than to refer us, for the knowledge of the Scriptures, to the fathers. who were very ignorant of them, that they almost constantly understood them in every sense but the true sense. They have such an appetite for vision, mystery, and obscurity, that in the plainest texts they find difficulty, darkness, allusion and enigmas; and explain obvious pas sages, just as they do doubtful ones, by far-fetched and mysterious guesses and meanings, which contradict common sense, and which none that had it would have thought of. A plain and natural meaning which every body could see, would not serve their turn; but they must extort a meaning, and so have the glory of the discovery; and their thoughts, like their language, were forced and bombast. And to these men, who made the word of God of none effect, by darkening his plainest precepts with false glossess and figures, we are sent for intruction in that word.

Whoever has seen Solomon's Temple Allegorized, by John Bunyan, may find there a specimen of the sagacity and abilities of the fathers in explaining of Scripture. According to John, there was not a nail in that temple but had its typical purpose; and every bason and pair of tongs prefigured some great mystery to come; and in short, every stone and every tool in the temple prophesied. And in all this the pious Tinker did but tread in the steps of the fathers, without knowing it. As he had much more honesty, and a more quiet and beneficent spirit, than any of them; so he had as much invention, and was full as equal to the business of allegory, as the best of them, and his fancy was not more heated than theirs; and whoever reads his Pilgrim's Progress, need only suppose himself reading one of the brightest fathers in English; and he will make them no ill compliment; for his imagination, which was a very good one, was really more regular and correct than theirs. I have often thought the Rosicrusians a sort of modern fathers; only they are more sublime in their reveries. They deal alike in the same puffry, false rhetoric, and their imaginations are alike inflamed and extravagant.

It is irrational and impious to suppose that Almighty God, the good, the merciful God, would give to his creatures instructions, commands, and advices, which were puzzling, obscure, or uncertain, when their eternal salvation was depending upon their conceiving and applying them aright. And yet these fathers suppose all this, in fetching from his word inferences and meanings, which, upon reading it, seem as different from it is any one language is from another. It is but jus tice to the omnipotent Being, to believe that he speaks candidly and intelligibly to his creatures, and to all his creatures, whenever he speaks to them at all. But this justice the fathers dény him, when they make him thus say one thing, and mean another.

And no more is it to be supposed, that the Father of mercies would cruelly impose upon us an impossible thing for a duty; I mean that of agreeing with the fathers, who never agreed with one another, nor indeed with themselves. No people upon the earth ever differed more (no, not their successors) nor proceeded to greater fury and bitterness in their differences. They were constantly quarrelling about the smallest, as well as the greatest points; and for the smallest, as well as for the greatest, they damned one another. It is to be hoped, that we are not to learn our religion from those who wanted charity; nor our

charity and meekness from men that were perpetually quarrelling, and cursing each other.

They indeed contradicted the first principles of the gospel, by turning meekness, humility, and self-denial, into pride, riches, and domination; and claimed all things, by virtue of a gospel that gave them nothing. Are these patterns for such as would renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil; and live sober, righteous, and godly in the world? Does their sainting of villains and assassins, as sometimes they did, entitle them to the character and reverence of saints? Does their eternal contention and contradiction qualify them for the center of unity? Is their turbulent spirit, and their wild want of common sense, their ravenous avarice, and flaming ambition, their fury and fighting, their frequent change of opinion, their apostacy and murders; I say are all these, or any of them, proper marks of the guides of God's people ? And that these marks belong to many of the fathers, and all of them to some, is too manifest. Indeed, their own writings, and all ecclesiastical history, do little else but prove it.

We have often heard the dissenters charged with fanaticism, and their best writers have been called fanatics by men who reverenced much greater fanatics, whilst they reverenced the fathers, who far outwent in fanaticism even the wildest sectaries, that appeared in England during the late long civil war; nor were the Ranters, Sweet-Singers, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchy Men, or any of them all, more stark mad with enthusiasm than the fathers were; who, besides the turbulency of their behaviour, by which they brought many and heavy evils and persecutions upon the primitive Christians, asserted principles utterly irreconcileable to human society, as well as to religion and Jacob Behmen was not a greater visionary, nor vended more

reason.

devout dreams.

