only the account is so; but as for any sensible demonstrations of its workings to be felt as such within us, the word of God is utterly silent; nor can that silence be supplied by any experience. We have none, unless you call the false pretences to it such, suggested by an enthusiastic or distempered fancy. Expressly as we are told and pray for the inspiration of God's Spirit, there are no boundaries fixed, nor can any be ever marked, to distinguish them from the efforts and determinations of our own reason; and, firmly as most Christians believe the effects of them upon their hearts, I may venture to affirm that, since the promises were made, there never was a Christian of a cool head and sound judgment that, in any instance of a change of life, would presume to say which part of his reformation was owing to divine help, or which to the operations of his own mind; or who, upon looking back, would pretend to strike the line, and say, 'Here it was that my own reflections ended, and at this point the suggestions of the Spirit of God began to take place.'

However backward the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as God never meant us to know, we have been more successful in our own days. Thousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings as to require no evidence of its truth.

It must be owned that the present age has not altogether the honour of this discovery. There were too many grounds given to improve on in the religious cant of the last century, when the in-comings, in-dwellings, and outlettings of the Spirit were the subjects of so much edification; and when, as they do now, the most illiterate mechanics, who, as a witty divine said of them, were much fitter to make a pulpit than to get into one, were yet able so to frame their nonsense to the nonsense of the times as to beget an opinion in their followers, not only that they prayed and preached by inspiration, but that the most common actions of their lives were set about in the Spirit of the Lord.

The tenets of the Quakers (a harmless quiet people) are collateral descendants from the same enthusiastic original; and their accounts and way of reasoning upon their inward light and spiritual worship are much the same,-which last they carry thus much further, as to believe the Holy Ghost comes down upon their assemblies, and moves them, without regard to condition or sex, to make intercessions with unutterable groans.

So that, in fact, the opinions of Methodists, upon which I was first entering, are but a republication, with some alterations, of the same extravagant conceits; and, as enthusiasm gene

rally speaks the same language in all ages, 'tis but too sadly verified in this; for though we have not yet got to the old terms of the incomings and in-dwellings of the Spirit, yet we have arrived at the first feelings of its entrance, recorded with as particular an exactness as an act of filiation,-so that numbers will tell you the identical place, the day of the month, and the hour of the night when the Spirit came in upon them, and took possession of their hearts.

Now there is this inconvenience on our side, that there is no arguing with a phrenzy of this kind; for, unless a representation of the case be a confutation of its folly to them, they must for ever be led captive by a delusion, from which no reasoner can redeem them; for if you should inquire upon what evidence so strange a persuasion is grounded, they will tell you, 'They feel it is so.' If you reply that this is no conviction to you, who do not feel it like them, and therefore would wish to be satisfied by what tokens they are able to distinguish such emotions from those of fancy and complexion,-they will answer that the manner of it is incommunicable by human language, but 'tis a matter of fact; they feel its operations as plainly and distinctly as the natural sensations of pleasure, or the pains of a disordered body. And, since I have mentioned a disordered body, I cannot help suggesting that, amongst the more serious and deluded of this sect, 'tis much to be doubted whether a disordered body has not ofttimes as great a share in letting in these conceits as a disordered mind.

When a poor disconsolated drooping creature is terrified from all enjoyment,-prays without ceasing, till his imagination is heated,—fasts, and mortifies, and mopes, till his body is in as bad a plight as his mind,-is it a wonder that the mechanical disturbances and conflicts of an empty belly, interpreted by an empty head, should be mistook for workings of a different kind from what they are? Or that, in such a situation, where the mind sits upon the watch for extraordinary occurrences, and the imagination is pre-engaged on its side, is it strange if every commotion should help to fix him in this malady, and make him a fitter subject for the treatment of a physician than a divine?

In many cases, they seem so much above the skill of either, that unless God in his mercy rebuke this lying spirit, and call it back, it may go on and persuade millions into their destruction.

XXVI.-ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE WORLD.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.'ROMANS 1. 22.

THERE is no one project to which the whole race of mankind is so universally a bubble as to

that of being thought wise; and the affectation of it is so visible in men of all complexions, that you every day see some one or other so very solicitous to establish the character as not to allow himself leisure to do the things which fairly win it ; expending more art and stratagem to appear so in the eyes of the world than would suffice to make him so in truth.

