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QUERIES RESPECTING THE OLD TESTAMENT.

To the Editor of the Freethinking Christians' Magazine.

BIR,

HA AVING been for some time a free and sincere enquirer after truth, I greatly rejoiced on seeing your Magazine advertized on the cover of the Monthly Repository. Accordingly, when the first number came out, I sent for it, and have continued to take in the work ever since; and I can with pleasure assure you, that I have acquired by it more important information than from any other source whatever. Placing the greatest confidence in your candor, I take the liberty of submitting a few thoughts which have recently exercised my mind, and beg that you will cause them to be answered through the medium of your valuable publication.

Suppose a person were to come into this country, who understood our language and that only, but who had never heard of the existence of the Bible--and I were to give him a copy of it, saying, at the same time, Sir, I take the liberty of presenting you with this book, and beg you will carefully read it through, for it contains a revelation from God to man, and it is essentially necessary that you become acquainted with its sacred contents, as thereon depends your happiness or misery in a future state-after this, I should give him a brief history of it; the manner of its having been handed down through the different ages; of its translation from the original language; with a summary of the evidences by which it is supported. When he had complied with my request, he tells me that he found therein many good things, exactly consonant with the opinion he had previously imbibed of the God of nature; but there are others which seemed to him altogether legendary, and to which he could not possibly give credit. It seems also (adds he) very hard that my future happiness or misery should depend on my views of this book: what you have said respecting its authenticity is ingenious enough, and perhaps to you satisfactory, as you are a learned man, and have had leisure and opportunity for prying into antiquity, which advantages I shall never enjoy; but as you lay no claim to infallibility, it is possible that you yourself may be deceived on some points, and consequently, were I blindly to admit your testimony, I should fall into the same error. However, as you have many strong arguments on your side, and my curiosity is awakened thereby, I shall be glad to see the subject fully in vestigated, to know what obligation 1 am really under to receive this book as a divine revelation, seeing I have no proper qualification for investigating its authenticity for myself.

How am I to know that the different parts were written by the persons whose names they bear? Then, admitting that such was the case, how am I to know, that those persons were well qualified to ascertain the truth of what they have related; or that they were men of such veracity, as to testify the truth of what they did know? Again, how am I to know that these different parts have all been faithfully transmitted down to the present day, and that they are justly rendered into the English language?-Also, admitting that the the miracles recorded in the histories of Moses and Christ were necessary to establish the truth of their divine missions, why has there not been a succession of them, to preserve these histories pure and uncorrupted, in every particular, throughout all the ages of their existence? Supposing the present canon of Scripture and the English version of it to be correct, how am 1 to act, seeing that men of equal talents and integrity have deduced from it opinions so widely different? Some persons, perhaps, will say, study the Bible for yourself, and pray to God to enlighten your understanding: but, admitting that I follow this prac tice, how am I then to know whether or not my conclusions, when drawn, are true, as many pious men have done so before me, and yet have formed systems very different from one another; and 1, surely, ought not to suppose that my mind will receive greater illumination than theirs?—These are questions of some importance, and deserve a serious, unsophisticated solution.

Before I close, 1 beg leave to observe, that though I do not agree with the Unitarians in those particulars wherein you have departed from them, yet I am sorry to see so respectable a denomination treated with such acrimony in several of your numbers. If Mr. Aspland, or any other individual, has manifested disrespect towards your society, that certainly gives no just cause for animadversions on the whole body. Doctor Priestley has also been treated very lightly. Granting that he did not go far enough, yet candour must allow that his Herculean labours have materially assisted in restoring Christianity to its original simplicity; and therefore his memory well deserves veneration from every friend to free enquiry. I am inclined to believe that your Magazine would not have appeared at this time, had not the doctor led the way.

A peculiar regard for the credit and continuance of your work occasioned these remarks, and I hope they will be kindly received.

Plymouth Dock, Nov. 16, 1811.

MINIMUS.

I

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ON THE RESURRECTION.

To the Editor of the Freethinking Christians' Magazine.

SIR,

CANNOT coincide with a correspondent, who signs himself a Deist, in your Magazine for December; and who asserts that "there is nothing in the usual course of nature, which bears the most distant analogy to the supposed resurrection of the human person."

In endeavouring to shew the fallacy of the above assertion, I shall confine myself principally to practical chemistry, and attempt to demonstrate, that there is nothing in the resurrection of man which is irrelevant to the order of things, or strictly inconsonant with the course of nature.

On the dissolution of the human frame decomposition takes place, and the body being deprived of the elementary principles with which it was united, becomes putrescent, and returns to its mother earth. But although the disposition of the human person is radically changed, yet it is not annihilated. The destruction of matter is as impossible as the creation of it, and the revivification of matter in the form of man perfectly compatible with the laws of philosophy. Although by a metallic solution the properties of the acid and metal are completely changed, and a compound is formed partaking of the qualities of neither, chemists find no difficulty in restoring the metal from its calz to its original purity. We shall find likewise that nature is continually exhausting and renovating herself. Man decomposes the atmospheric air, retains the vital, and emits the azote; hence the atmosphere becomes impoverished, but the vegetable part of creation restores the equilibrium, by retain ing the mephitic and emitting the pure vital, or oxygen gas.

