TO THE REVEREND THE CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LONDON. IN transcribing this Charge for the press, it has been augmented principally by additions to what was cited from other writers, but with no change of sentiment from what was heard by you, my Reverend Brethren, when the request was made for its being published; and to you it is now inscribed, with every deep impression of regard, BY ITS AUTHOR. A A CHARG E, &c. MY REV. BRETHREN, PILATE'S question, What is truth? may seem to have been a natural query; but indeed it was one which in his lips showed that he had little knowledge of what he might have known, and was as ill qualified for private judgment in things of moral or religious obligation, as he was for public and judicial causes: insufficient both ways, and too shallow and falsehearted to sit as a learner or a judge. Truth, indeed, in its comprehensive sense, as first derived from God, who gave the powers of intellect and reason, and who prescribed from the first the lessons proper for them in the first injunction of his sacred Word, speaks, in all ways, its Divine original. Those rays of light and knowledge have accordingly subsisted in full harmony under the never-erring government of God. I shall crave your attention for a while to the proof of this, before I pass on to the objects which I have in view. Thus, when God made man, He endowed him with all the powers and privileges proper for his appointed and distinguished station in the universe; without which endowments the objects of the senses would have been no more to man than to the brute. The sovereign Lord vouchsafed at the same time to become his teacher. What else were those communications of which we read in the first pages of the sacred volume? What was the precept which presented the first pledge of homage to the true Proprietor of all things? We cannot suppose that the sum of moral duty was confined to that commandment; and yet that Word was given, although the debt of homage could not fail to be suggested to the reasonable mind from all surrounding objects. The spontaneous efforts of the human mind rise as readily to view in the same scene of man's first existence. Thus when God brought all living things before Adam, to see what he would name them, what was this but the first occasion given for the exercise and trial of man's intellectual powers; and accordingly it follows, "whatsoever Adam called "every living thing, that was the name thereof;" as well as the description, no doubt, of its properties. Thus if the gift of reason with respect to man was the first privilege bestowed upon him, because without it man was not made, yet the first exercises of it were not left without direction. So true is it that "God teaches man more than the beasts of “the field, and maketh him wiser than the fowls of "heaven." There is no rival claim, then, for priority, where the gift of reason and the conscious spirit, with the Word of God for guidance and instruction, and for the assurance of man's best hope, have been found to stand together, and where the perfections of the sovereign Lord have formed the standard and the test of truth. It will be my aim to show how these grounds of truth and knowledge are combined in the written Word of God, the rule of faith, which is the main object which I have in view. Without reviving old disputes concerning what have been called common notions, certain it is that whatever be the method of receiving or acquiring such conceptions, the reality of that discriminative power must be admitted, and it must be owned that some agreement must evermore subsist between the best convictions of the human mind, and the known and adorable perfections of the sovereign Lord. We may be sure of this, because to his high perfections God makes his own appeal in every treaty with his reasonable creatures. The same conformity therefore between truth and reason must |