It is owing to the force of this desire that you see in general there is no injury touches a man so sensibly as an insult upon his parts and capacity. Tell a man of other defects, that he wants learning, industry, or application, he will hear your reproof with patience. Nay, you may go further take him in a proper season, you may tax his morals; you may tell him he is irregular in his conduct, passionate or revengeful in his nature, loose in his principles: deliver it with the gentleness of a friend, possibly he'll not only bear with you, but, if ingenuous, he will thank you for your lecture, and promise a reformation; but hint-hint but at a defect in his intellectuals, touch but that sore place, from that moment you are looked upon as an enemy sent to torment him before his time, and in return may reckon upon his resentment and ill-will for ever; so that in general you will find it safer to tell a man he is a knave than a fool, and stand a better chance of being forgiven for proving he has been wanting in a point of common honesty, than in a point of

common sense.

Strange souls that we are! as if to live well was not the greatest argument of Wisdom; and as if what reflected upon our morals did not most of all reflect upon our understand ings!

This, however, is a reflection we make a shift to overlook in the heat of this pursuit; and, though we all covet this great character of Wisdom, there is scarce any point wherein we betray more folly than in our judgments concerning it; rarely bringing this precious ore either to the test or the balance; and, though 'tis of the last consequence not to be deceived in it, we generally take it upon trust,-seldom suspect the quality, but never the quantity, of what has fallen to our lot. So that however inconsistent a man shall be in his opinions of this, and what absurd measures soever he takes in consequence of it, in the conduct of his life, he still speaks comfort to his soul; and like Solomon, when he had least pretence for it, in the midst of his nonsense will cry out and say, 'That all my wisdom remaineth with me.' Where then is wisdom to be found? and where is the place of understanding?

The politicians of this world, 'professing themselves wise,' admit of no other claims of wisdom but the knowledge of men and business, the understanding of the interests of states, the intrigues of courts, the finding out of the passions and weaknesses of foreign ministers, and

turning them and all events to their country's glory and advantage.

Not so the little man of this world, who thinks the main point of wisdom is to take care of himself; to be wise in his generation; to make use of the opportunity, whilst he has it, of raising a fortune, and heraldizing a name. Far wide is the speculative and studious man (whose office is in the clouds) from such little ideas. Wisdom dwells with him in finding out the secrets of nature; sounding the depths of arts and sciences; measuring the heavens ; telling the number of the stars, and calling them all by their names: so that when in our busy imaginations we have built and unbuilt again God's stories in the heavens,' and fancy we have found out the point whereon to fix the foundations of the earth, and, in the language of the book of Job, 'have searched out the corner-stone thereof,' we think our titles to wisdom built upon the same basis with those of our knowledge, and that they will continue for ever.

The mistake of these pretenders is shown at¦ large by the Apostle, in the chapter from which the text is taken-‘Professing themselves wise' -in which expression (by the way) St. Paul is thought to allude to the vanity of the Greeks and Romans, who, being great encouragers of arts and learning, which they had carried to extraordinary heights, considered all other nations as barbarians, in respect of themselves; and amongst whom, particularly the Greeks, the men of study and inquiry had assumed to themselves, with great indecorum, the title of the Wise Men.

With what parade and ostentation soever this was made out, it had the fate to be attended with one of the most mortifying abatements which could happen to Wisdom; and that was an ignorance of those points which most concerned man to know.

This he shows from the general state of the Gentile world, in the great article of their misconceptions of the Deity, and, as wrong notions produce wrong actions, of the duties and services they owed to him, and, in course, of what they owed to one another.

For though, as he argues in the foregoing verses, the invisible things of him from the creation of the world might be clearly seen and understood, by the things that are made,'—that is, though God, by the clearest discovery of himself, had ever laid before mankind such evident proofs of his eternal Being, his infinite powers and perfections, so that what is to be known of his invisible nature might all along be traced by the marks of his goodness, and the visible frame and order of the world,-yet so utterly were they without excuse, that though they knew God, and saw his image and superscription in every part of his works, yet they glorified him not.' So bad a use did they make

of the powers given them for this great discovery, that, instead of adoring the Being thus manifested to them in purity and truth, they fell into the most gross and absurd delusions, 'changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible men, to birds, to four-footed beasts and creeping things. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.' All their specious wisdom was but a more glittering kind of ignorance, and ended in the most dishonourable of all mistakes, in setting up fictitious gods, to receive the tribute of their adoration and thanks.