I thank God, we can understand the Scriptures without the voluminous and contradictory ravings and declamations of the fathers, who have equally perverted the religion of Jesus, and the religion of nature; both which are clear enough to those that will see them, and do mutually confirm each other. There is as much difference, and indeed opposition, between the New Testament and the writings of the fathers, as there is betwixt the Pentateuch and the Talmud; which, by its fables, forgeries, and wild inventions, has mangled, darkened, and perverted the short and plain history of Moses; nor are the dreams, fables, and absurdities of the fathers more sacred, or less glaring and extravagant, than those of the rabbies. Never were such ridiculous commentators upon texts; and where a child that could but read would not have missed their meaning, the fathers have missed it. They were so far from understanding, applying, explaining, or improving the amiable and evident moral of the gospel, that whoever would look for it in a place where he is sure not to find it, need only read the fathers; and I should think very meanly of our country curates, if most of them could not compose systems of divinity, more rational and scriptural than any of the fathers ever composed.

Thus much I thought proper to say here concerning the fathers. Whoever would see more elsewhere, may read the learned Dr. Whitby's late Latin treatise entitled, Disquisitiones modeste, and Mr. Marvel's short history of councils, and Daillé of the use of the fathers.

A Letter to the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury; proving, That his Grace cannot be the Author of the Letter to an eminent Presbyterian Clergyman in Switzerland, in which Letter the present State of Religion in England is blackened and exposed.

MY LORD,

Non potuit celare Pia Ludibria Fraudis.

Written in 1719.

BUCHAN.

THERE is lately printed in Switzerland a book entitled, Oratio Historica de Beneficiis in Ecclesiam Tigurinam collatis: "An historical Oration concerning the mercies bestowed upon the church of Zurich." In the 14th page of which Oration the author gives an account of the present state of the English church, as the same was transmitted from bence, in an epistle to a principal person (or ruler) there, from one of the like, or greater character here.

As this epistle gives a frightful representation of the state of religion amongst us, in general; and, more particularly, of the distresses and dangers, which accrue to the church of England, from schism, heresy, and the ministry; I herewith send it to your Grace. I have translated it for the benefit of my less learned readers, and added some observations of my own, to expose a lurking author, who deceives and prejudices the world abroad with a base image of our church affairs under your Grace's administration. And I do it the rather, because, my Jord, some people are so very ignorant and malicious, as to surmise that your Grace was the author of that letter, so inconsistent with your former life and character.

Oratio Historica de Beneficiis in Ecclesiam Tigurinam collatis, p. 14.

"ECCLESIA Anglicana divisionibus perrupta est, & schismatibus divisa; tot ac tam variis hominum ab ipsis sacris sese segregantium generibus confusa, ut nullis propriis nominibus vel ipsi se distinguere valeant, vel aliis describere. Atque utinam etiam hoc ultimum nobis querelæ argumentum esset! Sed impleri oportet quæcumque spiritus Dei olim futura prædixit; adeo ut inter nos ipsos exsurrexerint viri loquentes perversa. Et quid dico, viri? Immò Pastores, Episcopi ipsi manibus Ecclesiam diruunt, in quâ ministrant; ad cujus doctrinam pluries subscripsere: Quibus defensio Ecclesiæ commissa, quorum munus est invigilare contra hostes ejus, eosque pro meritis redarguere, compescere, punire. Etiam bi illius Ecclesiæ auctoritatem labefactare nituntur, pro quâ non tantum certare, verum, si res ita postularet, etiam mori debuerint. Quæ sint horum novatorum placita, ex duobus nuperis scriptis Gallico sermone libellis aliquatenus discernere valeatis. Uno hîc verbo dixisse sufficiat, his hominibus omnes Fidei confessiones, omnes Articulorum subscriptiones, animitùs displicere. Velle eas libertatem, seu verius licentiam omnibus concedi, quæcumque libuerit non tantum credendi, sed dicendi, scribendi, prædicandi; etiam si

Gratia Spiritûs Sancti, Christi Divinitas, & alia omnia Religionis nostra principia maximè fundamentalia, exinde forent evertenda. Quis bæc Christianus, de hominibus nomine saltem Christianis, dici non obstupescat! Quis non doleat hujusmodi aúxus Bagus non tantùm non ab Ovili longè arceri, verùm etiam intra ipsa Ecclesiæ pomaria recipi? Ad honores, ad officia, ad gubernacula ejus admitti? At vero ita se res habet. Dum ad ea, quæ sunt hujus seculi, unicè respicimus, prorsùm obliviscimur eorum quæ ad alterum spectant. Et quia horum hominum tolerantiâ & promotione quidam se populi favorem conciliaturos sperant, quibus id unicè cordi, ut in suis sese dignitatibus & potentiâ tueantur, parum curant quid de Ecclesiâ, de Fide, de Riligione, de ipso denique Jesu Christo, ejusque veritate eveniat. Ignoscas, vir spectatissime, si, dum justo animi dolori indulgeam, indignationem meam contra hosce religionis nostræ inimicos paulò asperius, quam pro more meo, expresserim. Reum me putarem prodita Fidei, si non his Hæreticis, quâvis occasione oblatâ, Anathema dixerim, &c.

