400 LETTER XXXIV. DOCTOR SAMUEL CLARKE. DOCTOR SAMUEL CLARKE. HIS SERMONS AT BOYLE'S OBJECTIONS MADE TO THE LINE OF ARGUHIS APOLOGY. -REMARKS MENT PURSUED IN THEM. ON THIS METHOD OF DEFENDING RELIGION. DIFIED VIEW OF HUMAN CORRUPTION. - PROBABLE REA JUS DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. MY DEAR FRIEND, WHEN I look back upon the length of a correspondence, which I intended to have limited to a few sheets, I am almost afraid to renew my promise of conciseness; yet, without some such encouragement, I can hardly expect that you will encounter any more giants," or be inclined to proceed farther in an enquiry, which seems to approach so slowly to its end. 66 I proposed, in my last, to offer a few remarks upon two or three of the preachers of Boyle's lectures, whose eminence in what we may call philosophical divinity, had contributed to form the taste, and to influence the practice, of their successors in the Church. The first place in this class, is due to the celebrated Doctor Samuel Clarke; who, as a philosopher, a practical preacher, and an expositor, held, perhaps, the first place in the public estimation, of all the writers of his time; and whom it seems now the fashion to load with a censure as indiscriminate, as the praise of his contemporaries was excessive.* *The reader will perhaps recollect, here, the con troversy respecting Doctor Clarke's "Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity," and hesitate, on that account, to subscribe to any favourable estimate of his general charac ter as a divine. But, agreeing (as the writer does fully) in the objections made to his statement of this doctrine, it does not follow that we should withhold from him that credit, upon other points, to which his scriptural fidelity and sound judgment may entitle him. I have His celebrated sermons, preached at these lectures, and afterwards connected into the form of treatises, on "The Being and At"tributes of God," and "The Evidences "of Natural and Revealed Religion," come said already, (and I repeat it,) that our confidence in the efficacy of our blessed Saviour's death, as a satisfaction. for the sins of mankind, must rest upon our belief of his essential divinity; and this Doctor Clarke himself has strongly enforced, in the sermons that treat of the doctrine of the atonement. In fact, his deviation from the doctrine of the Church was much less than is commonly supposed, by those who take his character upon trust, either from his admirers or his enemies. The praise of Hoadly, whose orthodoxy on this point is more justly questioned, has done Doctor Clarke no service: and the Arian and Socinian dissenters, are too ready at all times to claim the alliance of eminent Churchmen, and to wrest insulated or unguarded positions, to the support of principles which the authors never maintained, to be entitled to implicit credit on this subject. It is much to be lamented, that any aberration from the doctrine of the Church, should have lessened the usefulness, and lowered the theological character, of this zealous and laborious minister. Yet, as this aberration appears (if we except a very few of his sermons) but in one controversial work, it would be unjust to him, and unfair to the reader, to withhold from his writings the general praise to which they are entitled. under our notice, only in connection with the charge, of reasoning à priori, and of subordinating the divinity of the Bible, to the principles, and the judgment, of human science, which has been brought against this class of divines, and against Doctor Clarke in particular, and has been recently revived by a very powerful preacher of authoritative and evangelical divinity. But if we hear Doctor Clarke, * Doctor Chalmers. - Evidence and Authority of the Christian Revelation, p. 248, 249. + The writer is here led, by the course of the subject, to the unavoidable introduction of a reference to a living preacher, whose vigorous and original genius has elicited a new, but irresistible demonstration, of the awful and humbling doctrine, which lies at the foundation of the Christian scheme; viz. the corruption of human nature. In placing this corruption in a natural averseness to religion, he has stamped it with one striking and universal feature, to which every human being must, at one period or other, acknowledge a resemblance; and has forced from their refuge of pride and self-complacency, all who would triumph in the Pharisaic boast, "that they are not as other men are.' "If his character may be comprised in a few words, he is at once the most comprehensive, and the most personal, of modern preachers. In his strong and faithful delineations of the species, himself, upon the subject, in reference to the first of these treatises, we shall find that this line of argument, was rather forced upon him by his opponents, than adopted by his own choice. It was not so much for the instruction of the Christian convert, as for the confutation of the infidel, and the conviction of the sceptic, that these discourses were composed; and they are prefaced with an apology for the line of ment pursued in them, which is more fully repeated by the author, on another occasion. "There being already published, many "and good books, to prove the Being and "Attributes of God, I have chosen (says he) to contract what was requisite for 66 66 argu me to say, into as narrow a compass, and "to express what I had to offer, in as few words, as I could with perspicuity. For "which reason, I have also confined my every individual recognizes his own picture; and can only shut out the perception of the resemblance, by closing the volume, or closing his eyes an awful expedient, if the volume speaks truth; and the testimony of conscience confirms it. |