The fountain of religion being thus poisoned, no wonder the stream showed its effects, which are charged upon them in the following words, where he describes the heathen world as full of all unrighteousness,' fornication, covetousness, maliciousness, full of murder, envy, debate, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. God in heaven defend us from such a catalogue!

But these disorders, if fairly considered, you'll say, have in no age arisen so much from want of light as a want of disposition to follow the light which God has ever imparted; that the law written in their hearts was clear and express enough for any reasonable creatures, and would have directed them, had they not suffered their passions more forcibly to direct them otherwise; that, if we are to judge from this effect, namely, the corruption of the world, the same prejudice will recur, even against the Christian religion, since mankind have at least been as wicked in later days as in the more remote and simple ages of the world; and that, if we may trust to facts, there are no vices which the Apostle fixes upon the heathen world, before the preaching of the gospel, which may not be paralleled by as black a catalogue of vices in the Christian world since.

This necessarily brings us to an inquiry, Whether Christianity has done the world any service? And, how far the morals of it have been made better since this system has been embraced?

In litigating this, one might oppose facts to facts to the end of the world, without coming one jot nearer to the point. Let us see how far their mistakes concerning the Deity will throw light upon the subject.

That there was one Supreme Being who made this world, and who ought to be worshipped by his creatures, is the foundation of all religion, and so obvious a truth in nature, that Reason, as the Apostle acknowledges, was always able to discover it; and yet it seems strange that the same faculty which made the discovery should be so little able to keep true to its own judgment, and support it long against the pre

judices of wrong heads, and the propensity of weak ones towards idolatry and a multiplicity of gods.

For want of something to have gone hand in hand with reason, and fixed the persuasion for ever upon their minds that there was in truth but one God, the maker and supporter of heaven and earth, infinite in wisdom, and knowledge, and all perfections,-how soon was this simple idea lost, and mankind led to dispose of these attributes inherent in the Godhead, and divide and subdivide them again amongst deities which their own dreams had given substance to: his eternal power and dominion parcelled out to gods of the land, to gods of the sea, to gods of the infernal regions; whilst the great God of gods, and Lord of lords, who ruleth over all the kingdoms of the world, who is so great that nought is able to control or withstand his power, was supposed to rest contented with his allotment, and to want power to act within such parts of his empire as they dismembered and assigned to others!

If the number of their gods, and this partition of their power, would lessen the idea of their majesty, what must be the opinions of their origin, when, instead of that glorious description which Scripture gives of the Ancient of Days who inhabiteth eternity,' they gravely assigned particular times and places for the births and education of their gods; so that there was scarce a hamlet, or even a desert, in Greece or Italy, which was not rendered memorable by some favour or accident of this kind?

And, what rendered such conceits the more gross and absurd, they supposed not only that the gods they worshipped had a beginning, but that they were produced by fleshly parents, and accordingly they attributed to them corporeal shapes and difference of sex; and, indeed, in this they were a little consistent, for their deities seemed to partake so much of the frailties to which flesh and blood is subject that their history and their pedigree were much of a piece, and might reasonably claim each other. For they imputed to them not only the human defects of ignorance, want, fear, and the like, but the most unmanly sensualities, and what would be a reproach to human nature, such as cruelty, adulteries, rapes, incest; and even the accounts which we have from the sublimest of their poets, what are they but the anecdotes of their squabbles amongst themselves, their intrigues, their jealousies, their ungovernable transports of choler, nay, even their thefts, their drunkenness, and bloodshed?

Here let us stop a moment, and inquire what was Reason doing all this time, to be so miserably insulted and abused? Where held she her empire, whilst her bulwarks were thus borne down, and her first principles of religion and truth lay buried under them? If she was able by herself to regain the power she had lost, and

put a stop to this folly and confusion, why did she not? If she was not able to resist this torrent alone, the point is given up; she wanted aid, and Revelation has given it.

