To Samuel Sparrow, Esq.

CXCni. — TO SAMUEL SPARROW, ESQ.

Near Leeds, Jidy 2, 1772. Dear Sir, — I have delayed answering your favour from time to time, hoping for leisure to answer it at large. But when that leisure will come I cannot tell; for in the summer months I am almost continually in motion. So I will delay no longer, but write a little as I can, though not as I would.

1 incline to think that when you engaged in business, though you had no leisure for reading polemical writers, you had leisure to converse with those who ridiculed the doctrines which you till then believed, and perhaps of hearing a preacher who disbelieved them, and talked largely against human authority, bodies of divinity, systems of doctrine, and compiling of creeds. These declamations would certainly make an impression upon an unexperienced mind, especially when confirmed by frequent descants upon the errors of translators; although I really believe our English translation, with all its faults, is the best translation of the Bible now in the world. When you had heard a good deal of this kind, then was the time to offer you such argimients as the cause afforded: which, to a mind so prepared, would naturally appear as so many demonstrations. And it is no wonder at all that by lending you a few books, and properly commenting upon them, those new apostles should confirm you in the sentiments which they had so artfully infused.

To the questions which you propose, I answer, — 1. I really think that if a hundred or a hundred thousand sincere, honest (I add humble, modest, self-diffident) men were, with attention and care, to read over the New Testament, uninfluenced by any but the Holy Spirit, nine in ten of them at least, if not every one, would discover that the Son of God was “adorable,” and one God with the Father; and would be immediately led to “honour him even as they honoured the Father;” which would be gross, undeniable idolatry, unless he and the Father are one.

2. The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: and I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of his hands in the condition wherein he is now. I bog of you, sir, to consider the fact. Give a fair, impartial reading to that account of mankind in their present state which is contained in the book on original sin. It is no play of imagination, but plain, clear fact. We see it with our eyes, and hear it with our ears, daily. Heathens, Turks, Jews,

Christians, of every nation, are such men as are there described. Such are the tempers, such the manners, of lords, gentlemen, clergymen, in England, as well as of tradesmen and the low vulgar. No man in his senses can deny it; and none can account for it, but upon the supposition of original sin.

O sir, how important a thing is this! Can you refuse to worship Him whom “all the angels of God worship?” But if you do worship one that is not the supreme God, you are an idolater!

CXCIY. — TO THE SAME.

Wiiidmill-Hill, October 9, 1773.

Dear Sir, — On Scripture and common sense I build all my principles. Just so far as it agrees with these I regard human authority.

God could not command me to worship a creature without contradicting himself; therefore, if a voice from heaven bade me honour a creature as I honour the Creator, I should know, this is the voice of Satan, not of God.

The Father and the Son are not “two beings,” but “one.” As he is man, the Father is doubtless “greater than the Son;” who, as such, “can do nothing of himself,” and is no more omniscient than omnipresent. And, as man, he might well say, “I ascend to my Father and youi Father,” and pray to his Father and his God. He bids his disciples also to pray to him, but never forbids their praying to himself. I take this to be the plain, obvious, easy meaning of our Lord’s words; and the only one wherein they are reconcilable with a hundred passages both of the Old and New Testament.

With regard to original sin, (I mean the proneness to evil which is found in every child of man,) you have supposed it in the essays with which you favoured me, almost from the beginning to the end: and you have frequently asserted it; although you could not assert it in plainer terms than the honest, unbiassed heathens have done: Vitiis nemo sine nascitur* Hence, Omnes naturd proclives ad libidinem.] Hence, Dociles imitandis turpibus et pravis omnes sumus.^

But I believe nothing can set this point in a more clear and strong light than the tract which I beg you to accept of.^ Accept, likewise, the best wishes of,

Dear sir,

Your affectionate servant.

CXCV. — TO THE SAME.

December 29, 1773.

Dear Sir, — Upon the head of authority we are quite agreed. Our guides are Scripture and reason. We agree, too, that preachers who “relax our obligation to moral virtues, who decry holiness as filthy rags, who teach men that easy palatable way to heaven of faith without works,” cannot easily fail of having a multitude of hearers; and that therefore it is no wonder if vast numbers crowd Blackfriars church and the chapel at the Lock.

There is also too “just a ground for charging the preachers both there and at the Tabernacle with grievous want of charity.” For most of them flatly maintain, all who do not believe as they believe are in a state of damnation; all who do not believe that absolute decree of election which necessarily infers absolute reprobation.

But none were induced to hear my brother and rae, or those connected with us, by any such means as these: just the reverse. We set out upontwo principles: — 1. None go to heaven without holiness of heart and life. 2. Who-

* This qviotation from Horace is thus translated by Smart: — “No one is born without vices.” — Ed.

t This quotation from Terence is thus rendered by Colman: —

“The mind Fulls easily from labour to deHght.” — En. t This quotaiion from Juvenal is thus translated by Gilford: — “For youth is f.icile, and its yielding will Receives with fatal ease th’ iinj)rint of ill.” — Ed. Mr. Fletcher’s “Appeal.” — Ed.

soever follows after this (whatever his opinions be) is my “brother, and sister, and mother.” And we have not swerved a hair’s breadth from either one or the other of these to this day.

Thus it was, that two young men, without a name, without friends, without either power or fortune, “set out from college with principles totally different from those of the common people,” to oppose all the world, learned and unlearned; to “combat popular prejudices” of every kind. Our first principle directly attacked all the wickedness, our second, all the bigotry, in the world. Thus they attempted a reformation, not of opinions, (feathers, trifles not worth the naming,) but of men’s tempers and lives; of vice in every kind; of every thing contrary to justice, mercy, or truth. And for this it was, that they carried their lives in their hands, — that both the great lnilgar and the small looked upon them as mad dogs, and treated them as such; sometimes saying in tenns, “Will nobody knock that mad dog on the head?”

Let every one, then, speak as he finds: as for me, I cannot admire either the wisdom, or virtue, or happiness of mankind. Wherever I have been, I have found the bulk of mankind. Christian as well as heathen, deplorably ignorant, vicious, and miserable. I am sure they are so in London and Westminster. Sin and pain are on every side. And who can account for this, but on the supposition that we are in a fallen state? I have proved at large it can no otherwise be accounted for Yet none need perish; for we have an almighty Saviour; one who is able and willing to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through him.