The Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Arminian, the Greek, with all their sub-divisions, do yet all accord in these articles:—­the booksellers might have said, all who repeat the Nicene Creed.  N. B. I do not approve, or defend, nay, I dislike, these “United Theological Booksellers”:  but this utter Barrister is their best friend by attacking them so as to secure to them victory, and all the advantages of being known to have been wickedly slandered;—­the best shield a faulty cause can protend against the javelin of fair opposition.

Ib. p. 56.

Our Saviour never in any single instance reprobated the exercise of reason:  on the contrary, he reprehends severely those who did not exercise it.  Carnal reason is not a phrase to be found in his Gospel; he appealed to the understanding in all he said, and in all he taught.  He never required ‘faith’ in his disciples, without first furnishing sufficient ‘evidence’ to justify it.  He reasoned thus:  If I have done what no ‘human power’ could do, you must admit that my power is ’from above’, &c.

Good heavens! did he not uniformly require faith as the condition of obtaining the “evidence,” as this Barrister calls it—­that is, the miracle?  What a shameless perversion of the fact!  He never did reason thus.  In one instance only, and then upbraiding the base sensuality of the Jews, he said:  “If ye are so base as not to believe what I say from the moral evidence in your own consciences, yet pay some attention to it even for my works’ sake.”  And this, an ‘argumentum ad hominem,’ a bitter reproach (just as if a great chemist should say;—­Though you do not care for my science, or the important truths it presents, yet, even as an amusement superior to that of your jugglers to whom you willingly crowd, pay some attention to me)—­this is to be set up against twenty plain texts and the whole spirit of the whole Gospel!  Besides, Christ could not reason so; for he knew that the Jews admitted both natural and demoniacal miracles, and their faith in the latter he never attacked; though by an ‘argumentum ad hominem’ (for it is no argument in itself) he denied its applicability to his own works.  If Christ had reasoned so, why did not the Barrister quote his words, instead of putting imaginary words in his mouth?

Ib. 60, 61.

Religion is a system of ‘revealed’ truth; and to affirm of any revealed truth, that we ‘cannot understand’ it, is, in effect, either to deny that it has been revealed, or—­which is the same thing—­to admit that it has been revealed in vain.

It is too worthless!  I cannot go on.  Merciful God! hast thou not revealed to us the being of a conscience, and of reason, and of will;—­and does this Barrister tell us, that he “understands” them?  Let him know that he does not even understand the very word understanding.  He does not seem to be aware of the school-boy distinction between the [Greek:  hoti esti] and the [Greek:  dioti]?  But to all these silly objections religion must for ever remain exposed as long as the word Revelation is applied to any thing that can be ‘bona fide’ given to the mind ‘ab extra’, through the senses of eye, ear, or touch.  No! all revelation is and must be ‘ab intra’; the external ‘phaenomena’ can only awake, recall evidence, but never reveal.  This is capable of strict demonstration.