Author 
 
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 Title 
 
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 Imprint. 
 
 1«— 47S7S-S QF« 
 
A LETTER. 
 
A LETTER 
 
 DR. BUSHNELL, OF HARTFORD, 
 
 RATIONALISTIC, SOCMAN AND INDFIDEL TENDENCY 
 
 CERTAIN PASSAGES 
 
 HIS ADDRESS BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF YALE COLLEGE 
 
 
 Adeo quid simile Philosophus et Christianus ? Grteciae discipulus, et caeli 7 famae nego- 
 tiator, et salmis'! verborum, et factorum operator? rerum cedificator, et destructor f 
 Interpolator erroris, et integrator veritatis 1 Terttjli,. Apol. 
 
 HARTFORD. 
 
 HENRY S. PARSONS 
 
 1843. 
 
3)U 
 
 C3 
 
 LWhat, therefore, has the mere philosopher, in common with the Christian'? the disciple 
 of Greece, with the learner of Heaven ! the factor of reputation, with the worker-out of 
 salvation ; the dealer in words, with the laborer in realities ; the destroyer, with the edifier ; 
 the man who patches errors, with the restorer of uncorruptcd truth 1] — The motto from 
 Tertullian- 
 
 o *s~ o % Gr I 
 
 Press of 
 Case, Tiffany & Burnham. 
 
LETTER. 
 
 TO DR. BUSHNELL, 
 
 Sir: 
 
 It is now only a few days since your late Address at New 
 Haven came into my hands. Still in that time I have pe- 
 rused it more than once with careful attention ; and I assure 
 you it is with very great and sincere respect for yourself, 
 and with a high admiration of the generally scholarly tone 
 and spirit of your address, that I now venture to offer you 
 a few words in relation to certain passages contained in it: 
 passages which I have read with no little sorrow, and which 
 seem to me to be fraught with most ruinous consequences. 
 The tendency of which, in short, — harsh as the words may 
 sound, and over-bold as some will doubtless deem them, — 
 appears to me to be directly to Rationalism, Socinianism, 
 and even Infidelity. 
 
 You have expressed in your outset, a dislike of many or 
 long prefatory remarks, and I shall therefore, under shelter 
 of your own authority, dispense with them here, and pro- 
 ceed at once to the consideration of those passages against 
 which I am constrained to make the accusation of deep and 
 deadly error. 
 
 On page 4 you say ; " Religion, too, is physical in its 
 first tendencies, a thing of outward doings : — a lamb burned 
 on an altar of turf, and rolling up its smoke into the heav- 
 ens — a gorgeous priesthood — a temple covered with a king- 
 dom's gold, and shining afar in barbaric splendor. Well 
 is it if the sun and stars of heaven do not look down upon 
 realms of prostrate worshippers. Nay, it is well if the 
 hands do not fashion their own Gods, and bake them into 
 consistency in fires of their own kindling. But in the lat- 
 ter ages God is a spirit : religion takes a character of intel- 
 lectual simplicity, and enthrones itself in the summits of the 
 reason. It is wholly spiritual — a power in the soul reach- 
 1# 
 
ing out into worlds beyond sense, and fixing its home and 
 rest, where only hope can soar." 
 
 Now Sir, I venture to say that the very first perusal of 
 this paragraph leaves the disagreeable impression, on the 
 mind of any person who has looked at all into infidel wri- 
 ters, that it strangely symbolizes with their trains of thought 
 and modes of reasoning. Mr. Hume opens the first section 
 of his " Natural History of Religion ," in these words : — 
 " It appears to me, that if we consider the improvement of 
 human society, from rude "beginnings to a state of greater 
 perfection, polytheism or idolatry was, and necessarily must 
 have been, the first and most ancient religion of mankind"." 
 A little farther on, he continues ; " It seems certain, that, 
 according to the natural progress of human thought, the 
 ignorant multitude must first entertain some grovelling and 
 familiar notions of superior powers, before they stretch their 
 conception to that perfect Being who bestowed order on the 
 whole frame of nature. We may as reasonably imagine 
 that men inhabited palaces before huts and cottages, or 
 studied geometry before agriculture ; as assert that the De- 
 ity appeared to them a pure spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, 
 and omnipresent, before he was apprehended to be a pow- 
 erful though limited being, with human passions and appe- 
 tites, limbs and organs. The mind gradually rises from in- 
 ferior to superior : by abstracting what is imperfect, it forms 
 an idea of perfection : and slowly distinguishing the nobler 
 parts of its own frame from the grosser, it learns to transfer 
 only the former much elevated and refined, to its divinity. bV 
 All this appears to be perfectly identical with your theory of 
 the progress of religion from the physical to the spiritual. 
 Much more might be alleged from the same work, to the 
 same purpose. But it is needless, for the work is only a 
 development of the positions laid down in the extracts 
 just given, and I must refer you to itself for the complete 
 carrying out of the principles which you have advanced. 
 
