had you gone to the bottom of the subject, and unfolded all that was in your heart. To screen yourself, you affect to give us over, as incurable, before you have so much as tried what you can make of us. If you set about it, who can tell, but, stupid as we are, some of us may recover our sight and sense, and be emancipated from our gloom and from our surprise together? Electricity, under you auspices, may work miracles.

However lightly 1 may, occasionally, have expressed myself; I assure you, on the word of an honest man, that I have the honour to be, with seriousness and truth, Reverend sir,

your admirer,

and very humble servant, Augustus Montague Toplady.

P. S. On reviewing this letter, I deem myself obliged, in some measure, to apologize for that vein of freedom, into which, the supreme and insulting contempt, you express of the Calvinists, has, unwarily, betrayed me. Your last-quoted paragraph, sir, appears to carry an implication of extreme prejudice, and of sovereign pride. Nothing can be more supercilious, more rude, and more unjust, than the letter and the spirit of that would passage. I would willingly, if I were able, frame an excuse for you :. by supposing, that it escaped you, volante calamo; and that it is to be imputed, not so much to malice, to haughtiness, or even to your unacquaintedness with the people you traduce; as to the hurry and precipitation, with which your treatise was appearently written.

Believe me to be, sir,

most respectfully, your's.

LETTER II.

Knightsbridge, January 20, 1778.

I AM much your debtor sir, for your late polite favour from Calne: but, especially, for the obliging present of your Disquisitions concerning Matter and Spirit; and of the appendix, concerning Necessity. I have read them, with great attention: and, as you condescend to request my opinion of those ingenious pieces; you shall have it, with the most transparent unreserve.

I need not say any thing, as to the article of necessity: because you well know. that I have the hononr to coincide, almost entirely, with your own view of that great

bject. Permit me, however, to ask, en passant, in what part of any printed work of mine, I "seem to think that the torments of hell will not be eternal ?" You yourself, dear sir, I doubt not, will, on a calm review, be the first to condemn your own temerity, in having publicly advanced a conjecture totally unwarranted on my port: and I am equally disposed to believe, that this will be the last liberty of the kind, which you will venture to take either with me, or with any other man. You must be sensible, that not a word, on the nature or the duration of future punishment, ever past between you and me, either in writing, or in personal converse. Consequently, you must be entirely unaquainted with my ideas of that awful subject: and, as such, unqualified to advance the insinuation, of which I have such just reason to complain.

With regard to your Disquisitious," &c. I

66

would observe,

1. That I can subscribe to no more than to one moiety of them. I still consider materialism, as equally absurd in itself, and atheistical in its tendency.

Lut, 2. The perusal of your book gave me no surprice; because I have, for a considerable time past, viewed you as a secret materialist: whose favourite princip'e, like the workings of a subterranious fire, would, at fast, break forth into open birth.

3- Nor has this publication lessened, in the smallest

degree, my respect and esteem for its author. You have a right, to think for your self; and to publish the result of your thoughts, to the world. If my own brother was of a different judgment, as to this point, I should set him down for an enemy to the indefeasible prerogatives of human nature.

4. I revere and admire real probity where ever I see it. Artifice, duplicity, and disguise, I cannot away with. Transparency is, in my opinion, the first and the most valuable of all social virtues. Let a man's principles be black as hell, it matters not to me, so he have but integrity to appear exactly what he is. Give me the person, whom I can hold up, as I can a piece of chrystal, and see through him. For this, among many other excellencies, I regard and admire Dr. Priestley.

5. I must acknowledge, sir, that, in the foregoing part of your "Disquisitions," you throw no small quantity of light on the nature of matter at large. My apprehensions, concer: ing visible substance, are, in several important respects, corrected and improved, by your masterly observations on that subject. I wish you had stopt at matter, which you evidently do understand, and better, perpaps, than any other philosopher on earth; and not meddled with spirit, whose acquaintance, it is very plain, you have not cultivated with equal assiduity.

6. Bishop Berkeley tells me, that I am all spirit, without a single particle of matter belonging to me. Dr. Priestley, on the other head, contends, that I am all body, untenanted and unanimated by any immaterial substance within. But these two theories together, and what will be the product? That my sum total, and that of every other man, amounts to just nothing at all, I have neither body, nor soul. I have no sort of existence whatever. -Here it may be alledged, "That the two systems cannot be thrown together, as being totally incompatible." I answer: Why may not bishop Berkeley's word go as far as Dr. Priestley's; and the doctor's as far as the bishop's? Though, when all is done, the best way, in my opinion, is, to cease from both, and to believe neither.

7. The arguments, for absolute and universal materialism, drawn (or, rather, pretendedly drawn) from rational and philosophic sources, appear, to me, prodigiously forced, lame, and inconclusive. And, if we take Scripture into the account, not all subtilty nor all the violence of criticism will ever be able to establish your system on that ground. What wretched work do you yourself make, with those few texts, which you venture to quote and strive to obviate, wherein plena & prima facie, man is spoken of, as a being compounded of matter and spirit!

Can you bear this plain dealing? If you can, give me your hand. And I most heartily wish, that all, who differ from you, and especially that all who may commence your public antagonists, may treat you, as I ever desire to do, with the respect due to your virtues and your talents.

How is your health. Beware of too close application, and of too intense exertions of mind. I, for my own part, can most heartily subscribe to these remarks of the apocryphal writer: "The thoughts of mortal men are miserable, and our devices are but uncertain. For the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth on many things. Hardly do we guess aright, at things that are upon earth; and with labour do we find the things that are before us: but the things which are in heaven, who hath searched out? and the counsel who hath known, except thou give wisdom, and send the Holy Spirit from above?"-May that Holy Spirit, shining on his written word, and shining into our hearts, be a light to the paths of the much-esteemed friend, to whom I am writing; and the paths of his

obliged and most obedient servant,

Augustus Toplady.

ERRATA 3d page, 14th line, for at, read respecting.-8th page, 12th line, [omission,] We must not be silent.14th page, 7th line, Virgin Mary, read the Saviour.21st page, 4th line, for jurisdiction read justification.24th page, 6th line from the bottom, for secretary, read secrecy.

CATHOLICK QUESTION

AT BOSTON ;

OR

AN ATTEMPT TO PROVE THAT A CALVINIST IS A CHRISTIAN, (ACCORDING TO THE PROPER SIGNIFICATION OF THOSE NAMES.)

CONTAINING ALSO

More Remarks on " American Unitarianism,"

AND

A REPLY TO A LAYMAN'S ENQUIRY,

"ARE YOU A CHRISTIAN OR A CALVINIST?"

THREE LETTERS ON MR. TOMPKINS' " CALM ENQUIRY."

BY THE

REV. JAMES HERVEY.

Some truths are said to be catholick, because they are received by all the faithful. Johnson.

Neither is it strange that there should be mysteries in divinity as well as in the commonest operations in nature.

Swift.

Non recipit mendacium Veritas ; nec patitur Religio impietatem.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY R. P. & C. WILLIAMS,

NO. 8, STATE-STREET,