I LETTER XXII. The Conclufion. My Friends and Neighbours, HAVE now exerted my best endeavours to repel an unprovoked attack upon myself, and my brethren, the Diffenters of this country, made by Mr. Madan, and also to refute the grofs calumnies of Mr. Burn, two of your Spiritual guides, but whose example I hope you will now fee no inducement to follow. They have brought railing and unjust accusations against persons who neither did, nor meant, them any harm, and who lived quietly in their neighbourhood. You have feen the injuftice and folly of their own various charges, and those of other persons which have been industriously propagated; and I hope that for the future they will learn to pay a greater regard to truth and justice, and that you will fee reafon to refpect those whom they have endeavoured to exhibit as the objects of your averfion and abhorrence. Truth is fure to be a gainer by every open difcuffion, and will, no doubt, be fo by this; not perhaps in any great degree at prefent, but always after due reflection. If you have received either informatiou, or amusement, from these Letters of mine, please to remember that you are primarily indebted to Mr. Madan and Mr. Burn for it, and do not fail to make them a fuitable acknowledgement. For certainly their publications gave occasion to mine. As to myself, if, as Mr. Madan says, controversy be neceffary to my support, if not to my existence, I am obliged to him, and to Mr. Burn, for the fatisfaction that I most of all wanted, and (by giving me an additional degree of animation) for prolonging my life. It was, I ought to suppose, their their pure good will to me that prompted them to give me this exercile, fo neceffary to my health and happiness. It is poffible also that Mr. Pitt, and those whom we have generally confidered as the enemies of the Diffenters, may have given us our late defeat with the moft friendly intentions, viz. to promote the difcuffion of important topics, and to keep up a controversy in which they fee we take so much pleasure. For had we gained our point, we must, in common decency, have been quiet at least ten or a dozen years; which, befides ill fuiting such reflefs fpirits as I, and fome others, are reprefented to be, would have stifled in their very conception a number of excellent publications, with which, I doubt not, the prefs will now teem for years to come. However, as the best way to come at a thorough good understanding is fometimes to begin with a full difcuffion of all our differences (and I hope I am not prone to bear malice) my several antagonists and myself may, by this means, come to understand one another better than we otherwife could have done, and thus be better friends than before. In fettling the account between us I have more to forgive than they have. For I have never taxed them with malevolence, or wilful misrepresentation, which they have perpetually laid to my charge, as if they were words of course, without which controverfy could not be carried on; like the phrafe at the inftigation of the devil, in all indictments for felony; and I am willing to hope that, being unused to controversy, they did not confider them in any other light. All that I have to afk pardon for, is a little innocent, and as they will call it, awkard, pleafantry, like that of the ass in the fable, fuch as can do them no material harm; and therefore I hope that, after fome time, we shall meet on, at least, as friendly terms as ever. A good lady who wrote me an anonymous and scolding letter, on the idea, as fhe faid, that, being unworthy of the caftigation of any man, the pen of a woman was more pro perly perly employed, began her curicus letter with faying, that I " feized on Mr. Madan as a cat seizes on a mouse. But if she had recollected that both Mr. Madan and Mr. Burn were the aggressors in this controverfy*, she would have feen that they confidered themselves as the cats, and me as the defenceless moufe. However, if they have found themfelves mistaken, and fee reason to think, with my anonymous correspondent, that I am the cat and they the mice, I hope they will be fatisfied that, though I have played with them a little, I have done them no material injury (fuch as they would have done to me) but have taught them for the future not wantonly to provoke other animals of prey, more favagely difpofed than myfelf. It is true I am an avowed enemy to the church establishment of this country, but by no means to any who belong to it. I write against Calvinism, but have the greatest respect for many Calvinists, and wish to make them exchange their darkness for my light. I am also an enemy to Atheism and Deism, but not to Atheists or Deifis. I have a particular friendship for many of them, in this country and other countries, and I write in order to inform and reclaim them. There is nothing perfonal in all this. They think as unfavourably of my fyftem, as I do of theirs. Let all points. of difference be freely difcuffed. Truth will be a gainer by it. But let us refpect one another, as we refpect truth itself; love all, and with the good of all, without diftinétion. This is true candour, and confiftent with the greatest zeal for our particular opinions. * Mr. Madan, and the Rector of St. Martin's, out of their abundant zeal, went about the country, I am informed, like two ecclefiaftical knights errant, in order to collect as great a force as they could of the genuine friends of the establishment, on a late occafion at Warwick. If, therefore, the church of England, on any future emergency, shall want two champions, either to take the field, or to take the pen, she may know where to look for them. It is fomething remarkable that the freeholders of Warwickshire were among the foremost in their addreffes to procure a repeal of the bill in favour of the Jews, in 1753. Muft every thing narrow and illiberal originate in this part of the country? Let us exert ourselves to wipe off the difgrace. To To close with seriousness: I hope that, on reflection, we fhall all take more pleasure in exerting our endeavours to promote the knowledge and practice of the great things in which we and all christians agree, than in contending about the things of comparatively fmall importance with refpect to which we differ; as I formerly told the excellent bishop of Waterford, with whom I had a friendly controversy about the duration of our Saviour's miniftry; and with what I obferved to him on the fubject (as my publications of this kind will hardly ever fall into your hands) I fhall close these Letters. "Your lordship is pleased to speak of our differing in ' fome conclufions of greater importance than those we are now controverting.' Of this I am fully apprized; the "articles of your lordship's faith, as a member of the "church of England, being upon record, and mine being "fufficiently known by my writings, as alfo the ftrefs I lay << upon them, as opposed to the tenets of all the established "churches in the world. Yet, my lord, it gives me more "pleasure to reflect that, notwithstanding these very con"fiderable differences, there are still greater things in which. "we both agree, and on which we both, I hope, lay ftill greater stress; and they are things in which all perfons "who call themselves christians are agreed. "We both believe in a God, the intelligent author of "nature, in his conftant over-ruling providence, and in his righteous moral government. We both believe in the "divine origin of the Jewish and Chriftian revelations; that "Christ was a teacher fent from God, that he is our "Master, lawgiver, and judge, that God raifed him from "the dead, that he is now exalted at the right hand of "God, that he will come again to raise all the dead, and "fit in judgment upon them, and that he will then give "to every one of us according to our works. "Thefe, I need not tell your lordship, are, properly "speaking, the only great truths of religion; because they are those which have the greatest influence on our con“duct, ર "duct, and to these not only the church of England, and the church of Scotland, but even the church of Rome, << gives its affent. If we fufficiently attend to the importance of these great truths, and give ourselves up to "the full influence of them, we shall love as brethren, not"withstanding all leffer differences, and especially such as "we are now discussing. "Whether our Lord preached one year or three years, "three years or thirty years, we are perfectly agreed with "respect to the great object of his preaching, and the obli"gation we are under to regulate our lives according to it; "and from the catalogue of proper chriftian virtues we can "never exclude humility, benevolence, or candour. We muft "judge others as we would be judged ourselves, waiting "for the final fentence of our great and common Judge, Jefus Chrift." Hoping we shall all adopt these truly christian sentiments, and that nothing that Mr. Madan, or Mr. Burn have said, or can have to say, will make you lose fight of them, and induce you to think worse of the principles of any chriftians, than reason and candour require, I am, My friends and Neighbours, Birmingham, June 7, 1790. POSTSCRIPT. |