 Again, in your association of sacrifices and idolatry, as 
 both parts of the early physical tendencies of religion, you 
 have the support and cooperation of the celebrated infidel 
 Charles Blount, in his " Summary account of the Deist's 
 Religion. 77 He there associates idolatry and sacrifices, as 
 
 «. Essays, p. 363. Vol. II. 
 
 b. Ibid. p. 364. Vol. II. This is also Lord Bolinbroke's doctrine in his philosophical 
 works. Hume, indeed, seems to have derived his idea from him.— See Magee on Atone- 
 ment. App. No. 6U, Postciipt. 
 
gross and physical modes of worship, equally unacceptable 
 to God : and then proceeds to derive arguments therefrom, 
 against worshipping Him by a Mediator/ Dr. Priestly has 
 a similar theory of sacrifices, which he considers to have 
 arisen from physical and anthropomorphitical ideas of God : 
 in a word, from the same spirit which resulted in idolatry. 
 Intimately connected with this is your view of the origin 
 of a Priesthood, in the early physical tendencies of Reli- 
 gion ; wherein you assume the same ground with Mr. Hume, 
 in his essay on " Superstition and Enthusiasm." In that 
 extraordinary paper Mr. Hume classes all the parts of false 
 religion, under two heads ; the one Superstition, and the 
 other Enthusiasm : and to the former of these, answering to 
 your early physical tendencies, he ascribes the origin of a 
 Priesthood. A part of the passage I will transcribe : — 
 "Hence the origin of Priests, who may justly be regarded 
 as the invention of a timorous and abject superstition, which, 
 ever diffident of itself, dares not offer up its own devotions, 
 but ignorantly thinks to recommend itself to the Divinity 
 by the mediation of his supposed friends and servants*." 
 That "timorous and abject superstition" of his, is clearly 
 your " thing of outward doings," which having run through 
 its course of sacrifices, priesthood, temples, polytheism and 
 idolatry — all in your view equally the crude developments of 
 early physical tendencies — will by and by " take a char- 
 acter of intellectual simplicity, and enthrone itself in the 
 summits of the reason." In other words, having passed 
 through that period, which Mr. Hume denominates the 
 period of superstition, (to which he, equally with your- 
 self, assigns the invention of sacrifices, priesthood, temples, 
 polytheism and idolatry ; things which he, too, in common 
 with Blount, Priestly and yourself, ascribes to the rude 
 struggles of early religious feeling,) it will finally arrive at 
 pure Theism'. If there be any real difference in these 
 schemes, I am unable to perceive it. If they are not both 
 schemes of progress, from rude beginnings to greater per- 
 fection, then I have much misread them. Yet surely you 
 will not deny that this is your scheme : your whole theory 
 in language, religion, government, is by yourself thus ex- 
 pressed — "the physical shall precede the moral." And 
 
 c, See some account of the work in Leland's View of Deistica! writers, Vol. I. p. 44. 
 d- Essays, Vol. I. p. 71. Of course he would bring all Christianity under one or the other 
 head. 
 ». See his Natural History of Keligion, passim. 
 
8 
 
 who that reads the systems to which I assert yours to be 
 allied, will not see that their principle is precisely the same 1 
 You assert in religion, the same sort of progress as do Lord 
 Bolingbroke and Mr. Hume. What you call physical tenden- 
 cies, they denominate superstition. Offspring of these ten- 
 dencies, or this superstition, — the names are indifferent the 
 states being identical — are in your view, sacrifices, a priest- 
 hood, and a temple ; and Hume, Blount, and Priestly de- 
 clare the self same thing. Offspring of the same tenden- 
 cies, in the view, alike, of yourself and Mr. Hume, are 
 polytheism and idolatry ; and both he and you would send 
 men through the same range of errors, before they come to 
 a pure Theism. And if you would do it with somewhat 
 higher views of human nature than Mr. Hume holds, in 
 the sixth and seventh chapters of his Natural History of 
 Religion, still that can make but very little in your favor. 
 
 I suppose you may reply in relation to sacrifices and a 
 priesthood, that it is by no means a peculiarity of infidel 
 writers, to attribute to them a human origin. Since beside 
 many learned Jews, such men as Grotius, Spencer, and 
 Warburton, have held it among the moderns with al- 
 most all the writers of the Roman Communion. It were 
 useless here to enter into the question in full. Suffice it to 
 say, that the mere question of their human origin, is not the 
 one with which we are here chiefly concerned. Your view 
 makes them not only of human origin, — if it rested merely 
 here, it might not perhaps be so palpably identical with the 
 infidel vices just noticed ; — but it also gives them for their 
 origin, those physical tendencies, from which polytheism 
 and idolatry also arose ; that superstition, and want of spir- 
 ituality, which in your view and that of the writers whom 
 I have been citing, characterises the early stages of man's 
 history. Now I question whether even among the moderns, 
 certainly not among the ancients, you will find Christian 
 advocates for the human origin of sacrifices, and of course 
 a priesthood, advocating their view on these grounds. They 
 make indeed men the inventors of both ; but they do not 
 in so doing falsify the history of their race ; and substitute 
 in place of the only sure word of revelation, the unfounded 
 theories of heathen writers, speculating infidels, and Scotch 
 philosophers, as to the progress of mankind as a body, from 
 the physical to the spiritual. To shew therefore that 
 Christians have held to the human origin of sacrifices and 
 
9 
 
 a priesthood, will not be enough to secure your views upon 
 the subject from the charge of an infidel tendency ; unless 
 you can also shew that coincident with this view, they have 
 also held your theory, of the progress of our race from the 
 state of a mutum pecus, to that of elevated spirituality. — 
 And could you shew this, you would only involve them 
 with yourself, in the charge of holding notions contrary to 
 the declarations of God's word, and so afford a strong addi- 
 tional argument against the view in question. For a view 
 must needs be suspicious, which should always be accom- 
 panied, by a theory so plainly at variance with revelation. 
 Mr. Geddes, the Romish infidel author of the " Critical 
 Remarks" is the only writer calling himself a Christian, 
 who so far as I know, ascribes to sacrifices the same low 
 origin as yourself, i. e. " physical tendencies," or supersti- 
 tion ; or makes the rite, the true sister of polytheism and 
 idolatry ; and him even Priestly contradicted, taking back 
 as it would seem, and abandoning as untenable, the view 
 which earlier in life he appears to have held in common 
 with Blount/ Other writers have had apparently more of 
 reverence for a rite and an institution, so evidently sacred all 
 along from the very fall, as sacrifice and a priesthood. — 
 They may have made them human inventions, afterwards 
 divinely appropriated ; but they have not made them co- 
 existent with polytheism and idolatry. For with all their 
 philosophising, they have not forgotten, that long before 
 either of these fearful errors existed, the smoke of AbeVs 
 burning lamb, rolled up into the heavens. 
 
