Let not weak-minded Christians who think truth not able to maintain its authority without legal enforcements, lament what they call licentious abuses of that liberty on which we are happy to congratulate ourselves: injudicious productions of the pen will always meet the treatment they deserve. Fallacious pretensions to reasoning cannot deceive mankind in these liberal times; nor can truth be obscured, when the attention of honest inquiries after it, is properly exerted. If the little historical sketch which follows, and which in fact, exhibits no more than what we have all daily read, without presuming to decide upon; if it really is that audacious calumny which many roundly affirm it to be; it will doubtless be considered as such: if, on the contrary, it contains undeniable matters of fact, fallaciousness will appear in the angry objections against it; and the writer trusts, the futility of such objections, have already been made sufficiently apparent.
The name of David has never been mentioned by divines but with the greatest respect, from the time in which he lived to the present day; and he is always quoted as an illustrious example of holiness! so illustrious, that the greatest instance of purity that ever existed on earth, was frequently saluted by way of eminence, in reference to him, _Son of David!_ so illustrious, that on the death of the late king of Great Britain, many sermons were preached and published, in which, parallels are drawn betwixt him and this standard of piety, in order to justify encomiums on the former, by declaring how nearly he resembled the latter.
In what manner David first acquired, and has ever since maintained, this extraordinary reputation, is not difficult to deduce, he was advanced, by an enraged prophet, from obscurity to the Hebrew throne; and taught by the fate of the unhappy monarch who was raised in the same manner, whom he supplanted, and whose family he crushed, he prudently attached himself to the cause of his patrons,* and they were the trumpeters of his fame. The same order of men, true to their common cause, have continued to sound the praise of this church-hero from generation to generation, unto the present time: in like manner the grand violator of the English constitution obtained the epithet of _holy Martyr_.