their maintenance not affected by it: that, as long as they live virtuously, and write with all due modefty, good manners, and advance nothing that breaks in upon morality and government, they be treated in all respects as those are or ought to be who employ themfelves in any other part of useful learning.

I must add, let them be never fo much in the wrong, I can apprehend no danger from it to the church; or that the errors of a few men, can have any confiderable influence in oppofition to a great body of a vigilant and learned clergy, who will be always able and ready to defend the received notions, if they can be defended; and if they cannot, it must be allowed they ought not. But if fome inconveniences would arife from the liberty I contend for, they are nothing in comparison of thofe that must follow from the want of it.

Till there is fuch a liberty allowed to clergymen, till there is fuch a fecurity for their reputations, fortunes and perfons, I fear I muft add, till fo difficult a ftudy meets with proportionable encouragement; it is impoffible a fincere, impartial and laborious application to it, fhould generally prevail; and till it does, it is as impoffible the fcriptures fhould be well underftood; and till they are, they are a rule of faith in name only. For it is not the word of fcripture, but the fenfe, which is the rule; and fo far as that is not understood, so far the fcriptures are not our rule, whatever we pretend, but the fenfe that men have put on them; men fallible as ourselves, and who were by no means fo well furnished, as the learned at prefent are, with the proper helps to find out the true meaning of fcripture. And while we take the fenfe of the fcriptures in this manner upon content, and fee not with our own eyes; we infenfibly relapfe into the principle of popery, and give up the only ground on which we can juftify our feparation from the church of Rome. It was a right to study and judge of the fcriptures

€ 4

fcriptures for themselves, that our firft reformers afferted with fo good effect; and their fucceffors can defend their adherence to them on no other principle.

If then we are concerned for the ftudy of the fcriptures, further than in words; if we in earnest think them the only rule of faith; let us act as if we thought fo, let us heartily encourage a free impartial ftudy of them; let us lay afide that malignant, arbitrary, perfecuting, popifh fpirit; let us put no fetters on mens understandings, nor any other bounds to their inquiries, but what God and truth have fet. Let us, if we would not give up the Proteftant principle, that the fcriptures are plain and clear in the neceffary articles, declare nothing to be neceffary, but what is clearly revealed in them.

Then may we hope to fee the ftudy of thefe divine books fo happily cultivated by the united labours of the learned, when under no difcouragements, that all may in the main agree in the true meaning of them. Places that can be understood, they will agree in understanding alike; fuch at least as are of confequence to the faith. And for fuch as are too obfcure to be cleared up with any certainty, thofe likewife they will agree about, and unanimoufly confefs they are fuch as no article of faith can be grounded upon, or proved from. Next to understanding a text of fcripture, is to know it cannot be certainly understood. When the clear and dark parts of fcripture are thus diftinguished, an unity may then reasonably be hoped for among Proteftants in neceffary points; and a difference of opinion in such as are not neceffary, can have no manner of ill confequence, nor any way disturb the peace of the church; fince there will then be nothing left in its doctrines, to inflame mens paffions, or feed their corrupt interefis, when we are all agreed about what is effential to religion; and what is not effential, is looked on as indifferent; fo that a man may take one fide, or the other,

or

or neither, or may change, as he fees reafon, without offence.

Upon the whole, a free and impartial study of the fcriptures, either ought to be encouraged, or it ought not. There is no medium; and therefore those who are against one fide, which ever it be, are neceffarily espousers of the other. Those who think it ought not to be encouraged, will, I hope, think it no injury to be thought to defend their opinion upon fuch reafons as have here been brought for it, till they give better. On the other hand, those who think these reasons inconclufive, and cannot find better, will find themfelves obliged to confefs, that such a study ought to be encouraged; and confequently muft take care how they are acceffary to fuch practices, as in their natural confequence cannot but tend to its difcouragement; left they come into the condemnation of those who love darkness rather than light, and for their punishment be finally adjudged to it. There is in this cafe no other medium between encouraging, and difcouraging, but what there is between light and darkness. Every degree of darkness, is a want of fo much light, and all want of light, is a certain degree of darkness. To refuse then a greater degree of light where it can be had, is in truth to prefer darkness; which, in my humble opinion, can never be reasonable or excufable. Those who are of another mind, plainly distrust themfelves or their caufe. Which if it can bear the light, why should it not be shown in it? but if it cannot, it is not the cause of God, or of the Son of God; for God is light, and in him is no darkness; and the Son of God is the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world *.