 In connexion sir, with these points, I have a few words 
 to say concerning your theory of language, which indeed 
 according to your arrangement should have been first no- 
 ticed. I have to complain here of the same things, of 
 which I have just been speaking. You say, " words are 
 only the names of external things and objects." This is a 
 pretty bold assertion, considering the vast number of words 
 in all languages, which are not the " names of external 
 things and objects." Perhaps you mean originally, during 
 that period of physical tendency which is concerned with 
 " outward doings." There are some very early conversa- 
 tions recorded in the Book of Genesis, and unless we are 
 now to consider them as mythic naratives, they appear to 
 
 /. This contradiction of himself by Dr. Priestly is very remarkable: His earlier view 1 
 have mentioned above. One would fain take it as an evidence of greater changes in hia 
 views, than we are informed of. See Magee on the Atonement : App: No. 47. 
 
10 
 
 me to do any thing but support your theory. Indeed when 
 your assertions on this head are stripped of the glare and 
 glitter of their copia verborum, it will be found that your 
 theory of language, is not a whit more heedful of the facts 
 of revelation, than that of Lord Monboddo or Adam Smith. 
 The words which in the very earliest times, even in the gar- 
 den of Eden, were used by our first parents, were some- 
 thing more I trow, than "mere physical terms;" surely 
 they "were endued with intelligence and amoral power." 
 How else did Eve persuade Adam to violate God's prohibi- 
 tion ? In what " physical terms," did she represent to him 
 how their eyes should be opened, and they should know 
 good and evil ? Of precisely what " external things and 
 objects," are these two words the names ? And if our first 
 parents used words, thus " endued with intelligence and 
 moral power," — and what words more so than these two 
 good and evil, — pray tell me sir, if they had gone through 
 with your process of advancemeut and speculation, till their 
 language had "become sublimed with the penetration of a 
 moral nature V s Or was not language a matter of reve- 
 lation 1 Methinks I trace here more of the mutum pecus 
 theory. And you may depend upon it, that if you will put 
 to one side in your philosophical reveries, the word of God, 
 Plato is a better guide for you than Lucretius. 
 
 Your views of civil government, also deserve notice, as 
 still infected with this tendency to symbolise with those of 
 infidels. You say, "Civil government, also, in its first 
 stages, classes rather with the dynamic, than with the moral 
 forces. It is the law of the strongest, a mere physical ab- 
 solutism, without any consideration of right, whether as due 
 to enemies or subjects." In his " Essay on the origin of 
 Government," Mr. Hume declares, " Government commen- 
 ces more casually and imperfectly. It is probable that the 
 first ascendant of one man over multitudes begun during a 
 state of war ; when the superiority of courage and of genius 
 discovers itself most visibly*." This view is somewhat 
 higher than your own, in that it brings in a higher manifes- 
 tation, and development of something nobler than mere 
 brute force ; and in so far, it seems to me that the infidel 
 
 «•. Of course any amount of language which our first parents had, would be transmitted 
 to their descendants. I have not thought it necessary to follow out this idea, for it was the 
 origin with which I was concerned ; once originated it could never be lost The fact of the 
 abstract nature of the language used in paradise, is overlooked by the mutum pecus philoso 
 pnerg. Indeed they manage to pass over all the ground of Holy Scripture, sucissimis pedibue 
 A Essays, Vol. I. p. 43. 
 
11 
 
 has the advantage of you. The principal however is evi- 
 dently the same. In another " Essay on the original con- 
 tract ," Mi-. Hume considerably modifies this theory, and 
 acknowledges that to bring men together into a government, 
 their own consent was necessary ; and this in order to bol- 
 ster up his view of the original contract. Still he admits, 
 that " almost all the governments which exist at present, or 
 of which there remains any record in story, have been 
 founded originally on usurpation, or conquest, or both, with- 
 out any pretence of a fair consent, or voluntary subjection of 
 the people. " £ Your views and his, may therefore I sup- 
 pose, be fairly considered as pretty closely harmonizing. — 
 How nearly they both coincide with the notion of Hobbes of 
 MaJmsbury, " that the state of nature, is a state of war," I 
 must leave for yourself to determine. 
 
 In contradistinction from these views, let me recommend 
 to your notice the following passages from the Judicious 
 Hooker. " But forasmuch as we are not by ourselves, suffi- 
 cient to furnish ourselves with competent store of things 
 needful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a life fit for 
 the dignity of man ; therefore to supply these defects and 
 imperfections which are in us living single and solely by 
 ourselves, we are naturally induced to seek communion and 
 fellowship with others. This was the cause of men's uni- 
 ting themselves at the first in Politic Societies."* Indeed I 
 would bring to your notice the whole of the tenth Section of 
 his first Book : as also in connexion with it, the Vlth and 
 VIHth chapters of Mr. Locke's treatise on " Civil Govern- 
 ment." 
 