In English thus.

THE church of England is broken by parties, and rent by schisms; in short, distracted with such a number, and variety of separatists, that they want apt names to distinguish themselves from one another, and to describe themselves to the rest of the world.

And I wish even this were our highest ground of complaint! But it must be fulfilled, what the Holy Spirit foretold in times past; so that among ourselves men have arisen, speaking perverse things. But why do I say men? When even pastors, nay, Bishops themselves, pull down with their own hands the church in which they minister, and to whose doctrine they have over and over subscribed, even they to whom the preservation of the church is committed, and whose business and duty it is to watch against her enemies, and to oppose, and restrain, and punish them. Yes, they strive to undermine and over-turn the authority of that church, for which they ought not only to contend, but, if occasion were, to lay down their lives.

What the pleas and pretensions of these innovators are, you may in some measure learn, from a couple of French pamphlets lately published. Let it here suffice to say in one word, that these men are angry at all confessions of faith, and all subscriptions of articles, and are for granting a general liberty, or rather a general licence, to all men, not only to believe, but to speak, and write, and preach whatever they please, tho' at the expence and ruin of the grace of the Holy Spirit, the divinity of our blessed Saviour, and all the other fundamental principles of our religion.

Who, that is a Christian, can without astonishment hear these things, of men that call themselves Christians? and who can avoid lamenting, that these ravening wolves (uxus Bages) are not only not driven far away from the sheepfold, but even received within the very enclosures of the church, and admitted to her honours, her offices, and her government? And yet so it unfortunately is.

But whilewe only strive for the things of this life, we wofully neglect those which belong to another. And because some hope, by the toleration and advancement of such men, to acquire the favour of the

people, and, by that means, maintain themselves in that which they have only at heart, their power and places, they care not what becomes of the church, or of the faith, or of religion, or indeed of Jesus Christ hmiself, and his cause.

You will pardon me, sir, that to gratify a just sorrow, I thus express my indignation, with more than usual bitterness, against these enemies of our religion. I should accuse myself of betraying the faith, did I not, on every occasion, denounce damnation against these heretics," &c.

Thus far the letter, as it is quoted in the Oration above mentioned. Your grace will perceive in it a spirit, which shews what blind zeal, and uncharitableness, go to the composition of a high churchman, who must see double, and represent at random, else it would be impossible for him, either to discover the danger of the church himself, or to shew the same to others. A character by no means becoming your grace.

A high churchman may be denominated from divers marks and exclamations. He must be devout in damning of dissenters; he must roar furiously for the church, and its great modern apostle, the late Duke of Ormond, with some other pious and forsworn gentlemen, who are well affected to the pretender and the convocation; he must rebel for passive obedience; he must uphold divine right by diabolical means; and, he must be loud and zealous for hereditary, indefeasible, and the like orthodox nonsense. But there is one sign more of a true churchman, which is more lasting and universal than all the rest, and that is a firm and sensless persuasion that the church is in danger. If a man believe this, it is enough, his reputation is raised; and, tho' his life shew more of the dæmon than the Christian, he shall be deemed an excellent churchman. This is so true, that, if an honest, atheistical churchman will but curse and roar against a toleration of dissenters, he shall be sure to find a toleration himself for the blackest iniquities, be rewarded with reputation, and, if possible, with power.

There was a fellow in Oxfordshire, one Jack Brunt, who had made himself famous for zeal and roguery. His whole life was religiously wasted in getting drunk for the church, and robbing of hen roosts and gardens. In short, he was the best churchman, and the greatest thief, in all the neighbourhood, and in high esteem with every one that honoured the cause of drunkenness and orthodoxy. But for all this merit, as Jack was carrying off half a dozen cabbages from farmer Shepherd's garden, he was unluckily apprehended, and carried before. Justice Plowden. However, as Jack was upon his examination, and nigh his commitment, the parson of the parish, hearing of his tribulation, came to intercede for so worthy a fellow-labourer in the cause of tipling and conformity. The first thing the doctor said was, that tho' Jack was addicted to roguery, yet he was honest. How, sir! an honest theif! replied the Squire, spitting and staring. I mean he is for the church, answered the parson. The church, man! says his wor shipI hope the Common Prayer Book does not feed on cabbagcs. But consider, sir, said the doctor again, the prosecutor is a notorious dissenter. And what if he be, quoth the Justice? Have not Presbyterians a toleration to eat their own cabbages? Away, away, Mr. what d'ye call; I love the church very well, and yet I'll have this fellow gaoled and whipped. Jack was accordingly committed, and al!