New Testament, is a genuine and authentic history, as we have to believe in the genuineness and authenticity of any other ancient book-we have no evidence, external or internal, to induce us to conclude, that the apostles had either ability or motive to introduce and propagate an imposture. The selfishness, ambition, and cowardice of the apostles, shewn during the life, and at the death of Jesus, are perfectly natural and credible; and when contrasted with their subsequent disinterestedness, humility, and fortitude, afford an exceeding strong proof, both of the general veracity of the evangelists as historians, and of the fact of the resurrection of Jesus, as a cause adequate to the production of so great, and otherwise unaccountable change in their character and conduct.

CHARGE,

DELIVERED TO THE

CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE OF LANDAFF,

IN JUNE, 1795.

REVEREND BRETHREN,

THE pleasure which I experience in meeting you on such occasions as the present, is always accompanied with some degree of anxiety. I am fearful, lest I should have nothing to produce to you worthy of your attention, as scholars and divines; and I think too well of your general good conduct, in the discharge of your parochial duties, to employ the time in reprehending you for faults, which probably do not exist; or in cautioning you against errors, to which you probably are not prone.

On a former occasion I took the liberty of giving you my advice, on the necessity of your

thoroughly examining the foundation on which your faith, as Christians, is built; and I, at this time, repeat the advice with great earnestness and sincerity. An attack has been openly made in a foreign country, and is secretly carrying on in our own; not on modes of worship or church discipline; not on disputable articles of faith; not on any of the out-works of Christianity, but on the citadel itself. We know, indeed, that this citadel is founded on a rock, which no human force can subvert; yet we are placed in it as sentinels, to detect the artifice of those who covertly undermine, and to repel the aggression: of those who openly assail it; and we know the punishment which awaits soldiers sleeping on their post.

There have been men in former ages, and there are not a few in our own, who think and speak of the clergy, as destitute either of understanding, or honesty; who represent them as interested in the support of a superstition; and ready, at all times, to sacrifice their probity as men, on the altar of professional hypocrisy ; who stigmatize them as the protectors of ignorance, and the persecutors of science. A philosopher,

says Helvetius, has for his enemies, the bonzes, the dervises, the bramins, the ministers of every religion in the world. Let us forgive these philosophers, whether foreign or domestic, this wrong; but, let us at the same time, beg them to consider that we, as well as they, are subjects of a free state, in which the road to wealth and distinction is open to every man of ability; and more open, perhaps, to men of ability in other professions, than in that of the church-that we, as well as they, enjoy talents from the gift of God, and have been as sedulous as themselves, (speaking without arrogance) in the improvement of them. Are they mathematicians, natural philosophers, metaphysicians, logicians, classical scholars? So are we.-I speak not of individuals, much less of myself, but of the great body of the British clergy. There is not a single branch of knowledge, in which the clergy are not equal, at least, to those who injuriously impute to them the grossness of ignorance in believing an imposture, or the more degrading and flagitious infamy of supporting what they do not believe.

It is true, that lawyers, physicians, soldiers, men in every profession, are wont to acquire a

partiality for that in which they have been educated; and, by the almost irresistible force of habit, think more highly of its excellencies, and are disposed to defend its defects with more pertinacity than reason will allow.. If a preposses sion of this kind should be observable in the professors of Christianity, or in the advocates for any particular system of Christianity, a candid mind would be ready rather to apologize for the infirmity, than to condemn it, as springing from a corrupted source of interest or ambition. What interest can an Unitarian or an Arian have in dissenting from the faith esteemed orthodox? If either, or both of them are in an error, may the mercy of God forgive them! but let not the unmerciful judgment of man condemn them.What interest can a deist of upright morals (and there are many such) have in contending, that the Supreme Being gave no law to Moses, no revelation of his will to mankind by Jesus Christ, but that Moses and the prophets, that Jesus and the apostles, were like Confucius, Zoroaster, Numa, Mahomet, and their several associates; that they pretended to a divine authority, which was not vouchsafed to them? We believe, that the divine missions of Moses and of Jesus may