After several allusions to the birth of our Saviour, you come forward and explicitly state your own belief; and unlike those who have preceded you in this path, and who have endeavoured to destroy our faith in the miracle, by arguments drawn from the Scriptures, you take a shorter road, and declare it is impossible.
You say "By the analogy of reason, spirit cannot beget a material body, because the thing begotten, must be of the same nature with its father. Spirit cannot beget any thing but spirit, it cannot beget flesh and blood. No, my friends, it is impossible."[[5]]
I have in a former letter referred to this assertion, and had you confirmed the opinion which I then intimated, that it was a hasty expression, and uttered without your perceiving its tendency, I should not again allude to the subject. But you found yourself seated between the horns of a dilemma. If you admitted it was an inconsiderate expression, you abandoned your high claim to inspiration; and if you re-affirmed it, in its obvious meaning, it would be an adoption of principles which I sincerely hope you do not entertain; and you have endeavoured to escape by an explanation which, although it narrows the meaning, does not relieve it from the stain of impiety; and is a proof, (if any further proof is wanting,) that such a course cannot proceed from the inspirations of the spirit of truth.
You say, that in denying the power of the spirit to beget, you did not mean to question the power to create. To limit is to destroy the omnipotency of the Creator; and when we see such a creature as man, presuming to scan His power and determine what He can, or cannot do, the feelings which its profanity would otherwise occasion, are lost in our astonishment at its arrogance and presumption. But you have announced your opinion not only as sanctioned by divine inspiration, but as being according to "the true analogy of reason," and yet, taken with your subsequent explanation, it is enveloped in absurdity. In admitting the power to create, you have destroyed your own argument; for you cannot suppose that there was an individual present in the meeting, so grossly dull as to believe that when the prophecy was accomplished in the birth of our Saviour, it was by the means which your explanation points to; or that it was other than a miraculous intervention of that merciful Being, who in his unlimited power and inscrutable wisdom, has chosen his own way in directing us to a knowledge of those truths which the gospel unfolds. And if we assent to your doctrine in the restricted sense in which you say you intended the word beget to be understood; we must believe there are sexes in spirit, and that it can only be produced by a corporeal union of incorporeal beings.
Here is no proof of your ability to draw conclusions from the analogy of reason, but it is a striking illustration of the wisdom of the counsel, "not to multiply words without knowledge."
A very keen and accurate observer of the foibles and infirmities of man remarks, "it would be well, if people would not lay so much weight on their own reason in matters of religion, as to think every thing impossible and absurd, which they cannot conceive: how often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives? Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices."[[6]]
If, as I truly believe, the christian religion is intended to subdue the wanderings of the imagination, and bring the mind into a humble dependance on our Creator, it seems necessarily to follow, that we ought to be anxiously careful to prevent its being drawn into a too great fondness for enquiries into unsearchable things. In the course of my reading, I have lately perused the prayer of a very learned man,[[7]] which, for its rational and fervent piety, must be instructive to all, and in a particular manner to those who are our teachers. It is the prayer of one whose writings will be read with instruction and delight as long as our language endures; whose intellectual faculties were of the highest order, and who was sufficiently sensible of his superiority, when compared with most other men: yet, when in solitude and private worship, he looked beyond all sublunary things, and contemplated the immensurable distance between the wisdom of man and his Creator, with deep prostration of mind he prayed "Oh, Lord, my maker and protector, who hast graciously sent me into this world to work out my salvation, enable me to drive from me all such unquiet and perplexing thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the practice of those duties which thou hast required. When I behold the works of thy hands, and consider the course of thy providence, give me grace always to remember that thy thoughts are not my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways: and while it shall please thee to continue me in this world, where much is to be done, and little to be known; teach me by thy holy spirit, to withdraw my mind from unprofitable and dangerous enquiries, from difficulties vainly curious, and doubts impossible to be solved. Let me rejoice in the light which thou hast imparted, let me serve thee with active zeal and humble confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest, shall be satisfied with knowledge. Grant this, O Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake."
And that it is with minds thus disciplined, that all ought to be prepared for prayer, and that in this spirit alone, can the preacher awaken the mind to true worship, are truths which few professors of the christian name, and none who believe in the doctrines of Friends, can doubt.
LETTER III.
If, in my succeeding observations, I refer to the opinions held by any other sect than that in which I have been educated, I wish it to be understood, that it is neither to approve nor censure. Believing, (as I sincerely do,) that christianity consists not in forms or observances; neither in subscriptions to curiously contrived creeds, nor in confessions of faith; but in that worship which purifies and cleanseth the heart; so I believe that he who ministers to a congregation in this spirit, (whatever may be his name among men,) ministers profitably; "and that both he that soweth, and he that reapeth, may rejoice together."