554 TIIE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. there is but little in our religion that differs from his, and that he is better without a gospel than with it, since it makes such a pother to so little purpose. And indeed there are some persons, who by suffering them- selves to be seduced into Agrippa's scheme. have already learned to undervalue the writings of the blessed Paul, though he was the greatest and best of all the divine writers. They find so much of the atonement of Christ in his epistles, that they reject them at once because they will not believe this doctrine. They represent him as a Jew of a warm imagination, an enthusiast with his head full of propitiations, sacrifices, and other plia, risaical notions, to such a degree that he deserves no regard, and that the New Testament would be much better without his writings. Another step, and the gospels will he turned out too, when they have learned of the deists to say, that the sermons and speeches of Christ, so far as they are rational and intelligible, contain nothing but mere natural religion ; the rest is all enthusiasm, and it is not worth while to defend any . of these gospels as divine. Thus the belief of Agrippa's creed has an evident tendency to make men disbelieve the NewTes, tament itself. Sixthly, When we refuse to receive a doctrine which is so clearly and expressly revealed in the word of God, as the atone- inent "of Christ is; when we are are taught to deny a doctrine which is so strongly asserted there, and so frequently introduced and repeated upon everyoccasion, it evidently abates that vene- ration which even Christians themselves have or should have for the New Testament, though it should not prevail so far as to turn them into infidels. It teaches then to grow too bold with scripture, and twist it to any purposes : It disgraces the word of the living God, and sinks the character of it into a. mere leaden rule, as the papists call it, which may be bent to serve or support any opinion. It tempts us to turn the brightest discoveries, and the peculiar glories of it into mere lessons of morality. When we explain away one of the most evident and substantial doc- trines of it at this rate, it gives us a sort of effrontery and un- godly courage to oppose the most express truths which are writ- ten in scripture, if we can possibly construe and translate them into another sense. It introduces a sort of profane hardiness into theconscience, and emboldens us to renounce the most evident lessons of St. Peter, Paul, and John, and deny the truth of them even to the veryteeth of the sacred writers. Such a practice as this slims our great unwillingness to sub- mit our opinions to the dictates of heaven, and argues an unbe- coming pride of our own reasoning powers. It draws us into the very spirit as well as the sentiments of Sucinus and his fol- lowers, who have ventured to affirm, If it should be written in
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