Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

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DR. BEATTIE'S OPINION OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

"The Christian Religion, according to my creed, is a very simple thing; intelligible to the meanest capacity, and what, if we are at pains to join practice to knowledge, we may make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with, without turning over many books. It is the distinguished excellence of this religion, that it is entirely popular and fitted, both in its doctrines and in its evidences, to all conditions and capacities of reasonable creatures—a character which does not belong to any other religious or philosophical system that ever appeared in the world. I wonder to see so many men eminent both for their piety and for their capacity, labouring to make a mystery of this divine institution. If God vouchsafes to reveal himself to mankind, can we suppose that he chooses to do it in such a manner as that none but the learned and contemplative can understand him—The generality of mankind can never, in any possible circumstances, have leisure or capacity for learning, as profound contemplation. If, therefore, we make Christianity a mystery, we exclude the greater part of mankind from the knowledge of it; which is directly contrary to the intention of its author, as is plain from his explicit and reiterated declarations. In a word, I am perfectly convinced that an intimate acquaintance with the SCRIPTURE, particularly the gospels, is all that is necessary to our accomplishment in true Christian knowledge. I have looked into some systems of Theology; but I never read one of them to an end, because I found I could never reap any instruction from them. To darken what is clear, by wrapping it up in the veil of system and science, was all the purpose that the best of them seemed to me to answer."

Letter to Sir Wm. Foster.