 I have now sir, shown how on the three heads just no- 
 ticed, i.e. Religion, Language and Civil Government, your 
 views symbolise with those of infidel writers. In doing this I 
 have by necessary consequence, shown that they do not 
 symbolise with the word of God. But in relation to this last 
 charge, in so far as Religion is concerned, I will with your 
 favour, speak somewhat more at length. 
 
 I am addressing a scholar, and therefore I need not dwell 
 on the fact admitted by the learned, that Polytheism prece- 
 ded Idolatry.' But is it not sir as much admitted on all 
 hands, except indeed by such men as Blount, Hume, and 
 Bolingbroke, that Polytheism and Idolatry so far from being 
 
 • Essays, Vol I. p. 409. *. Lib. I. Sect. 10. 
 
 ' This matter is opened in a plain way in Graves' Lectures on the Pentateuch, Part II, 
 Sec. 1. where also are abundant references. 
 
12 
 
 the earliest developments of religious feeling-, are later 
 corruptions of the one true faith 1 Can any thing- else be 
 gathered from Scripture, whether you begin with Noah or 
 Adam 1 And how can you without verging toward infidel- 
 ity, claim these things as the offspring of primal physical 
 tendencies, when the whole train of Scripture teaching, to 
 say nothing of sound philosophy, declares them to be after 
 corruptions of a primal and heaven-given truth 1 
 
 And by what warrant from the word of God, do you put 
 sacrifices and the necessary concomitant of sacrifices, name- 
 ly, a priesthood, in the same category with the things just 
 mentioned ? I read in the eighth chapter of Genesis, how 
 Noah offered sacrifice immediately after coming out of the 
 ark. But I do not find any Polytheism or still less Idolatry, 
 even hinted at, till the building of the tower of Babel. I 
 say hinted at, because it is only by an inference that it has 
 been concluded, that polytheistic and idolatrous worship, 
 was the end for which that structure was erected."* Now, 
 the" common consent of chronologers, makes this more than 
 a century from the time of Noah's sacrifice ; a period long 
 enough to introduce frightful corruptions ; particularly in 
 regard to a truth which men were so likely to corrupt as that 
 of the Divine Unity, especially when it was unfenced by 
 the guards, which in his last Dispensation, God has gra- 
 ciously provided for it. Now I suppose you will admit that 
 Noah, was not a polytheist, or an idolater. Yet if we are to 
 believe Scripture, he did offer sacrifices. All this, I say, is 
 an utter absurdity according to your scheme. Your plan is, 
 sacrifices first, then most likely Polytheism and idolatry, then 
 theism. So Noah has passed your grand development of 
 primal physical tendencies, arrived at your final step of pure 
 theism, and yet is not emancipated from the swaddling 
 bands of the very earliest of your physical tendencies ! — 
 He has made a long journey, and never stirred from his 
 starting point ! But, you will say, Noah, did not begin all 
 anew : he received his knowledge of the Divine nature 
 from revelation ; and retained sacrifices, from the antedilu- 
 vian practice. It is a pity your philosophy did not hold to 
 the first of these assertions in your address, for I fancy it 
 would have considerably modified your theory of human 
 progress in religion. The last however, is what I am now 
 concerned with. 
 
 •» Hutchinson's Works 1. 28. 
 
13 
 
 It is of course by inference, that we conclude as to the 
 existence of polytheism and with it of idolatry, before the 
 deluge. Moses speaks of the imaginatinsof men becom- 
 ing evil, and St. Paul uses nearly the same phrase, to de- 
 scribe the incoming of idolatry." The precise time of the 
 beginning of this corruption, could hardly of course be as- 
 signed, for its beginnings must have been slight, just as they 
 afterwards were in the Christian Church. Bishop Horseley 
 ingeniously conjectures, that in the time of Enos, who was 
 born in the year of the world as we say, (probably after the 
 fall,) 235, it had reached a very great height, and become 
 very widely extended. Be this as it may, it is quite evident 
 as a matter of fact, that so far from being a primal devel- 
 opment, polytheism and its unfailing companion are an 
 after corruption. 
 
 Now, long before it was possible that this corruption could 
 have even begun to exist, we find Cain and Abel bringing 
 sacrifices to God. On your supposition that they are the 
 offspring of primal physical tendencies, one would fancy 
 that Cain's was a rattier less gross offering than that of Abel. 
 In the eye of modern philosophy, it would surely be a much 
 more innocent, beautiful, appropriate thing, much more 
 indicative of a mild, peaceable, gentle character, to bring 
 an offering of the fruits of the earth, than to slay a poor 
 innocent lamb, to wantonly take away a life that God had 
 given, and grossly burn the carcass, as if the smoke of it 
 might appease an angry and man-like Deity, (I almost 
 shudder at writing this,) to whose nostrils it might come. — 
 And yet sir, whose offering did God, — not a heathen God, 
 but your God, the God, — whose offering did he accept 1 — 
 And whose was the gentle, holy, faithful spirit, which even 
 yet as the inspired Apostle says, doth speak, p and who was 
 the proud, and cruel and revengeful % Nay what saith the 
 Holy Ghost by the lips of the blessed John ? " Not as Cain 
 who was of that wicked one and slew his brother. And 
 wherefore slew he him 1 Because his own works were evil, 
 and his brother's good." 1 These very sacrificial works, out 
 of which arose Cain's anger which ended in his brother's 
 death, are here characterized, the one as evil, and the other 
 good. What possible ground can there be, on your hypoth- 
 esis, of their origin in low and grovelling views, for this dis- 
 
 n Compare Gen. VI. 5, and Romans I. 21. 
 See his " Dissertation on ttie Prophecies of the Messiah ;" an Essay which will repaj 
 the most attentive perusal. P Hebrews XI. 4. » I. John, III. 12. 
 
