was evidently influenced by no religious motive and sought no religious end. He was very far from having any serious impressions of religion, or any sense of the importance and responsibility of the office he had undertaken. He was in truth an irreligious man, who had entered the christian ministry exclusively from selfish and ambitious motives and for worldly ends. This will be made more manifest as we proceed. In his new situation he devoted himself ardently to study, of which he was extravagantly fond, and pursued eagerly the path of distinction and honour. He went over a large range of study, with keen relish, instigated by the hope of future preferment. For the same reasons he was laborious in his preparation for preaching. 'Diligence seems to have been a sort of elementary ingredient in his character.' After a little more than two years thus spent, diligently as a scholar, unfaithfully as a minister, he was married to a lady whom he 'first met with at a christening, and won her money at cards.' He tells us, also in this connexion, 'when with a female servant we entered on a temporary dwelling of our own, immediately began family worship, though I had never lived in any family where it was practised, nor ever been present at such a service, except once, which was in the house of a dissenting minister.' Yet he had been ordained more than two years.

Shortly after this marriage he removed to the curacy of Ravenstone, the next village. It was here that he began to be roused from his deplorable state of impiety and irreligion, and that the change took place in his opinions and character, which has been so noised abroad in the world. From a vain, ambitious, hypocritical, worldly man, wearing the cloak of religion as a means of temporal advancement, professing a doctrine of which he knew nothing, while secretly he held a doctrine of which he knew as little, a man of study and speculation, but of neither faith nor piety; he came gradually under the power of religious principle, and grew up to a devout and exemplary Christian. We have no belief that the peculiarities of faith in which he settled are the peculiarities of christianity; but there is no doubt that he became a religious man, which he plainly was not before. It was the want of religious sentiment, not of right religious speculation, which had been his ruin; and it was the acquiring religious sentiment, and not a new opinion on speculative points, which saved him. Errors of opinion are of little consequence so long as they are accompanied by the great principles of moral action and religious truth which guide and govern the soul; while the purest faith is of no value if unaccompanied by these great affecting principles. While we hold there

fore that his speculations were far from correct, we yet think his change of character to have been most important and salutary. He was an unprincipled man, he became subject to principle; he had no settled or well grounded religious opinions, for he thought this a matter of no consequence, and was satisfied with a few prejudices; he became interested in inquiring, and adopted Calvinism. When bis conscience was awakened, and he was stung with remorse at his wickedness and folly, he naturally attributed his past insensibility to the want of a right faith; and as through the example and influence of Newton, he changed his whole system, practical and theoretical, at once, he supposed that to be owing to his new peculiarities of doctrine, which in fact was owing to the new influence of those fundamental and universal principles, which he never had suffered to exert their power over him before.

It is from his own narrative, as contained in the celebrated Force of Truth, that we derive all the knowledge we have on this subject. This narrative has been circulated with incredible industry, and has been thought to contain irrefragable proof that there is no religion except with the orthodox. Scott probably thought so himself; for men of ardent temperament readily ima gine it must be with every man as with themselves. They set up their own experience as the standard by which all others must stand or fall. He had himself been a hardened and hypocritical sinner while without orthodoxy; he charitably drew the inference that every other man without orthodoxy is so likewise; and published his own case to persuade the world of it. As this is the most important circumstance in his life, and his case is appealed to with triumphant confidence, we may be excused for taking this opportunity to venture a few remarks in regard to it.

The examination of his life and character as frankly unfolded by himself, will make it perfectly manifest, that he was an irreligious man, ignorant and prejudiced in his opinions, occasionally visited by compunctions of conscience, by opposing which he only made himself worse, but upon the whole given up to ambition and selfishness. Having incurred disgrace in his sixteenth year by dismission from his apprenticeship for ill conduct, he suffered long and severely under the displeasure of his father. The exasperation of mind which this produced drove him to bad company and bad courses. Yet still,' he says, 'I not only had seasons of remorse, but, strange to say, continued to entertain thoughts of the university and of the clerical profession!" And as soon as he found that his father would carry his revenge so far as to cut him off from all decent provision at his death, then, in bitterness and anger, he left his father's house, to undertake the

sacred office. Nothing could be more unfit for it, than his habits and state of mind. 'While I was preparing for the solemn office,' he says, 'I lived as before in known sin, and in utter neglect of prayer, my whole preparation consisting of nothing else than an attention to those studies which were more immediately requisite for reputably passing through the previous examination.'

Thus, with a heart full of pride and wickedness; my life polluted with many unrepented unforsaken sins; without one cry for mercy, one prayer for direction or assistance, or a blessing upon what I was about to do; after having concealed my real sentiments under the mask of general expressions; after having subscribed articles directly contrary to what I believed; and after having blasphemously declared, in the presence of God and of the congregation, in the most solemn manner, sealing it with the Lord's supper, that I judged myself to be "inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take that office upon me," (not knowing or believing that there was a Holy Ghost,) on September the 20th, 1772, I was ordained a Deacon."

