In 1743 appeared ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures.’ The more immediate object of this work was to refute a well-known deistical publication which was then recent, entitled ‘Christianity not founded on Argument;’ the writer of which had somewhat insidiously taken advantage of the disposition of some advocates of revelation to decry reason altogether in matters of religion, and to consider it as exclusively addressed to the affections and feelings. The fair inference from which seemed to be, that the Gospel, which did not address itself to the understanding, was unfit to stand in an appeal to the tribunal of reason, or to endure the test of a rigid and impartial examination.
This treatise is drawn up in the form of dialogue, and the argument on the side of revelation is, on the whole, ably and well managed, though it is certainly open to the usual objection to controversial works written on this plan, that the opponent is too commonly a mere man of straw, and is very far from giving such a view of his own case as any real opponent would be satisfied with. All readers, except the most careless or prejudiced, are sure to be struck with this; and the consequence of such one-sided ex parte statements is apt to be a reaction in the mind of the reader, who has no means of rightly estimating how much of the real strength of the opponent's