14 
 
 tinction ? If both are pieces of will-worship, as you in 
 common with Infidels and Romanists r would make them, 
 what ground is there for choosing one above the other ? 
 And particularly for choosing the grossest and most carnal? 
 Will you reply that it was Abel's strong and living faith, 
 that made his sacrifice accepted over that of Cain's ] No 
 doubt it was. But by conceding this, you have admitted 
 yourself to be in error. You have admitted that Abel's 
 faith, found its appropriate expression, in a rite, which you 
 characterize as the offspring of any thing but faith ; and 
 Cain's disbelief found its expression in another form which 
 according to your principles, and your views of the origin 
 of sacrifice, must be considered, (and which unquestionably 
 a modern and mere philosopher would consider,) less gross, 
 and much more elevated. And how this comports with 
 your theory, seems to me so clear, that no words can make it 
 clearer. Your philosophy appears to have forgotten, that 
 she ought to be only the handmaid of your divinity. 
 
 In this connexion, I will here notice your very objection- 
 able treatment of the character of the Patriarch Noah, and 
 the absurd generalization you make from your unwarranted 
 positions concerning him. " Far back in the remotest ages 
 of definite history, we find one of the world's patriarchs so 
 fortunate or unfortunate as to be the inventor of wine, by 
 which he is buried in the excesses of intoxication, we know 
 not how many times, with no apparent compunction. Say- 
 ing nothing of abstinence, not even the law of temperance 
 had yet been reached." 4 All this I suppose, for the benefit 
 of the Temperance Societies, to whom of course belongs 
 the full inthronization of this moral element ; for the blas- 
 phemy of this nineteenth century does not scruple to assert, 
 that a mere man, may have a clearer view of its rules and 
 their application, than the adorable Redeemer. May 
 it be forgiven ! Now by what right do you conclude, that 
 it happened more than once that Noah was intoxicated, and 
 then not through ignorance of what would be the effect of 
 the wine he had drunk? Neither the original, nor any 
 version, nor any commentator support your fancy. Yet 
 from this one instance, — following the example of Ham, 
 rather than of Shem and Japheth — you make outNoah almost 
 an habitual drunkard, and then generalizing your supposed 
 
 *' Many Romish writers would justify their will-worship, by making the Patriarchal 
 sacrificial worship, which God accepted, the same thing. » Address, p. 14. 
 
15 
 
 defect in him to the whole race, lay it down that they did 
 not even understand the laws of temperance, let alone absti- 
 nence ! If this be not an instance of what may be called 
 theory-madness, I would that the annals of literature might 
 be searched to find one. Indeed sir, I do not see how a 
 Christian Teacher as you profess yourself, can speak in so 
 light a way as you do of this circumstance, and what you 
 term the prevarications and extortion of Abraham and 
 Jacob ! ! ! If they are merely the failings of eminently holy 
 men, then surely a different tone is more becoming, in view 
 of the probable reason why the Holy Spirit has suffered 
 them to be recorded, namely our encouragement. If on the 
 other hand, in at least the two instances alleged from the 
 life of Jacob, and in the case of Noah, high providential 
 mysteries are hidden under the outward veil, surely atone 
 of yet deeper reverence should be assumed : and either 
 might protect them, from being flippantly advanced, to sup- 
 port a theory, to which they really can give no support. 
 Because you might just as well argue from Peter's conduct 
 at Antioch,' that the law of Christian boldness and sincerity 
 was not yet understood by the early Christians, as to attempt 
 to generalize these single instances as you have done. 
 
 The Jewish economy fares but little better in your hands. 
 You speak of the " outward style of virtue" under it, as 
 " harsh"and " barbarous." It of course was somewhat so ; 
 for its principles were incomplete, and the temporal sanc- 
 tions of the Mosaic economy, together with its outward rules, 
 could hardly be expected to accomplish exactly the same 
 things, as the eternal sanctions and the inward, heart-writ- 
 ten law of Christianity. The ministration of life must 
 needs be more glorious than that of death. Perhaps, even, 
 it may deserve no very severe reprehension, the terms being 
 somewhat explained, that you say " You seem to be in a 
 raw, physical age, where force and sensualism and bigotry 
 of descent, display their unlovely presence." But when 
 to this you add the declaration, " As you approach the later 
 age of their literature and history, you perceive a visible 
 mitigation of these features,''' then theory seems once more 
 to be triumphing over fact. It is true, indeed, that after 
 the terrible punishment of the captivity and the destruction 
 of the Holy city, we hear no more of idolatry. If, how- 
 ever, physical tendencies and sensualism in religion, would 
 
 t Galatinns II. 11, 12. 
 
16 
 
 display themselves in " outward doings," at what period of 
 the Jewish history were they more rife, than when the 
 Pharisees cleansed only the outside of cup and platter, or 
 supposed that in paying tithes of mint, anise and cummin, 
 they were exonerated from the practice of justice, tempe- 
 rance and mercy 1 When was bigotry of descent more 
 thoroughly displayed than in their contempt for all the 
 Gentile world, and their cry, " We have Abraham to our 
 father V When was force more horribly evidenced, than 
 in their lawless efforts against the person of our blessed 
 Lord 1 What evidence of mitigation in these things do you 
 gather from the close of the elder, or the gospels of the 
 later scriptures 1 Alas, Sir ! your reveries have again put 
 themselves in place of the truths of Revelation. It seems 
 to me, too, that a thoroughly christian scholar, viewing the 
 sublime union and harmony of all the dispensations of God, 
 would hardly cry, " how sublime the contrast, then, of 
 Genesis and John." His words would rather be, "How glo- 
 rious the completion of all dispensations in Christ ! the 
 Body of all shadows ! the Head of all things !"" 
 
