LINES ON MR. MACLAURIN. ADORN'D with learning, taste, and manly sense, Swift was his race, with health and vigour bless'd, Soft was his passage to the land of rest. His work concluded, ere the day was done, Sudden the Saviour stoop'd, and caught him to his throne. EDINBURGH, March 8, 1755. ESSAY I. ON PREJUDICES AGAINST THE GOSPEL. ONE principal prejudice that the corruption of the heart raises against the doctrine of the gospel is, that it represents the evil demerit of sin too great, when so costly a sacrifice was requisite to expiate it. It is one of the hardest tasks in the world, to bring the heart to a sincere persuasion, that sin is indeed as vile as God's word represents it, and that it deserves all that his law threatens against it. Hence a great many are not properly so sorry for their sins against God's law, as for the severity of God's law against their sins. While many do not regret their sins at all, some regret them rather as misfortunes than faults, and as worthy of pity and compassion, rather than hatred and punishment. These favourable impressions of sin naturally create prejudices, not only against the awful threatenings of the law, but also even against the glad tidings of the gospel: because the latter as necessarily suppose the former, as a recovery or a remedy supposes a disease, or as deliverance supposes danger. When the apostle Paul represents the scope of the gospel, he says, that "therein is revealed the right eousness of God, and the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." And nothing is more certain, than that this is one of the chief prejudices men entertain against it. If one were to compose a formal confutation of this prejudice, it were needful to meet with some pretended demonstration that sin does not deserve the punishment above mentioned, that so the foundations and grounds of such an argument might be impartially inquired into. But, in effect, this prejudice does not usually form itself into any thing like a clear chain of reasoning, but expresses itself in confused and indistinct complaints against the opposite doctrine, as too severe and rigid. And therefore, perhaps, it will not be an improper way of examining of it, to propose some miscellaneous considerations, that may serve to show whether this judice be founded on reason or not. pre If any man undertook to prove that sin cannot deserve hell, there are two things absolutely necessary in order to make that proof good. First, that he know all the ends and designs, all the reasons that God can possibly have for punishing sin; and then, that he demonstrate, that all those ends and designs may be obtained as well, and in a manner as agreeable to the infinite perfections of God, and the most perfect way of governing the world, without inflicting the above-mentioned punishment, and without any propitiation to declare his righteousness in the remission of it. Now, it is certain, that no man can pretend, with any tolerable shadow of reason, to so vast an undertaking. All that a man can pretend for lessening the evil demerit of sin, is |