ntent to subscribe? They do
not think that a book becomes of divine authority because it is bound in
blue morocco, and is printed by John Baskett and his assigns. The Bible
is a vast collection of different treatises: a man who holds the divine
authority of one may consider the other as merely human. What is his
Canon? The Jewish? St. Jerome's? that of the Thirty-Nine Articles?
Luther's? There are some who reject the Canticles; others, six of the
Epistles; the Apocalypse has been suspected even as heretical, and was
doubted of for many ages, and by many great men. As these narrow the
Canon, others have enlarged it by admitting St. Barnabas's Epistles, the
Apostolic Constitutions, to say nothing of many other Gospels.
Therefore, to ascertain. Scripture, you must have one article more; and
you must define what that Scripture is which, you mean to teach. There
are, I believe, very few who, when Scripture is so ascertained, do not
see the absolute necessity of knowing what general doctrine a man draws
from it, before he is sent down authorized by the state to teach, it as
pure doctrine, and receive a tenth of the produce of our lands.

The Scripture is no one summary of doctrines regularly digested, in
which, a man could not mistake his way. It is a most venerable, but most
multifarious, collection of the records of the divine economy: a
collection of an infinite variety,--of cosmogony, theology, history,
prophecy, psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legislation, ethics,
carried through different books, by different authors, at different
ages, for different ends and purposes. It is necessary to sort out what
is intended for example, what only as narrative,--what to be understood
literally, what figuratively,--where one precept is to be controlled and
modified by another,--what is used directly, and what only as an
argument _ad hominem_,--what is temporary, and what of perpetual
obligation,--what appropriated to one state and to one set of men, and
what the general duty of all Christians. If we do not get some security
for this, we not only permit, but we actually pay for, all the dangerous
fanaticism which, can be produced to corrupt our people, and to derange
the public worship of the country. We owe the best we can (not
infallibility, but prudence) to the subject,--first sound doctrine, then
ability to use it.

SPEECH

ON

A BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF PROTESTANT DISSENTERS.

MARCH 17, 1773.

NOTE.