 Such, then, are your views which agree with those of 
 infidels, and disagree with the declarations of scripture, in 
 the way which I have pointed out. If against such views 
 the charge may not fairly lie, of a tendency to infidelity, 
 then it can lie against none. 
 
 I now proceed to notice Rationalistic and Socinian ten- 
 dencies. And here let me say, that in what you have ven- 
 tured to call the "Stability of change," Rationalism is the 
 first step in the road to Infidelity ; and that between these 
 two extremes lie in different stages of the progress, all pos- 
 sible heresies : which springing always from the former, 
 find their full development in the latter. Any tendency, 
 therefore, even towards Rationalism, and much more to- 
 wards infidelity, involves, necessarily, a tendency toward 
 any conceivable heresy, or toward all. But generally — 
 and a deep lesson is involved in this — the Rationalism, be- 
 fore it ends in Infidelity, comes immediately, or else finally, 
 through the medium of interposed heresies, to touch upon 
 the nature of the Deity ; the awful mystery of the Holy 
 Trinity ; and the Offices of the blessed persons who com- 
 pose it. Sometimes, it bears upon this great mystery first, 
 and at once, and takes up other errors afterwards ; at other 
 times, it begins with Pelagianism, or the denial of sacra- 
 
 u Collossians ii. 17. Ephesians i. 22. 
 
17 
 
 mental grace, or some other error; but it almost always 
 comes at last, if not at first, to deal with the nature of God, 
 and the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity ; and from that 
 the course is swift and easy to Infidelity. With thus much 
 in preface, I proceed to certain passages of your address, in 
 which these tendencies appear to me pretty manifest. 
 And here I must beg you will observe, that I am speaking 
 all along of tendencies, not of full developmnts. 
 
 On page 27, you say, " It remains to speak of a third pow- 
 er descending from above, to bring the divine life into his- 
 tory, and hasten that moral age, toward which its lines are 
 ever converging." But can you mean seriously to intimate 
 that without Christianity, this moral age as you call it, would 
 ever have arrived? And is that all that our holy religion 
 accomplishes, to hasten it ? Or when you speak of con- 
 verging lines, are we to understand that you intend the 
 asymtotes of an hyperbole, which would never meet, 
 though always approaching 1 I see no other way than this 
 supposition, through which you can extricate yourself from 
 the difficulty of having laid down, that what is accom- 
 plished with Christianity, would, only not quite so soon, 
 have been accomplished without it. Now, sir, the chris- 
 tian view of human history is, that the fall,— to continue 
 and carry out your figure, — caused the moral lines to di- 
 verge from thepoint of right and holiness ; and that but for 
 the interposition of God in the plan of our Redemption, 
 they would have gone on forever diverging more and more. 
 Through this only, working all along under the dispensa- 
 tions from the fall, are they made once more to converge to 
 the line of their starting point. You on the other hand, 
 make them start from divergence in your scheme of poly- 
 theism and idolatry as the earliest religion ; and thence, con- 
 verging ever of themselves, to a pure Theism, and with 
 it, of course, to a pure morality, you give to Christianity, or I 
 should rather say, to the plan of Redemption perfected in 
 Christianity, the office only of hastening their convergence ! 
 How well this agrees with the Unitarian scheme of self- 
 sufficiency, and the prattle of Bclsham, and Priestly, and 
 Charming, is, I think, easily to be discerned. 
 
 Again, on the same page : " He shows us," [in Christi- 
 anity] " an external government of laws and retributions, 
 connected with the internal laws of conscience ; opens 
 worlds of glory and pain beyond this life : presents himself 
 
 2* 
 
18 
 
 as an object of contemplation, fear, love and desire; re- 
 veals his own infinite excellence and beauty, and withal, 
 his tenderness and persuasive goodness ; and so pouks the 
 divine life into the dark and soured bosom of sin." And 
 just before, " In religion, in Christianity, we are to view 
 him as coming into mental contemplation, and operating 
 thus as a moral cause." And this is Christianity! and this 
 is the work of Christianity among the natious ! God made 
 a moral cause, through mental contemplation ; and by the rev- 
 elation of his own nature, and man's destiny, and man's re- 
 flections thereupon, pouring the Divine Life into the sinner's 
 soul ! Says Mr. Belsham ; " You are deficient in virtuous 
 habits ; you wish to form them : you have contracted vicious 
 affections ; you wish to exterminate them." In other words 
 you have a dark and soured bosom of sin. Now for Mr. 
 Belsham's process of cure. u You know the circumstan- 
 ces in which your vicious habits were originally contracted. 
 Avoid these circumstances and give the mind a contrary bias. 
 You know what impressions will produce justice, benevo- 
 lence &c. Expose uour mind reputedly and perseveringly 
 to the influence of these impressions, and the affections them- 
 selves will gradually rise, 10 " &c. In other words let the 
 Deity, — necessarily the highest subject of meditation, — 
 come into mental contemplation, meditate on what he has 
 revealed of his excellence and beauty, and tenderness and 
 persuasive goodness, and thus shall be poured into your 
 soul the Divine Life. I have ho wish to be any thing but 
 serious ; but I cannot help giving to you Dr. Magee's advice 
 to Mr. Belsham, to read the " Modern Philosopher," wherein 
 are displayed the Energies of Miss Bridgetina Botherim. 1 
 