If man, by chemical agency, has it in his power to analyze the productions of nature, and resolve them to their first principles-to extract the metal and the acid in every possible state of combination--to disunite the elementary bodies of the ancients, is it irrational to suppose, that Providence cannot by similar means recall the component parts of man, and again reanimate them? The seed, after having been sown for a short period in the earth, shoots forth with lustre; and having beamed awhile, decays, and deposits its original species. This, if not conclusive evidence, bears at least a strong similitude to the resurrection of man.

If matter were perishable, a doubt might exist as to the reorganization of the corporeal substance; but as it is impossible to create something out of nothing, and nothing out of something, man, as man, may be destroyed, bút, as matter, cannot be reduced to nonentity.

I might adduce numberless scriptural authorities to prove the resurrection of the human being, but these your correspondent regards as mere traditionary facts, which are unsupported by any thing like reason, and wholly at variance with philosophical researches. Your's, &c.

Dec. 9, 1811.

AMICUS.

ON WATER BAPTISM.

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To the Editor of the Freethinking Christians' Magazine.

SIR,

N my last, I stated the occasion of my being delivered unto Satan, the mode of proceeding by which that was done, and what followed thereupon. I now proceed to give you a further Narrative, being the substance of my defence on that occasion.

John the Baptist, who was a man sent from God, for the special purpose of making the Messiahship of Jesus manifest to the Jews, his countrymen, and to them only; that Jesus should be manifest to Israel; therefore, says John, am 1 come, baptizing into water. Here there is no commission, or even reference, to the baptizing of Gentiles into water; no, not by Jesus himself, whom John invariably pointed to as the Messiah that was to come into the world, and who was now about to establish that vital religion which was ultimately to overthrow all others, even that which God himself established on the earth by his servant Moses. Jesus came with that power with which he was invested by God the father, to sit as a refiner of silver, as one that winnows corn, gathering the wheat into his garner, and burning all the chaff in fire unquenchable. These figurative expressions 1 believe refer to what was to take place in the minds of men upon the reception of the gospel of Jesus.

There appears to have been a hearsay report spread abroad, that Jesus was baptizing with water in the land of Judea; but John, the beloved disciple, who is justly supposed to have known more of his master's mind and will than any of the other Apostles, has most remarkably cautioned all who should read or hear bis writings, against entertaining such an idea as that of Jesus ever practising water baptism, by stating within a parenthesis that Jesus baptized not, being unworthy the cha racter of him who came to set up a kingdom purely spiritual, not consisting of divine ordinances, meats and drinks, beg garly elements, days and months, and times and years, neither holy-days nor sabbaths, which being a shadow of things to come aud perish in the using, were to cease when Christ the substance came; not instantaneously, but as the minds of men were able to bear the new and important truths taught by Je

sus and his Apostles. Wherefore, argues the Apostle Paul, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?

It is said the disciples of Jesus did baptize, and that they were not forbidden of him to do so. Admitted: for I might, as well suppose that Jesus would forbid John and his disciples to baptize with water, as to forbid his own to do so; for the kingdom of God, of which this ordinance was to form no part, was not yet fully established, though at hand. John also bore witness, that he, meaning his commission and work, was to decrease, but that of Jesus was to incréase. John was a burning and shining light, but continued only for a short time; long enough, however, to make it manifest unto Israel that Jesus was the Christ, which appears to have been the sole pur-. pose of his mission.

I come now to the grand foundation on which is built the superstructure of water baptism, whether it be by immersion, sprinkling, or pouring the commission of Jesus, spoken by him to his eleven Apostles after his resurrection from the dead, which I read thus: All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth; go ye, therefore, and disciple all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatever I have commanded you; and, lo! I am with you alway unto the end of the world. Who art thou, O great mountain? let me view thy parts, scale thine height, and search thy bottom, to see if there be water wherewith the nations were to be baptized by the apostles of Jesus, to whom this commission was given. In the first place I can discover no water here at all, not even a single drop for an infant, nor any thing like a river or a baptism for adults. Making disciples of all nations, baptizing them, have generally been considered to mean two separate acts; the making of disciples by the preaching of the gospel, and then to baptize them into water. Not so do I understand the commission, but that it means one undivided apostolic act, the washing of water by the word. The gospel preached by the Apostles, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, the disciples being then translated into the kingdom of God, were to be further taught and admonished of those things pertaining thereto.

Jesus did not command his apostles to preach the gospel, or make disciples of all nations, and baptize them, but to do it baptizing; so I maintain, that for want of that little word and in the commission, the very foundation for water baptism is overthrown. Peter makes use of the word baptized as sy nonimous with converted. (Compare Acts ii. 38. with iii. 19.) This was a baptism, a change or conversion, whereby their sins were blotted out. How? not by water is very certain, but by

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