The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-02-08 00:00:00

CORRESPONDENCE

TO THE REV. THOMAS YOUENS, D.D.

LETTER 111

REV. have attentively perused your letter wriccit
appears in the Albion of yesterday, and as the subject mat-
ter of it is distinct from that on which I had purposed LA,
have addressed you, I shall occupy this letter in attemptia,v;
to reply to everything therein which calls for remark.
Notwithstanding your resolution " to take no further no-
tice of any future anonymous correspondent," (which, by
the way, is somewhat rash,) I must remain under the veil
of " Baptistes." In doing so I am influenced by the fal-
lowing considerations. Hitherto I have not made any state-
ment which can be regarded as personal testimony;—ray
name and station would not add one iota to the probability
of my statements, every reader having opportunity to exa-
mine for himself, and being welcome either to refute or reject
my arguments, as he may possess either ability or inclina-
tion. I have reasons, too, of- ara i% ate nature, which lead
me to decline being introduced to the public " in propria
persona" ; and an introduction to you would be " a work
of supererogation." We have met before ; and I trust that
although we meet in conflict, this is not our " Philippi."
You say, Baptistes
" Directs my attention to a certain part of Mr. M`N.'s
" letter, which he wishes me to notice in my reply to that
" gentleman. * * * As the part of Mr. M'N.'s letter
" to which he refers appeared to me to be a divergence from
" the real question between us, I did not consider it worthy
" that attention," &c. . _ _

Excuse me, my dear sir, but one of us must be labouring
under delusion, and that to a marvellous and alarming ex-
tent ! I have sought with the utmost diligence, but cannot
find any such reference as the one discovered by you, and
feel persuaded that it would be one of the most difficult
tasks you could undertake, to place the sentence in question
within " inverted commas." Nay ! so utterly at a loss am
I, that both your meaning and allusion appear to be buried
in that entangled web whereby counsel is darkened " by
words without knowledge." It was distinctly stated, that
my motive in addressing you was to solicit a more careful
examination of the premise from which YOU drew a con-
clusion, &c. In the last sentence of my letter a hope was
expressed that YOU would shew us more tenable grounds
for YOUR opinion. As to the " divergence," however, as
I hare no taste for purely imaginative pursuits, I leave the
discovery thereof to those who may be inclined to enter upon
the search, trusting that the individual who is so fortunate
as to detect it will apprise " Baptistes " of the fact.
You then recapitulate all you have "to say respecting
" The Ephesine Fathers," which I leave in the hands of Mr.
M Neile.

You discovered (probably simultaneously with all my
readers) that " there appears to be considerable confusion
" and indistinctness in the mind of Baptistes. * * *
" Baptistes seems to think that
.in my remarks on Mr.
" M`N.'s speech I endeavoured to establish as a principle,
" that a numerical majority in favour of any opinion is evi-
" dence of the truth of that opinion. I beg leave to inform
" Baptistes that I never advanced such a proposition, nor
" endeavoured to establish ouch a principle ' • nor am I aware
" of any expression used by tee, which could authorise him
"to suppose that such was my opinion." Now one of the
following consequences must result from the above. Either
your mind or mine must be the prey of most unaccountable
" confusion and indistinctness," or either you or I have a
most extraordinarily short memory. On either the one or
other one of us must be impaled ; for I must be excused
maintaining, that you placed the following upon record (first
premising that the italics, &c., are of my own marking) :
"We will now proceed a step further. Suppose that I ad-
" dress myself to ten individuals, with a view of proving to
" them that my opinion is right. If by my arguments I satisfy
" two of them that I am in the right, then it is clear that
"my opinion is proved to these two. But the circumstance
" of its being proved to two of the number, whilst there re-
" main eight who see no force in my arguments, is no trite-
" rion that the two who agree with me are in the right, and
" that the eight dissenters are wrong. The PROBABILITY
" Ls, that the dissentients, BEING THE MORE NUMEROUS,
" are in the right; and that 1 and my two friends, notwith-
" standing my proof, are in the wrong.
" To prove doctrines from Scripture is, therefore, no evi-
" deuce whatever that these doctrines are in accordance with
" Scripture. It only amounts to this, that we have induced
" others to adopt our opinions on the subject. If, indeed,
" my arguments appear conclusive to the generality of man-
" kind, this affords strong presumption of the truth of my
" opinions. If, on the other hand, I have argued with many
" and convinced few, the presumption lies the other way."
Remarks, p. 8.

