HKB
Bishop's argument is to be received with more or less qualification, the fact itself, as stated in the concluding sentence of the Aphorism, remains unaffected, and is beyond exception true.
If other argument and yet higher authority were required, I might refer to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and to the Epistle to the Hebrews, which whether written by Paul or, as Luther conjectured, by Apollos, is out of all doubt the work of an Apostolic man filled with the Holy Spirit, and composed while the Temple and the glories of the Temple worship were yet in existence. Several of the Jewish and still Judaizing converts had begun to vacillate in their faith, and to stumble at the stumbling-stone of the contrast between the pomp and splendour of the old Law and the simplicity and humility of the Christian Church. To break this sensual charm, to unfascinate these bedazzled brethren, the writer to the Hebrews institutes a comparison between the two religions, and demonstrates the superior spiritual grandeur, the greater intrinsic worth and dignity of the religion of Christ. On the other hand, at Rome where the Jews formed a numerous, powerful, and privileged class (many of them, too, by their proselyting zeal and frequent disputations with the priests and philosophers trained and exercised polemics) the recently-founded Christian Church was, it appears, in greater danger from the reasonings of the Jewish doctors and even of its own Judaizing members, respecting the use of the new revelation. Thus the object of the Epistle to the Hebrews was to prove the superiority of the Christian Religion; the object of the Epistle to the Romans to prove its necessity. Now there was one argument extremely well calculated to stagger a faith newly transplanted and still loose at its roots, and which, if allowed, seemed to preclude the possibility of the Christian religion, as an especial and immediate revelation from God--on the high grounds, at least, on which the Apostle of the Gentiles placed it, and with the exclusive rights and superseding character, which he claimed for it. "You admit" (said they) "the divine origin and authority of the Law given to Moses, proclaimed with thunders and lightnings and the voice of the Most High heard by all the people from Mount Sinai, and introduced, enforced, and perpetuated by a series of the most stupendous miracles. Our religion then was given by God: and can God give a perishable imperfect religion? If not perishable, how can it have a successor? If perfect, how can it need to be superseded?--The entire argument is indeed comprised in the latter attribute of our Law. We know, from an authority which you yourselves acknowledge for divine, that our religion is perfect. He is the Rock, and his Work is perfect. (Deuter. xxxii. 4.) If then the religion revealed by God himself to our forefathers is perfect, what need have we of another?"--This objection, both from its importance and from its extreme plausibility, for the persons at least, to whom it was addressed, required an answer in both Epistles. And accordingly, the answer is included in the one (that to the Hebrews) and it is the especial purpose and main subject of the other. And how does the Apostle answer it? Suppose--and the case is not impossible[146]--a man of sense, who had studied the evidences of Priestley and Paley with Warburton's Divine Legation, but who should be a perfect stranger to the Writings of St. Paul: and that I put this question to him:--"What do you think, will St. Paul's answer be?" "Nothing," he would reply, "can be more obvious. It is in vain, the Apostle will urge, that you bring your notions of probability and inferences from the arbitrary interpretation of a word in an absolute rather than a relative sense, to invalidate a known fact. It is a fact, that your Religion is (in your sense of the word) not perfect: for it is deficient in one of the two essential constituents of all true religion, the belief of a future state on solid and sufficient grounds. Had the doctrine indeed been revealed, the stupendous miracles, which you most truly affirm to have accompanied and attested the first promulgation of your religion, would have supplied the requisite proof. But the doctrine was not revealed; and your belief of a future state rests on no solid grounds. You believe it (as far as you believe it, and as many of you as profess this belief) without revelation, and without the only proper and sufficient evidence of its truth. Your religion, therefore, though of divine Origin is, (if taken in disjunction from the new revelation, which I am commissioned to proclaim) but a religio dimidiata; and the main purpose, the proper character, and the paramount object of Christ's mission and miracles, is to supply the missing half by a clear discovery of a future state;--and (since "he alone discovers who proves") by proving the truth of the doctrine, now for the first time declared with the requisite authority, by the requisite, appropriate, and alone satisfactory evidences."