time and the person are at last arrived, that are to dissipate the errors which have overspread the past generations of ignorance. The believers in Christianity are many, but it belongs to the few that are wise to correct their credulity. Belief is an act of reason, and superior reason may, therefore, dictate to the weak. In running the mind along the long list of sincere and devout Christians, I cannot help lamenting, that NEWTON had not lived to this day, to have had his shallowness filled up with this new flood of light. But the subject is too awful for irony. I will speak plainly and directly. NEWTON was a Christian! NEWTON, Whose mind burst forth from the fetters cast by nature upon our finate conceptions. NEWTON, whose science was truth, and the foundation of whose knowledge was philosophy; not those visionary and arrogant presumptions which too often usurp its name, but philosophy resting upon the basis of mathematics, which, like figures, cannot lie. NEWTON, who carried the line and rule to the utmost barriers of creation, and explored the principles by which, no doubt, all created matter is held together and exists. But this extraordinary man, in the mighty reach of his mind, overlooked, perhaps, the errors which a minuter investigation of the created things on this earth might have taught him of the essence of his Creator. What then shall be said of the great Mr. BoYLE, who looked into the organic structure of all matter, even to the brute, inanimate substances, which the foot treads on? Such a man may be supposed to have been equally qualified with Mr. PAINE, to look up through nature to nature's God; yet, the result of all his contemplations was the most confirmed and devout belief in all which, the other holds in contempt, as despicable and drivelling superstition. But this error might perhaps arise from a want of due attention to the foundations of human judgment and the structure of that understanding which God has given us for the investigation of truth. Let that question be answered by Mr. LOCKE, who was to the highest pitch of devotion and adoration, a Christian. Mr. LOCKE, whose office was to detect the errors of thinking, by going up to the fountain of thought, and to direct into the proper track of reasoning, the devious mind of man, by showing him its whole process, from the first perceptions of sense, to the last conclusions of ratiocination; putting a rein besides upon false opinion by practical rules, for the conduct of human judgment. But these men were only deep thinkers, and lived in their closets, unaccustomed to the traffic of the world, and to the laws which practically regulate mankind. Gentlemen! in the place where we now sit to administer the justice of this great country, above a century ago, the never-to-be-forgotten SIR MATTHEW HALE presided; whose faith in Christianity is an exalted commentary upon its truth, and whose life was a glorious example of its fruits in man; administering. human justice with a wisdom and purity, drawn from the pure fountain of the Christian dispensation, which has been and will be in all ages, a subject of the highest reverence and admiration. But it is said by the Author, that the Christian fable is but the tale of the more ancient superstitions of the world, and may be easily detected by a proper under-. standing of the mythologies of the heathen. Did MILTON understand those mythologies? Was he less versed than Mr. PAINE in the superstitions of the world? No; they were the subject of his immortal song; and though shut out from all recurrence to them, he poured them forth from the stores of his memory, rich with all that men ever knew, and laid them in their order as the illustration of that real and exalted faith, the unquestionable source of that fervid genius, which cast a sort of shade upon all the other works of man. "He passed the bounds of flaming space But it was the light of the body only that was extinguished, the celestial light shone inward, and enabled him to justify the ways of God to man. The result of his thinking, was, nevertheless not the same as the Author's. The mysterious incarnation of our blessed Saviour (which this work blasphemes in words so wholly unfit for the mouth of a Christian, or, for the ear of a Court of Justice, that I dare not, and will not give them utterance) MILTON made the grand conclusion of his Paradise Lost,' the rest from his finished labours, and the ultimate hope, expectation, and glory of the world. "A Virgin is His Mother, but his Sire, The power of the Most High; He shall ascend The Throne hereditary, and bound His reign With Earth's wide bounds, His glory with the heavens.” Bred as he was to the consideration of evidence, he declared the prophecy concerning the destruction of the Jewish nation, if there was nothing else to support Christianity, absolutely irresistible. The division of the Jews into Tribes, to preserve the genealogy of Christ; the distinction of the tribe of Judah, from which he was to come; the loss of that distinction when that end was accomplished; the predicted departure of the sceptre from Israel; the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, which imperial power in vain attempted to rebuild, to disgrace the prophecy; the dispersion of this nation over the face of the whole earth; the spreading of the Gospel throughout the world; the persecution of its true ministers, and the foretold superstitions which for ages had defied its worship,-furnish to my mind irrefragible evidence of its Divine origin. [Much as I admire this beautiful oration, I do not think this, nor any other prosecutions of this nature, can be justified upon the principles of the New Testament.