But though Reason, you'll say, could not overthrow these popular mistakes, yet it saw the folly of them, and was at all times able to disprove them.

No doubt it was; and it is certain, too, that the more diligent inquirers after truth did not in fact fall into these absurd notions, which, by the way, is an observation more to our purpose than theirs who usually make it, and shows that, though their reasonings were good, there always wanted something which they could not supply to give them such weight as would lay an obligation upon mankind to embrace them, and make that to be a law which otherwise was but an opinion without force.

Besides, which is a more direct answer, though 'tis true the ablest men gave no credit to the multiplicity of gods (for they had a religion for themselves, and another for the populace), yet they were guilty of what in effect was equally bad, in holding an opinion which necessarily supported these very mistakes, namely, that as different nations had different gods, it was every man's duty (I suppose more for quietness than principle's sake) to worship the gods of his country, which, by the way, considering their numbers, was not so easy a task; for, what with celestial gods, and gods aërial, terrestrial, and infernal, with the goddesses, their wives and mistresses, upon the lowest computation, the heathen world acknowledged no less than thirty thousand deities, all which claimed the rites and ceremonies of religious worship.

But 'twill be said, allowing the bulk of mankind were under such delusions, they were still but speculative. What was that to their practice? However defective in their theology and more abstracted points, their morality was no way connected with it. There is no need that the everlasting laws of justice and mercy should be fetched down from above, since they can be proved from more obvious mediums: they were as necessary for the same good purposes of society then as now; and we may presume they saw their interest, and pursued it.

That the necessities of society, and the impossibilities of its subsisting otherwise, would point out the convenience, or, if you will, the duty of social virtues, is unquestionable; but I firmly deny that therefore religion and morality are independent of each other: they appear so far from it, that I cannot conceive how the one, in the true and meritorious sense of the duty, can act without the influence of the other. Surely the most exalted motive which can only be depended upon for the uniform practice of virtue must come down from above-from the love and imitation of that Being in whose sight

we wish to render ourselves acceptable: this will operate at all times and all places, in the darkest closet as much as on the greatest and most public theatres of the world.

But with different conceptions of the Deity, or such impure ones as they entertained, is it to be doubted whether, in the many secret trials of our virtue, we should not determine our cases of conscience with much the same kind of casuistry as that of the Libertine in Terence, who, being engaged in a very unjustifiable pursuit, and happening to see a picture which represented a known story of Jupiter in a like transaction, argued the matter thus within himself: If the great Jupiter could not restrain his appetites, and deny himself an indulgence of this kind-ego, Homuncio, hoc non facerem?— shall I, a mortal, an inconsiderable mortal too, clothed with infirmities of flesh and blood, pretend to a virtue which the father of gods and men could not? What insolence!

The conclusion was natural enough; and as so great a master of nature puts it into the mouth of one of his principal characters, no doubt the language was then understood: it was copied from common life, and was not the first application which had been made of the story.

It will scarce admit of a question whether vice would not naturally grow bold upon the credit of such an example, or whether such impressions did not influence the lives and morals of many in the heathen world; and had there been no other proof of it but the natural tendency of such notions to corrupt them, it had been sufficient reason to believe it was so.

No doubt there is sufficient room for amendment in the Christian world, and we may be said to be a very corrupt and bad generation of men, considering what motives we have from the purity of our religion, and the force of its sanctions, to make us better: yet, still I affirm that, if these restraints were taken off, the world would be infinitely worse; and though some sense of morality might be preserved, as it was in the heathen world, with the more considerate of us, yet, in general, I am persuaded that the bulk of mankind, upon such a supposition, would soon come to live without God in the world,' and in a short time differ from Indians themselves in little else but their complexions.

If, after all, the Christian religion has not left a sufficient provision against the wickedness of the world, the short and true answer is this, that there can be none.