 But you are philosophising no doubt. And it may not 
 be proper in such high and wide-reaching meditations, to 
 stoop to the Scripture truth, that there is such a Divine 
 Persou as the Holy Spirit, known in Christian philosophy 
 as the Sanctifier ! without whose glorious presence, there 
 is and can be, no Divine life in the soul of any man. This 
 must be kept out of view, in a lofty and speculative address, 
 before an assemblage of modern scholars. It smacks of 
 ""sectarianism" unquestionably to introduce it, and would in- 
 terfere with the complacent utterance, or the complacent 
 hearing, of the chain of causes and effects, by which "Gre- 
 
 w . Releham's R»view,&c. pp 174, 175. 
 
 x. Mageeon Atonement, &c. App. on Unitarian scheme. 
 
19 
 
 cian Art, Roman Law, and Christian Faith;" — God of Heaven 
 what an union ! Pygmalion, Ulpian, and Christ the Lord ! 
 — have wrought together, u to enthrone the moral element." 
 Sir, you write yourself a Doctor in Divinity ; you have I 
 suppose the cure of souls ; and if your very Christian name, 
 is not a guarantee that never shall any thing guide your 
 philosophy but the truth of God, methinks at least these 
 two things might be. Do you teach, when you take the 
 office of a Christian Minister, that the moral element is to 
 be enthroned in the souls of your people, in such ways as 
 this 1 Would you dare in your pulpit, to say as you do on 
 p. 29 of your Address, that Greek Art and Roman Law, 
 are as indestructible, and as immortal, as the Gospel of the 
 Lord? Greek Art! which shallow philosophy alone, can 
 characterize as a development of perfect beauty. Whose 
 architecture grovelled on the earth, instead ("like the Chris- 
 tian) of springing toward the skies ! And of whose paint- 
 ing and sculpture, it has been said with as much of true 
 philosophy and taste, as of ardent Christian feeling, that 
 
 all they dreamed of God in heathen time, 
 
 The Christian's thought of man, shall scarcely fill." 
 
 Roman Law ! whose real moral power you have well 
 shown, when you tell of the frequent signature of Carac alia 
 upon the Pandects. And if you would not speak of them 
 thus in the pulpit, why dream thus of them in your study 1 
 Have you a double character, a Christian Teacher, and an 
 infidel Philosopher 1 Orthodox in your pastoral relations, 
 Socinian in your relations as a Scholar ? Are you one thing 
 as Dr. Bushnell preaching in Hartford, and another thing 
 as Dr. Bushnell addressing the Alumni of Yale College ? — 
 If you are not, and your people go with you, it needs no 
 prophet's eye to see where you and they will soon be found. 
 And if the Orthodoxy of Yale, takes no alarm at hearing 
 these things from one of its Doctors, it will soon go, one 
 may fancy, to slumber by the side of that of its sister 
 Harvard. 
 
 Once more ; on p. 27, you speak thus of the Incarnate 
 Son of God. "He is at once the Perfect Beauty and the 
 Eternal Rule of God — the Life of God manifested under 
 the conditions of humanity — by sufferings, expressing the 
 Love of God, by love attracting man to his breast." Now 
 on the very first reading, these words have a very unpleas- 
 ant Sabellian sound, to say the least. I asked a friend ac- 
 
20 
 
 customed to Socinian ways of .talking, whose, from hearing 
 them read, he should suppose they were. The answer was, 
 " Channing's, or more likely Emerson's, or Theodore Park- 
 er's." I am well aware that you may say, that the views 
 which you here intend to express are partial ; that they do 
 not bring out, and that you did not intend they should bring 
 out, all your doctrine. That it is not just therefore, to ac- 
 cuse you of Socinianism on the ground of them. I admit it. 
 I do not accuse you of Socinianism. I only charge oncer- 
 tain passages of your Address, Sociniiui tendencies; and 
 those passages I must of course take as they stand, and not 
 as they may be modified, by other possible views which you 
 may hold in private. You are professing to sum up the 
 ways in which our Lord is to be viewed in relation to human 
 history ; and it is of the very defectiveness of these views, 
 and their dangerous tendency arising therefrom, that I com- 
 plain. If it be true that partial exhibitions of truth are 
 always dangerous, it is also true that they are ten-fold more 
 so, when subjects are touched on, which are so awfully 
 mysterious, and so fearfully liable to perversion, as the na- 
 ture and character of our Lord. Here all imperfect ways 
 of speaking, are likely to become the sources of deadly 
 heresy and are high treason against our Sovereign. Nay 
 even the insisting on one truth, or one set of truths will lead 
 to the same result,. Insisting too much on the proper hu- 
 manity, Arius came to deny the proper divinity of our Sav- 
 iour. Looking too earnestly on His two-fold nature, Nesto- 
 rius came to separate the oneness of His person. Vindica- 
 ting too exclusively the oneness of His person, Eutyches 
 came to deny the two-fold nature. Your expressions, there- 
 fore, I cannot but consider dangerous. To speak of Him 
 who is " very God of very God," as being God's " Perfect 
 Beauty and Eternal Rule," is dangerous ; because it is fa- 
 miliarizing men's minds with the idea, that He is a mani- 
 fested Attribute, or an embodied Law. To speak of Him, 
 as the "Life of God manifested under conditions of human- 
 ity," is dangerous; because it presents Him, as a quality 
 enshrined in a human form, and not as " perfect God, and 
 perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsist- 
 ing." To say that " by sufferings He expressed the love of 
 God" is to degrade the mysterious agonies of the desert, and 
 the garden, and the Cross : and to make familiar the Socin- 
 ian idea concerning them. To say merely, that, " by love 
 
21 
 
 He attracts man to His Breast," is to forget that " no man 
 can come, except the Father draw him." In a word, the 
 tendency of all this, is at once and directly to Socinianism. 
 