-C.] The following very eloquent address was delivered by CHAS. PHILLIPS, Esq. (the celebrated Irish barrister) at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the City of London Auxiliary Bible Society, which was held shortly after the trial which gave occasion to the preceding oration. Being called upon by some persons on the platform, he immediately rose, and bowing to the Meeting, spoke as follows: May it please your Lordship-Ladies and Gentlemen,-Although I have not had the honour either of proposing or seconding any of your resolutions, still, as a native of that country so pointed alluded to in your report, I hope I may be indulged in a few observations. The crisis in which we are placed, is, I hope, a sufficient apology in itself for any intrusion; but I find such apology is rendered more than unnecessary by the courtesy of this reception. Indeed, my Lord when we see the omens which are every day arising-when we see blasphemy openly avowed-when we see the Scriptures audaciously ridiculed-when in this Christian monarchy the den of the Republican and the Deist yawns for the unwary in your most public thoroughfares, where the moral poison may be purchased, whose subtle venom enters the very soul-when infidelity has become an article of commerce, and man's perdition may be cheapened at the stall of every pedlar, - no friend of society should continue silent; it is no longer a question of political privilege of sectarian controversy - of theological discussion; it is become a question whether Christianity itself shall stand, or whether we shall let go the firm anchor of our faith, and drift, without chart, helm, or compass, into the shoreless ocean of impiety and blood! I despise as much as any man the whine of bigotry-I will go as far as any man for rational liberty; but I will not depose my God to deify the Infidel, or tear in pieces the charter of the State, and grope for a constitution amongst the murky pigeon holes of every creedless, lawless, infuriated regicide. When I saw the other day, my Lord, the chief Bacchanal of their orgies-the man with whom the Apostles were cheats, and the Prophets liars-on his memorable trial in Guildhall, withering hour after hour with his horrid blasphemies, surrounded by the votaries of every sect, and the heads of every faith-the Christian Archbishop, the Jewish Rabbi, and men most eminent for their piety and learning, whom he had purposely collected to hear his infidel ridicule of all they reverenced,-when I saw him raise the "Holy Bible" in one hand, and the "Age of Reason" in the other, as if it were confronting the Almighty with a rebel worm, till the pious judge grew pale, and the patient jury interposed, and the self-convicted wretch himself, after having raved away all his original impiety, was reduced into a mere machine for the re-production of the ribald blasphemy of others, I could not help exclaiming," Infatuated man! if all your impracticable madness could be realized, what would you give us in exchange for our establishments? What would you substitute for that august tribunal? For whom would you displace that independent judge, and that impartial jury? Or would you really burn the gospel, and erase the statutes, for the dreadful equivalent of the crucifix and the guillotine?" Indeed, if I were asked for a practical panegyric on our Constitution, I would adduce the very trial of that criminal; and if the legal annals of any country upon earth furnished an instance, not merely of such justice, but of such patience, such forbearance, such almost culpable indulgence, I would concede to him the triumph. I hope, too, in what I say, I shall not be considered as forsaking that illustrious example-I hope I am above an insult on any man in his situation-perhaps, had I the power, I would follow the example farther than I ought-perhaps I would even humble him into an evidence of the very spirit he spurned; and as our creed was reviled in his person, and vindicated in his conviction, so I would give it its noblest triumph in his sentence, and merely consign him to the punishment of its mercy. It has But, indeed, my Lord, the fate of this half-infidel, half-trading martyr, matters very little in comparison of that of the thousands he has corrupted. He has literally disseminated a moral plague, against which even the nation's quarantine can scarce avail us. poisoned the fresh blood of infancy-it has disheartened the last hope of age; if his own account of its circulation be correct, hundreds of thousands must be at this instant tainted with the infectious venom, whose sting dies not with the destruction of the body. |