It is sufficient to leave us without excuse, that the excellency of this institution, in its doctrine, its precepts, and its examples, has a proper tendency to make us a virtuous and a happy people: every page is an address to our hearts to win them to these purposes; but as religion was not intended to work upon men by force and natural necessity, but by moral persuasion, which sets good and evil before them,

so, if men have power to do the evil and choose the good, and will abuse it, this cannot be avoided. Religion ever implies a freedom of choice, and all the beings in the world which have it were created free to stand and free to fall; and therefore men who will not be persuaded by this way of address must expect, and be contented, to be reckoned with according to the talents they have received.

XXVII.—THE ABUSES OF CONSCIENCE CONSIDERED.

For we trust we have a good conscience.-HEBREWS XIII. 18.

TRUST!-Trust we have a good conscience! Surely, you will say, if there is anything in this life which a man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is capable of arriving upon the most indisputable evidence, it must be this very thing, whether he has a good conscience or no.

If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to the true state of this account: he must be privy to his own thoughts and desires; he must remember his past pursuits, and know certainly the true springs and motives which, in general, have governed the actions of his life.

In other matters we may be deceived by false appearances; and, as the wise man complains, Hardly do we guess aright at the things that are upon the earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us;-but here the mind has all the evidence and facts within herself is conscious of the web she has wove-knows its texture and fineness, and the exact share which every passion has had in working upon the several designs which virtue or vice has planned before her.

Now, as conscience is nothing else but the knowledge which the mind has within itself of this, and the judgment either of approbation or censure which it unavoidably makes upon the successive actions of our lives, 'tis plain, you will say, from the very terms of the proposition, whenever this inward testimony goes against a man, and he stands self-accused, that he must necessarily be a guilty man. And, on the contrary, when the report is favourable on his side, and his heart condemns him not, that it is not a matter of trust, as the Apostle intimates, but a matter of certainty and fact, that the " science is good,' and that the man must be good also.

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At first sight this may seem to be the true state of the case; and I make no doubt but the knowledge of right and wrong is so truly impressed upon the mind of man, that, did no such thing ever happen as that the conscience of a man, by long habits of sin, might (as the Scripture assures us it may) insensibly become hard, and, like some tender part of his body, by much stress and continual hard usage, lose by degrees

that nice sense and perception with which God and nature endowed it,-did this never happen, or was it certain that self-love could never hang the least bias upon the judgment, or that the little interests below could rise up and perplex the faculties of our upper regions, and encompass them about with clouds and thick darkness; could no such thing as Favour and Affection enter this sacred court; did Wit disdain to take a bribe in it, or was ashamed to show its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoyment; or, lastly, were we assured that Interest stood always unconcerned whilst the cause was hearing, and that Passion never got into the judgment-seat, and pronounced sentence in the stead of Reason, which is supposed always to preside and determine upon the case ;-was this truly so, as the objection must suppose, no doubt, then, the religious and moral state of a man would be exactly what he himself esteemed it; and the guilt or innocence of every man's life could be known, in general, by no better measure than the degrees of his own approbation or censure.

I own, in one case, whenever a man's conscience does accuse him (as it seldom errs on that side), that he is guilty; and, unless in melancholy and hypochondriac cases, we may safely pronounce that there are always sufficient grounds for the accusation.

But the converse of the proposition will not hold true, namely, that wherever there is guilt, the conscience must accuse; and if it does not, that a man is therefore innocent. This is not fact: so that the common consolation which some good Christian or other is hourly administering to himself-that he thanks God his mind does not misgive him; and that, consequently, he has a good conscience because he has a quiet one, current as the inference is, and infallible as the rule appears at first sight, yet when you look nearer to it, and try the truth of this rule upon plain facts, you find it liable to so much error, from a false application of it,-the principle on which it goes so often perverted,―the whole force of it lost, and sometimes so vilely cast away, that it is painful to produce the common examples from human life which confirm this account.

A man shall be vicious and utterly debauched in his principles; exceptionable in his conduct to the world: shall live shameless, in the open commission of a sin which no reason or pretence can justify,-a sin by which, contrary to all the workings of humanity within, he shall ruin for ever the deluded partner of his guilt, rob her of her best dowry, and not only cover her own head with dishonour, but involve a whole virtuous family in shame and sorrow for her cake. Surely, you'll think, conscience must lead such a man a troublesome life: he can have no rest night or day from its reproaches.

Alas! Conscience had something else to do all