LETTER XV.

Winchester Row, July 18, 1785,

I

DEAR SIR,

HOPE this epistle will find you in a better state of health than I left you in, and heartily wish that the Almighty may sanctify the affliction for the good of your soul. I received your letter, and have carefully perused it, and remain quite unconvinced of any of those evils you charge me with. My long silence was not occasioned by the consideration of your letter being unanswerable; far from it, for as it contained no scripture proof, it consequently had no weight with me; in this matter I would answer with pious Job, "How forcible are right words! but what doth your arguing reprove?"

As to my exposing my pedigree in the book of my conversion, which you are pleased to style wickedness, ignorance, and a thing unreasonable, I think God himself hardly stands clear of this your charge; for he exposed the pedigree of Solomon's father and mother to all the world, if the world would read the Bible; and I assure you it was a point of conscience with me, "And why am

I judged of another man's conscience?” God made Solomon's pedigree of great use to me in my distress, and he may make my pedigree of use to others in distress also; and for my part, I see nothing in it to displease chaste Christians: it may indeed be offensive to some carnal professors, who have forfeited all the honour God has conferred on the honourable state of wedlock, by defiling the marriage bed; but then, a minister of the gospel is to use his liberty in the gospel, without standing in awe of such as these.

As I published to the world my spiritual troubles, and the sharp discipline that God brought me under, I thought it was my duty also, to let the world know my base original, and wretched life, that the world might see that God afflicteth not willingly, nor grieveth the children of men without cause, but that it is sin that he visiteth with the rod, and iniquity with stripes, even in them that are the objects of an eternal affection, Psalm lxxxix. 32. And this is so far from being unreasonable, that it directly falls in with the connected chain of Festus's reasonings, who I suppose you will allow to be a very nervous logician; for he insisted upon it before king Agrippa, that it was a thing that seemed unreasonable to him, to send Paul the prisoner to Augustus Cæsar without signifying the crimes laid against him, Acts xxv. 27. But that after Agrippa had found out Paul's faults, if he had any, Festus might have something to write. And it appears to me as un

reasonable to send an account of God's severe chastisements into the world, without specifying the crimes that procured these things to those that fell under the rod.

The charge you lay against me of using a borrowed language in my writings, stands on so weak a basis, that it may be blown away with the wind of a sparrow. Your letter that now lays before me, has not a word in it but was borrowed; you were not born a grammarian any more than I; nor was you born with any language at all; for had you been trained up from your infancy among the Arabs, you would doubtless have spoken Arabic; and if I had been trained up from five months old in Paris, I should have muttered something like French.

But if your wealthy father had got his hundreds to spare, and put you to school at a great expense, to learn other people's language and words, this gives you no licence to reflect on the poverty of my progenitors; for it is God that maketh poor and maketh rich; he therefore that despiseth the poor, reproacheth his maker, Prov. xiv. 31. But if I, by the dint of hard study and observation, am enabled to cope with you, my study and observation rather merit your praise than your derision. However, this charge of yours has no more weight with it, than that of the Jewish Rabbies against Christ, "Whence hath this man all these things, seeing he never learned letters?" And the Saviour's answer may justly be

turned on you, "Whatever I speak, therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak."

But alas! when men, and especially professors of religion, begin to turn their backs on the Bible, (which is the only true basis of all sound reasoning,) and launch forth to establish their logic on what they got from the schools, the weakest scripturalist, if experienced in the power of truth, may soon overturn all that they can establish; for he that reasons from God, is sure to lose himself in a labyrinth, and leave all his arguments floating on the surface of confusion. God is the only centre where every line of argument may be drawn, and the only fountain of wisdom where all doubts may be dissolved, all controversies end, and the only foundation where every distressing thought about our state can be established. He that reasons with truth on his side up to God, is sure to end well; but he that pursues his argument from the centre, is sure to make a ridiculous finish. This is loudly proclaimed by the writings of the atheists and deists, who have drawn all their lines of creation from God, down to such a ridiculous fancied mass of gendered, or compounded atoms, as will leave to all enlightened posterity an everlasting reproach upon that paradise of fools; and I think the skeleton of a cabbage, properly dissected by an army of caterpillars, is sufficient to rebuke such carnal reasonings both with respect to the creation and government of the world; for they leave every vein of the cabbage leaf center

ing in one stock, and are all at the command of God; for the caterpillars are called an army, raised, sent, and mustered by God himself, Joel ii. 25. Nor do they return till they have accomplished that for which they were sent, as appears by the former quotation; God that sends them can only drive them away; and for my part, I should never care to head that army which God opposeth, if his host consisted only of a hive of bees; for such a regiment, which is never unarmed, if commissioned by God, would be sufficient to rout the most formidable host of men that ever combined together. God's hornet put the land of Canaan into confusion, and a band of locusts, and a troop of frogs, made all the land of Egypt cry for quarters.

The other charge you bring against me for speaking against the form of prayer, and for not using the Lord's prayer, is nothing new; I have had enough of that from other pharisees: but you have not brought one scripture proof that contains any sentence against me for that crime, nor does the Bible afford you one.

It appears plain to me, that Abel had his sacrifice to look to, when he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and by his faith he has still a voice in the word of God.

Noah had both his altar and sacrifice to look to, when he called on the name of the everlasting God.