 There are some other points, of which I had proposed to 
 speak, but I am conscious of having already extended my 
 remarks very far. Before I close, however, permit me to 
 ask, whence all this has come 1 I speak not now of your- 
 self alone. I am not pretending to fathom the depths of 
 your individual spirit. I speak of you as the representative 
 of a class, and therefore may speak without the arrogance 
 of assuming to define motives, or lay bare the secret springs 
 of thought and action. 
 
 The class then to which you belong, and which at this 
 day in certain quarters is pretty widely spread, seem to be 
 given to generalizing, on insufficient grounds. You take 
 what would probably be the moral and religious develop- 
 ments of single fallen men, separated from any traditional 
 or other knowledge of man's original creation, and separa- 
 ted too from any communication with God by revelation, or 
 any knowledge of such communication. Or else you take 
 the social and political developments, of a few such men, 
 in language or government, as they probably would be, if 
 they were thrown together under the same circumstances. 
 In other words you suppose a case which never has existed ; 
 and then generalizing your supposition, you make these 
 individuals, or these small societies, types of the whole race, 
 and talk of what you suppose their progress would be, as 
 if it were really the progress of all mankind. You frame 
 a theory irrespective of facts, and then apply your theory, 
 when these facts make it inapplicable ; and this because 
 you separate your speculations from the truth. Looking at 
 Revelation as something aside from the history of human 
 progress, you set up schemes aside of it. And thus become 
 Infidels in your philosophy, while you are Christians in your 
 formal doctrine. In short whatever may be your intentions, 
 you make Christian Doctrine and Scripture truth isolated 
 things. Not things which must lie at the basis, and be 
 mingled with the superstructure, of all theories which touch 
 upon man, in any possible relation, or any conceivable point 
 of view. Hence in speculations, when in your view Reli- 
 gious truth is not immediately concerned, heretical or infidel 
 tendencies come to be slightly regarded ; and in time that 
 carelessness is easily transferred to God's truth itself, and 
 
22 
 
 so a door is widely opened for the entrance of any possible 
 error. Such are in brief the tendencies of a yet unnamed 
 school of philosophers, that has been growing up in certain 
 quarters for the last century ; tendencies, which are now 
 displaying themselves with alarming frequency, in such 
 ways as they have done in your Address. This, without at 
 all impugning the sincerity of your Christian belief, or ques- 
 tioning the goodness of your intentions, will I believe quite 
 sufficiently account, for the way in which you have felt 
 yourself warranted, in speaking of human progress in Re- 
 ligion, Language, and Government ; or of God, and the 
 Saviour, and the Christian Faith, in relation to that progress : 
 never once, I most fully believe, dreaming that what you 
 said, had any tendency toward Infidelity, or even Socinian- 
 ism. Never once, I am well assured, thinking of the irrev- 
 erence, and almost profanity, of the way in which you have 
 spoken of our God and his Incarnate Son, and connected 
 with two mere human developments in Art and Civil Polity, 
 that scheme of mysteries, which surpasses all the powers 
 of Angels to comprehend. Because, in accordance with 
 the doctrines of your school, you have been accustomed to 
 separate Philosophy from The Faith ; and to look on the 
 latter, as a thing that without danger or irreverence, could 
 be talked of in the same tone, and be viewed from the same 
 point, as Grecian Art, or Roman Law, or why not the Feu- 
 dal System, or the American Revolution. But sir, Philos- 
 ophy and Religion must not be thus dissevered. Nay they 
 cannot be. God hath joined them, in a certain union and 
 subordination. If that is disturbed, and the attempt made 
 to dissever them, it only results in upturning the Divine 
 arrangement, and making Religion secondary to Philos- 
 ophy. Then Tertullian's words came true, h&reses a philos- 
 ophia subornantur? 
 
 The origin and progress of the school, whose character- 
 istics I have thus been briefly noticing, I am not here con- 
 cerned to speak of. Suffice it to say, that when man, has 
 been dislodged from the position, in which God has given 
 means to place him and ordained that he shall be placed, 
 and in which only the scheme of Redemption bears upon 
 him ; that is, when he is universally and continually regar- 
 ded, as merely individual, and irrespective of the Body of 
 Christ, as part of which alone Religion has to do with him ; 
 
 y Tertull. de Prescript. Hsreticor. 
 
23 
 
 it can occasion no great wonder, if speculations shall be 
 held about him, irrespective of Religion. If he is viewed 
 irrespective of his relation to God, through the Redeemer's 
 living Body; the Philosophy that is concerned with him, 
 may well be irrespective of the Redeemer's holy Faith. 
 
 In conclusion sir, allow me to say, that if any expressions 
 have escaped me, which you may construe into personali- 
 ties, I most sincerely regret it. To give loose to any such, 
 has been far from my intention. And if I mourn at seeing 
 your mind, as I cannot but think beclouded, and misapplied, 
 and its energies misdirected, not on your part wittingly ; it 
 is because I picture to myself, how noble, how subservient 
 to the cause of holiest truth, and deepest philosophy, its 
 workings under a surer guide, and a more generous system, 
 would, and I pray God, may yet become. 
 
 I am Sir, with very much respect, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 CATHOLICUS. 
 
 November, 1843. 
 
! i