6 My views, as far as I can ascertain them, were these three.- A desire of a less laborious and more comfortable way of procuring a livelihood, than otherwise I had the prospect of:-the expectation of more leisure to employ in reading, of which I was inordinately fond:-and a proud conceit of my abilities, with a vain-glorious imagination that I should some time distinguish and advance myself in the literary world. These were my ruling motives in taking this bold step: motives as opposite to those which should influence men to enter this sacred office, as pride is opposite to humility, ambition to contentment in a low estate, and a willingness to be the least of all and the servant of all; as opposite as love of self, of the world, of filthy lucre, and slothful ease, is to the love of God, of souls, and of the laborious work of the ministry.'

His whole conduct and habits during the first years of his ministy, corresponded with what is exhibited in these extracts.

No sooner was I fixed in a curacy, than with close application I sat down to the study of the learned languages, and such other subjects as I considered most needful in order to lay the foundation of my future advancement. As a minister, I attended just enough to the public duties of my station, to support a decent character, which I deemed subservient to my main design; and from the same principle I aimed at morality in my outward deportment, and affected seriousness in my conversation. As to the rest, I still lived in the practice of what I knew to be sinful, and in the entire neglect of all secret religion: if ever inclined to pray, conscious guilt stopped my mouth, and I seldom went further than "God be merciful unto me."i

No one, after reading this, can think it strange, that his conscience should sometimes clamorously reproach him with base

hypocrisy.' He was thoroughly wrong, and needed to be converted.

But the argument is, that all this was owing to religious errors of doctrine, and that nothing better can be expected from the Socinian creed he held. He himself threw the odium and sin upon his faith, and his friends have endeavoured to smother it under the reproach.

In order however to make this argument of any validity, it must be shown that worldliness and hypocrisy like this never have existed in connexion with an orthodox faith. For if they have, then it cannot be inferred from their existence in any instance, that they are owing to the influence of heterodox opinions. If insincerity of profession and immorality of life will not prove the Calvinism which they accompany to be false, neither will they of themselves prove Socinianism to be false. The argument therefore amounts to nothing, for it is equally conclusive in establishing contradictions.

Further; in order to warrant the use which has been made of it, it should incontrovertibly appear, that Scott's opinions were the cause of his religious looseness. If a sect is to be decried and its sentiments pronounced ruinous and pernicious, because it has unregenerate and infamous members, which is the denomination that could survive? Even Christianity itself must be discarded if this ground is taken. You must trace the immorality to its cause, and find that cause to be the opinion, before you have any right to condemn that opinion. But in the instance before us, so far were his Socinian principles, as he styles them, from being the cause of his irreligious habits, that the fact was directly the reverse. He tells us again and again that he adopted those opinions for the sake of favouring his sin, and because he found that his conscience would sleep under them. So far is it from the fact that his character was the consequence of his creed. It was formed and fixed before his creed was adopted.

It may be said, that this is the same thing in substance, since his opinions suffered him to remain in his sin. But certainly this is nothing to the purpose, because orthodox opinions have also permitted men to remain in sin. Besides, it is perfectly clear, that, properly speaking, his speculative opinions. whatever they were, neither occasioned, permitted, nor prevented his unworthiness. It was dependent on something entirely unconnected with them; and it began to give place, as we shall see presently, before his opinions had undergone any change. The refor mation of his character commenced before his doctrinal speculations had been in any degree disturbed. Besides-there might

be some pretence for laying the guilt upon his opinions, if these had been formed with care and deliberation, and if he had himself regarded them as sacred or important. But this was far from being the case; and the fair inference is that the irreligion of his life was owing to the same want of principle which led him to adopt a system of faith without examination, and adhere to it through mere prejudice. It is irrational to attribute effects to the form of his faith, when it is so clear that in adopting that form he exercised precisely the sin which it is said to produce. He appears to have had no thought of choosing a system for its truth, and only considered whether it would suffer his conscience to be at peace. He took it from a single book, and fashioned it to the wishes of a depraved heart.

'I met with a Socinian comment on the Scriptures, and greedily drank the poison, because it quieted my fears and flattered my abominable pride. The whole system coincided exactly with my inclinations and the state of my mind. In reading this exposition, sin seemed to lose its native ugliness, and to appear a very small and tolerable evil; man's imperfect obedience seemed to shine with an excellency almost divine; and God appeared so entirely and necessarily merciful, that he could not make any of his creatures miserable without contradicting his natural propensity.'

He ought to have informed us what book this was, since it was the oracle of his faith. We never have met with one which answers the description. It may serve the turn of those who would keep up the cry against an unpopular and growing heresy ; but a fair-minded man will hardly condemn a sect on account of a book which Scott read fifty years ago, the title of which he has not told us and nobody knows, and which seems to have long since perished, probably because it was so worthless and bad. That man's principles must be past the danger of corruption, who could adopt such a system without examination, and imagine it to be the doctrines of the New Testament.

'To these latter sentiments I acceded, and maintained them as long as I could; and I did it, most assuredly, because they soothed my conscience, freed me from the intolerable fears of damnation, and enabled me to think favourably of myself. For these reasons alone I loved and chose this ground: I fixed myself upon it, and there fortified myself by all the arguments and reasonings I could meet with. These things I wished to believe; and I had my wish; for at length I did most confidently believe them. Being taken captive in this snare by Satan, I should here have perished with a lie in my right hand, had not that Lord, whom I dishonoured, snatched me as a brand from the burning.'

It is to be remembered, in the mean time, that his 'studies lay New Series-vol. IV.

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