divine forgiveness in praying for his enemies?—­I grant all this.  But then how is this peculiar to Christ?  Is it not the effect of all illustrious examples, of those probably most which we last read of, or which made the deepest impression on our feelings?  Were there no good men before Christ, as there were no bad men before Adam?  Is it not a notorious fact that those who most frequently refer to Christ’s conduct for their own actions, are those who believe him the incarnate Deity—­consequently, the best possible guide, but in no strict sense an example;—­while those who regard him as a mere man, the chief of the Jewish Prophets, both in the pulpit and from the press ground their moral persuasions chiefly on arguments drawn from the propriety and seemliness—­or the contrary—­of the action itself, or from the will of God known by the light of reason?  To make St. Paul prophesy that all Christians will owe their holiness to their exclusive and conscious imitation of Christ’s actions, is to make St. Paul a false prophet;—­and what in such case becomes of the boasted influence of miracles?  Even as false would it be to ascribe the vices of the Chinese, or even our own, to the influence of Adam’s bad example.  As well might we say of a poor scrofulous innocent:  “See the effect of the bad example of his father on him!” I blame no man for disbelieving, or for opposing with might and main, the dogma of Original Sin; but I confess that I neither respect the understanding nor have confidence in the sincerity of him, who declares that he has carefully read the writings of St. Paul, and finds in them no consequence attributed to the fall of Adam but that of his bad example, and none to the Cross of Christ but the good example of dying a martyr to a good cause.  I would undertake from the writings of the later English Socinians to collect paraphrases on the New Testament texts that could only be paralleled by the spiritual paraphrase on Solomon’s Song to be found in the recent volume of “A Dictionary of the Holy Bible, by John Brown, Minister of the Gospel at Haddington:”  third edition, in the Article, Song.

Ib. p. 63, 64.

Call forth the robber from his cavern, and the midnight murderer from his den; summon the seducer from his couch, and beckon the adulterer from his embrace; cite the swindler to appear; assemble from every quarter all the various miscreants whose vices deprave, and whose villainies distress, mankind; and when they are thus thronged round in a circle, assure them—­not that there is a God that judgeth the earth—­not that punishment in the great day of retribution will await their crimes, &c. &c.—­Let every sinner in the throng be told that they will stand ‘justified’ before God; that the ‘righteousness’ of ‘Christ’ will be imputed to ‘them’, &c.

Well, do so.—­Nay, nay! it has been done; the effect has been tried; and slander itself cannot deny that the effect has been the conversion of thousands