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like yourselves---also in regard to his mission, as a prophet or a teacher sent from God. So that how irrational soever you may deem the Orthodox, that prophet was at least as intelligent as yourself.

I have shewn, that if your doctrine be true, Mohammed was a more consistent prophet than David, Isaiah, and the rest of the Old Testament prophets---That he was even a better preacher than Christ and all his apostles---That he was more tender of the Divine character, and more zealous for the glory of God, than all the prophets; than Christ and all his apostles; consequently, that he gave better proof of the divinity of his mission, than Jesus gave of his. I have even shewn, that were your doctrine that of the Gospel, the world has received more extensive and more lasting advantages from Mohammed, than from all that Jesus Christ hath done and suffered. And to close the whole, I have demonstrated, that if the Lord Jesus be but a mere man like ourselves, he was an arrant impostor, a notorious blasphemer, and as such, most justly condemned by the Jewish Sanhedrim, and still rejected by their offspring.

These conclusions, Sir, dreadful as they are, naturally result from your scheme of doctrine. And is this what is obtruded upon us, under the character of Rational Religion? Boast not more, Sir, of your superior reason, till you have rejected a scheme laden with such absurdity. To become Mohammedans at once, would be acting with propriety, for then you would have a consistent system, as to the point before us; but your present motley, heterogeneous, perplexed system, has, it is to be hopea a natural, a necessary tendency to dissolution. Remember, however, that these things are not to be trifled with. And permit me to subscribe myself,

Reverend Sir,

Your humble servant,
J. MACGOWAN.

P. S. I am not at all solicitous about the time or manner of your answer, but shall consider myself at liberty to resume my pen, when any fresh attack is made on the doctrine of Christ's proper Divinity, because if that falls, my hope must perish for

ever.

N. B. Those who have time and inclination to consider the other articles treated of in your appeal, will find every one of them equally big with absurdity.

Note, All the quotations from the KORAN, are from the octavo edit. printed in 1764.

The quotations from the APPEAL, from edit. 2, with improvements, 1771, without a bookseller's name.

THE

ARIANS' AND SOCINIANS' MONITOR;

BEING A

VISION

THAT

A YOUNG SOCINIAN TEACHER

LATELY HAD,

In which he saw, in the most exquisite Torment, his Tutor, who died some Years ago; and had from his own Mouth the fearful Relation of what befel him at and after his Death. Together with many Instructions relating to the Socinian Errors: by all which he is turned to the Faith of the Gospel, and subscribeth his Name

ANTISOCINUS.

ARIANS' AND SOCINIANS' MONITOR.

INURED to self-deceptions from my youth up, I laughed at the fantastical whims of enthusiastic whigs, the dreams of anabaptists, and cunning inventions of mercenary priests; or cranumian phantasms of weak and unstable men; for by such names I was pleased to call the glorious doctrines of the everlasting gospel. The doctrine of the Trinity in Unity I contemned, purely because I could not fully comprehend it.

Reason, saith I, is the touchstone of every truth; the even balance in which Revelation must be weighed. The oracle of God must be hushed in silence, till reason, adorable reason, is free to speak her mind even then it is at the peril of Revelation to utter one word that is beyond the reach of our godlike reason. Every thing that is divinely mysterious I am wont to treat with derision and contempt. Mysteries in Religion! saith I, mere nonsense! There is nothing mysterious in it! Nothing mysterious required to be believed. Reason alone, that noble principle, must give the sanction to every truth divine. If illustrious reason will not condescend to sign a certificate for truth, let her wander as a vagabond upon the face or the earth; no reasonable christian, sure, will venture to receive her.

Let fanatics and enthusiasts receive and rely on what they call holy mysteries, for my own part, I am determined, that my reason shall act supreme with me, both in matters of faith and practice.

Thus elevated with a high opinion of my rational faculties, and pregnated with the strongest resolutions never to admit of any other rule but the dictates of my own reason, one evening lately I walked abroad into the fields to meditate on the happy estate of mankind, as being capable of meriting, at the hands of he Omnipotent, a right to every divine donation, every eternal lessing.

The road which I took led me into a pleasant avenue, on the one hand decorated with an uniform row of well-grown oaks, extending their spreading arms almost to the opposite side of the verdant path, clasped with the supple branches of yielding elms, which in an even row decorated the hedge on the left. A

grassy turf, barely sheered by the nimble teetu of the bleating sheep, spread the floor of the avenue ten yards in breadth; every sullying excrement was carefully swept up by the yielding broom of the industrious shepherd, who watchfully followed the fleecy innocents.

Thus alone, secluded from the noise of mankind, I began to improve what I beheld in this pleasant but lonesome avenue. How beautifully, thought I, do these stately oaks, with their straight and solid, their smooth and massy trunks, extended arms, and cloathed branches, represent the man, the happy man, that is fixed in rational ideas, and guided only by the dictates of his reason. See how the penetrating roots dig deep into the bosom, and with their forked talons clasp the entrails of their mother earth; the grizly stem smiles at the angry rage of stormy gusts which wreak their vengeance against it. It stands unmoved. It mocks the fury of the most violent storm. Just so is the man who makes reason his only rule. Nothing moves him. He smiles at the gusts of enthusiastic zeal. He laughs at the dreams of fanatics, and mocks at the mysteries of Luther and Calvin. His mind lays deep hold of directing reason, and he stands in his paradisiacal rectitude.

These dwarfish shrubs (continued I) are the lively types of pedantic bigots, who are blindly carried away with enthusiastic fancies to believe in irrational mysteries, called by them the doctrines of grace, but which really are the subtle inventions of designing men; as the shrub is diminutive when compared with the stately oak, so are those men compared with these who are the happy disciples of reason.

As I thus continued pleasing myself with this improvement of my evening's solitude, and blessing God that I was not as other men, even as these fanatics and irrational christians are, but believed and acted according to the dictates of my own reason, I came near to the end of the avenue, and the path became extremely dark and narrow. The opposite trees did so interweave their branches with each other, that no gleam of light could penetrate through the shade.

It would now have appeared wisdom to have turned my face towards home; but by some unseen power I was seized with a perfect suspension of thought, and heedlessly walked forward, till at last I found I had got out of the avenue, and a dusky light appearing, discovered to me a variety of frightful objects. The place into which I was now got, bore the grizly aspect of a forest devoured by fire; no blooming flower nor verdant leaf was to be seen in all its vast extent ;---only desolation and destruction. All, all was devastation.

I attended occasionally to the fearful noises, that as I thought were, and afterwards proved to be, subterraneous. Sometimes I heard, like the noise of many waters, the tempestuous roaring of

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