REMARKS on what are filed FUNDAMENTALS.

This is a point I apprehend incapable of being determined, as it muft neceffarily depend on, and will ever Bishop Hare.

vary,

vary, according to the circumftances of perfons; and therefore I fhall be more concife on this head, and give the reader the fentiments of some eminent au

thors thereon.

Bishop Ufher fays, as for the credenda, or things neceffary to be believed, the Creed, called the Apostles, contained all articles of that kind, as is manifeft from" the continual practice of the Catholic church. For when fhe prepared her catechumens for baptifm, and thereupon received them to that ordinance, and into the Christian church, we cannot reasonably fuppofe fhe omitted any thing to make them members; and yet all that the required of them to beleive, were the articles of this creed.

As to the agenda, or things neceffary to be done, in order to falvation, he says, among all the great differences we see in the practice of Chriftians, there are certain fundamental points in which they all agree; as, a defire to fear God; repentance for fins paft, and a fincere purpose of heart, for the time to come, to cleave unto the Lord; which whofoever have is under mercy, and ought not to be excluded the communion of the faithful Chriftians *.

With this agrees the doctrine of the church of England, for fhe requires of thofe that are to be baptifed, only to make confeffion of this faith +.

Hence the judicious Mr. Chillingworth fays, the main queftions in this business are, what revelations are fimply and abfolutely neceffary to be proposed to the belief of Christians, so that that fociety which doth believe them, hath for matter of faith, the effence of a true church. And he quotes,

Archbishop Ufher on the Unity of the Church, p. 15, 28. + Church Catechifm.

Mr. Chillingworth's Religion of Proteftants, chap. iv. fect. 13 pag. 196. See Dr. Potter on the Creed, p. 215.

Bishop of London's fecond Pastoral Letter, printed in 1730,

pag. 15.

Dr.

Dr. Potter, who says, that what man or church foever believes the Creed, and all the evident confequences of it fincerely and heartily, cannot poffibly (if also he believes the fcripture, be in any error of fimple belief, offenfive to God, nor therefore deferve for any fuch error to be deprived of his life, or to be cut off from the communion of the church, and deemed unworthy of falvation. And the confequence is this, which highly concerns the church of Rome, that whatsoever man or church does for any error of fimple belief, deprive any man fo qualified as above, either of his temporal life, or livelihood, or liberty, or of the churches communion, and hope of falvation, is for the first, unjust, cruel and tyrannical, fchifmatical and prefumptuous; and for the fecond, uncharitable.

Bishop Gibson has delivered his fentiments on this fubject with much clearness, candour and charity; he fays, as long as men are men, and have different degrees of understanding, and every one a partiality to his own conceptions, it is not to be expected that they fhould agree in any one entire scheme, and every part of it, in the circumftances, as well as in'the things themselves.

The question therefore is not in general about a difference in opinion, which in our prefent ftate is unavoidable; but about the very weight and importance of the things wherein Chriftians differ, and the things wherein they agree; and it will appear that the several denominations of Chriftians agree, both in the subftance of religion, and in the neceffary enforcements to the practice of it: "That the world, and all things in it, were created by God, and are under the direction and government of his powerful hand and allfeeing eye; that there is an effential difference between good and evil, virtue and vice; that there will be a ftate of future rewards and punishments, according to our behaviour in this life; that Chrift was a teacher fent from God, and that the apoftles were divinely infpired;