The fallacy of the majority being considered probably right
on account of their numbers, irrespective of other considera-
tions, was exposed in my first letter. Had I been aware,
however, that the portion of the pamphlet from which the
above is selected was considered by you as " a battery of
argument," (Observations, p. 3,) a little hesitation on my
part would have been prudent. No damage, however, has
as yet been sustained, excepting that the " divergence" is
still "missing." You go on to state :

" We will now take the liberty of applying this PRINCIPLE
" TO TEST the truth of those religious opinions which Mr,
" M'N. is in the habit of enforcing. * * *
. .

" Well, what success has the Established Church of Eng-
" land had in proving the truth of her own religious princi-
" pies ? * * * Has she induced all Englishmen at home
" or in the colonies to acknowledge her authority and adopt
" her principles ? Quite the contrary. Both at home and

abroad THE DISSENTIENTS ARE ON THE INCREASE, AND

" ORTHODOXY ON THE WANE

If this be not applying the "principle" of numbers as a
criterion to judge of truth, you would place me under an obli-
gation by stating what meaning you intended to convey by
the language employed. There is nothing in the context to
lead either me or any one else to conclude that you were
amusing us with allegory, or that you intended to string a
number of words together, to show with what dexterity the
feat may be accomplished without conveying any meaning.
May I be allowed to suggest, that in future you notify such
as being your intention in the margin, thus giving your read-
ers the option of either reading to admire, or passing over to
spare time.
In the letter before me, you fall back upon " the strong
presumption," and thereby involve yourself in the gross ab-
surdity of attempting to establish a positive conclusion from
a presumptive premise! The principle by which you at-
tempted to test the reformed faith, you now confess had no
other foundation than a " strong presumption." This, from
its very nature, admits of doubt; therefore is, in fact, no
TEST. In your " Observations," (p. 4) you say it is " a
question of the deepest importance," " a great question."
In the letter before me you say—" Truths of the highest im-
" portance require evidence peculiar to themselves," and you •
say truly ; but why, with this conviction upon your mind,
why did you produce only " strong presumptive evidence!!"
The highest and most convincing authority to be adduced,
as to the inconclusiveness of presumptive evidence, how
strong soever it may be, is the fact, that if either you or I
were arraigned for a capital offence, and the strongest ima-
ginable presumptive evidence adduced against us—upon our
proving a clear " alibi," we should be at once acquitted
without blemish and without stain.
The test by which you ought to have measured the reformed
faith is the SCRIPTURES ! Centuries before John Wickliff
or Martin Luther appeared, an unfortunate, a despised, and
a persecuted race of human beings suggested this as the test
by which they desired their faith to be tested by the emissa-
ries of your church. The latter chose the more silencing, if
not the more convincing, weapons of fire and sword, and the
Piedmontese Protestants, though " cast down," were not
" forsaken ;" they were destroyed, yet behold they live !
Prove (said they) that the doctrine of your church is the doc-
trine of the Scriptures, and we reiterate the request.
Nothing more than proof can be adduced, nothing less can
be admitted.
Again, you say—" I indeed acknowledged, that in case a
" man's arguments appeared conclusive to the generality of
" mankind, this circumstance," &c. Now, on turning to
your " Remarks," (p. 9), in order to discover what you
mean by " generality of mankind," I find you mean " any
" one nation," "all Englishmen;" but so long as the re-
formed faith is held by even a small majority, your test is
only presumption after all, therefore no test.
On this most important subject let me beg of you to climb
out of the Valley of Presumption, where every step you take
is in darkness, every breath uncertainty : besides, it is pain-
ful to see you struggle and contend " as one that beateth the
air." Do not content yourself with propounding " Non
" Sequiturs :" leave them in the valley.
I receive the information contained in the close of your
letter in the spirit you intended. You imagined it was needed
by me, and, as a Christian minister, it is as much your duty
" to be instant in season and out of season," as it is " to
" contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints;"
and that you may, ere long, be engaged in that bloodless
warfare, is the sincere desire of your obedient sep ry
TISTESant,
BA.
Liverpool, 2d February, 1812.