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"Although such arguments as these," he says, "in "the way in which Mr. Wardlaw has illustrated them, afford. "a fine field for eloquent declamation, and are well adapted "to excite the wonder, applause, and sympathy, of a listen

ing crowd, they are altogether out of place in a work ❝of scriptural investigation." (Page 245.)—If the declamation referred to has in it any portion of eloquence, I am fully satisfied it has more of argument. There is such a thing as argumentative declamation; and it seemed to me the only suitable style for proofs of the kind in question. Why such proofs should be condemned as "altogether out of place in 66 a work of scriptural investigation," I have yet to learn. In such a work, we are surely intitled to take up the representations of things which the Scriptures give us, and to contemplate them in their manifest tendency and design. If the representations now under review were not designed to stir up into exercise the warmest feelings of the soul; if they were not designed to make "our hearts burn within "us;" then the writers have shown wonderful ignorance of the constitution of the human mind, and have, besides, most unhappily caught a flame themselves which it was not at all their intention to communicate to others. "While "they muse, the fire burns, and then they speak with their tongues." But in our musings on the same topics, we must be all jealousy of the least approach to warmth, and must handle them with all the icy coldness of speculative argumentation.-I am dissatisfied with Mr. Yates for uniformly associating, in his statements on this subject, “fancy, "and feeling." That the "sallies of fancy should be check“ed,” that “imagination's airy wing" should be "repressed,' is perfectly right. But there is a wide difference between repressing flighty fancy, and repressing legitimate feeling;

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between checking the aërial rovings of mere imagination, and checking the just emotions of "wonder, love, and "praise." But where lies the charge of fancy? I have given the representations of Scripture in Scripture language. The fancy, then, must be found in the interpretation and application of that language. But on this, the reader must be left to decide. May I be permitted to entreat his renewed attention to this part of the argument in my Discourses. I frankly avow, that if there be one part of my volume towards which I feel a greater partiality than another, it is the illustration of these general considerations, (Pages 4758.) I reckon the argument which they contain, in itself sufficient, I had almost said to decide the question ;—at any rate sufficient to communicate the very highest degree of previous verisimilitude to all the more direct proofs which follow.—If the feeling which these illustrations breathe shall be thought by any to be more than the case will justify, I have to say for myself, that, so far from being satisfied of this, I only lament its disproportionate inferiority. -I am quite aware, that the warmth will be deemed excessive by all within the polar circle of Socinianism :—where the inhabitants love to shiver amidst their eternal snows, and where all is apprehension and alarm when the thermometer of devotional feeling threatens to rise above the point of freezing. I am satisfied, that the religious affections should have their origin in an enlightened understanding. Enthusiasm is heat without light; or the movement of the passions in a degree disproportionate to the illumination of the mind, or to the magnitude of the subject it contemplates. But, at the same time, I know not what religion is, without feeling; and the question now is, are the representations given in those "general considera

"tions" against which Mr. Yates has thought good to "enter his decided protest,"-scriptural? If they are, are they not in their nature calculated to move, and to move powerfully, the affections and passions of the human soul? -Did not the contemplation of them produce this effect upon the writers themselves? Have not they given indulgence to the emotions of a glowing heart, in communicating to others the truths which so "effectually wrought" in their own bosoms? And was it not their intention, or rather the intention of the Holy Spirit, under whose influence they wrote, that their readers should not merely perceive their meaning in the truths which they expressed, but catch the same holy ardour which these truths kindled within them while they wrote? If so, why are such "general considerations" to be proscribed, as "altogether "out of place in a work of Scriptural investigation?" Is it not a presumption against any system, that its advocates appear so jealous of emotions which the sacred writers themselves indulged?—that the views which they entertain of the same points, instead of kindling the fervour of de votional feeling, serve rather to "freeze the genial current "" of the soul," and oblige them to exert all their ingenuity, in finding out plausible reasons for their anti-devotional coolness, and the phlegmatic temperament of their boasted rationality?

After entering his protest against the method of arguing in question, and observing, that "if the deity of Christ be not "taught in explicit terms, mere general considerations can be "of no avail to prove it," Mr. Yates adds a few other remarks," in reply to this part of Mr. Wardlaw's publication."

These, however, are very brief. They are, in a great measure, confined to the first of the five general considerations. And I really do not think it very necessary, to spend

the time and try the patience of my readers by proving it unscriptural, in estimating the love of God manifested in the mission of Christ, to leave out of account the original dignity of the person sent, and to confine our thoughts to "the ❝ merciful and beneficent ends to be accomplished in sending "him;"—especially when we consider, how these ends are reduced and lowered by the system of Unitarian exposition. -Neither do I feel it needful, to show at any length how entirely unsatisfactory it is, to account for the attachment of the primitive Christians to their crucified Master, and for all its glowing and practical expressions, by comparing it to the veneration displayed, in subsequent times, to the memory of the martyrs. Whence Whence sprung that veneration? Did it not arise from the relation of these holy men to Jesus Christ, the great object of Christian gratitude, and from the invincible love which they showed to him, by enduring tortures and sacrificing their lives in his cause? The martyrs themselves, and those who venerated their memories, viewed HIM in a higher character than that of a mere fellow-martyr, who had evinced his sincerity, by submit ting to death rather than retract his testimony. His blood was the blood of atonement;-of the great expiatory sacrifice; -of "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the "world." And it was faith in his blood, as an accepted propitiation, that sustained the martyrs, while they nobly suffered their own to be shed;-parting cheerfully with life, even when the death which deprived them of it was inflicted by excruciating agonies, because the haters of their Master would not suffer them to retain it, except on the condition of renouncing his cross, and forswearing their fealty to his name.— Mr. Yates is of opinion that the respect and veneration shown to the memories of the martyrs was the same in kind with that shown by the apostles and early Christians to the

name and memory of Jesus, only lower in degree;-that Jesus was viewed by them simply as a martyr of a higher order; the principal difference being, that he was the "author" (i. e. the first messenger to mankind) of that doctrine, for their adherence to which the subsequent martyrs bled. But no. Could these holy men have been made sensible that the veneration paid to them rested on similar grounds with that paid to their blessed Redeemer and Lord, it would have stirred their very bones in the graves at which their votaries assembled.-Regard to the memories of these witnesses to the truth, degenerated into a superstitious, idolatrous, and nonsensical veneration for broken pieces of stone and wood, for sacred dust and "canonized bones," and all the holy relics of martyrology. While we would avoid this stupid extreme, we would also deprecate running into its opposite. Not to revere the names of those who have bled for Christ, who "have not counted their lives dear unto themselves;" not to consecrate them in our memories, and embalm them in the affections of our hearts, were surely to forfeit every claim to Christian sensibility. But still, this reverence must be different, not only in degree, but in kind, from the reverence which we feel and cherish towards the name of that Redeemer, whose body was broken and whose blood was shed for us. When we take our seats at his table, do we “remem“ber him" merely as the great proto-martyr in the cause of Christian truth? Is he not brought before our contemplation in a more sublime and peculiar character?—as atoning on the cross for the sins of a guilty world? Yes; and it was this view of the cross that animated the martyrs themselves in the trial of fire, and the baptism of blood. It was the remembrance of his "cup of trembling" that took the bitterness out of theirs. It was his sprinkled blood that allayed the fury of the devouring

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