: but then this sense of the word is not pertinent to the case in hand; and we may as well pretend that the constitution of the natural world is unreasonable, as that the system of Revelation is so, because we are in the same ignorance, for the most part, of the grounds and reasons on which either fabrick is erected.
In the next place, supposing that, by intense pains, and a greater sagacity than ordinary, we are enabled to see, or guess at least, in some instances, on what principles of reason the great scheme of revelation or some of its doctrines at least are founded, what do we get by the discovery? Only, the addition of a little speculative knowledge, which does not make us at all wiser to salvation, than we were before, and possibly not so wise; since knowledge, we know, puffeth up, and God giveth grace to the humble.