faith, this sure confidence, that fills a troubled mind with Divine consolation, and never be sensible of it.

Nor did the other reformers hold any other opinion, as you may see, Sir, by the following lines, englished from the xxth and xxiid Art. of the Confession of Faith drawn up by Calvin, Beza, &c. and still subscribed to by all the Protestant clergy in France and Holland.

"We believe that by faith alone we are born again, and made partakers of salvation, being enabled thereby to receive the promises of life made to us in Jesus Christ. We make them our own, and apply them by faith, in so much that we feel the effect of them." This is still more clearly expressed in the 14th Sect. of their Article of Faith printed with their Liturgy, part of which runs thus :

"As the blood of Christ is to purify us, so the Holy Ghost besprinkles our consciences therewith, that they may be effectually purified; for dwelling in our hearts, he makes us feel the power of our Lord Jesus Christ; he enlightens us, he seals and impresses his graces in our hearts, regenerates, and makes us new creatures," &c.

I own, Sir, that after these great Divines, I am no more ashamed to enforce faith in the Holy Ghost, the Author and Giver of life, and to say to my flock that he is to make them feel the power of Jesus Christ, and the virtue of his blood in their hearts, than I would be ashamed, were I a physician for the body, to tell them they must take a medicine inwardly, if the applying it outwardly would not do; and that would cause them some pain at the first operation, but only in order to cure them more radically.

Thus, Sir, I have endeavoured to prove, from the doctrine of our Church, from Reason and Scripture, from the testimony of the best men, and of all the reformed Churches, not only that feeling and rational Christianity are not incompatible, especially the feeling godly sorrow or trouble of mind, antecedent to justifying faith, and the feeling the comforts of the Holy Ghost, even peace, love, and joy in believing; but also that such feelings, so far from deserving to be called madness and enthusiasm, are nothing short of the actings of spiritual life, or, to speak scripturally," the power of God to every one that believeth," Rom. i. One more argument on this subject, and I shall conclude the whole.

If good-nature, affability, and morality, with a round of outward duties, will fit a man for heaven, without any feeling of the workings of the Spirit of God in the heart, or without peace, righteousness, and joy in the Holy Ghost: if such a professor of godliness is really in that narrow way to the kingdom which few

people find; why did our Lord puzzle honest Nicodemus with the strange doctrine of a new birth? Why was he so uncharitable as to declare, with the utmost solemnity, that he could not see the kingdom of God if he was not born again of the Spirit? Why did he trouble the religious Centurion with sending for Peter, that the Holy Ghost might fall upon him, and all that heard the word while the Apostle preached to them remission of sins, through faith in Jesus, a heart-purifying faith? See Acts xv. 8, 9.

But, above all, if inward feelings are nothing in sound religion; if they rather border upon enthusiasm; why did not our Lord caution the woman who came behind him in Simon's house, who wept at his feet, and kissed and wiped them with her hair? Why did he not take this opportunity to preach her and us a lecture on enthusiasm? Why did not he advise her to take something to help the weakness of her nerves, and prevent the ferment of her spirits? Why did not he tell her she went too far, she would run mad in the end? Why did not he bid her, (as people do in our days,) go into company a little, and divert her melancholy? Nay, more; why did he prefer her, with all her behaviour, to good-natured, virtuous, religious, undisturbed Simon? Why did he send her away with his peace, and the assurance of the forgiveness of her sins, while he did not vouchsafe to say to the composed Pharisee, "This day salvation is come to thy house?"

May I be allowed to tell the reason? Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If a man, therefore, is full of confidence in his own powers, and righteousness: if he supposes he is, or can make himself good enough outwardly, without those enthusiastic feelings of godly sorrow, pardon, peaee, and love in his heart, Jesus must leave him to his self-conceit and virtuous pride; for "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble."

However, do not mistake me, Sir; I am far from supposing that the sincerity of people's devotion must be judged of by the emotion they feel in their bodies, for the grace of God generally brings a great calm, and such a heavenly serenity into the soul, that it may even keep the body composed in a sudden danger. But as I read that God will have the heart or nothing, so I know that when he has the heart, he has the affections of course. Fear and hope, sorrow and joy, desire and love, act upon their proper objects, God's attributes. They often launch out, and, as it were, lose themselves in his immensity, and, at times, several of these passions acting together in the soul, the noble disorder they cause there cannot but affect the animal spirits, and communicate itself more or less to the body. Hence came the floods of tears shed by David, Jeremiah, Mary, Peter, Paul, &c.;

hence came the sighs, tears, strong cries, and groans unutterable, of our Saviour himself.

But, after all, Sir, if you exclaim only against bodily feelings and emotions, when the soul itself is past feeling; you cannot do it too much; it is either weakness, or hypocrisy intolerable; it must be thundered against. Therefore a just distinction is to be made between feelings excited in the body alone by self-exertion or mere natural pathos, and those bodily emotions that are necessary and involuntary consequences of the powerful workings of God's Spirit on the soul: the one are "sparks of our own kindling," which give neither heat nor light, and vanish as soon as perceived; the other are the natural effect of grace, which the soul cannot contain; and they are to grace, and the fire of Divine love, what smoke is to culinary fire: it proceeds from it, but adds nothing to it; yea, if a man lays any stress thereon, it will darken, and perhaps put out the flame.

You see, Sir, by this observation, that though I plead for spiritual feelings in devotion, and would not have even all bodily feelings resulting therefrom branded with the name of enthusiasm, yet I am as far as yourself from laying any stress upon bodily frames, merely as such; and I would as soon judge of the heat of a fire by the smoke that comes out of the chimney, as judge of grace by bodily emotions, conscious that there may be more of the one when there is less of the other; yea, that grace, peace, and love often overflow the soul within, when the animal spirits are most composed, and the nerves least at work without.

Upon the whole, Sir, I humbly presume that I may conclude from what I have taken the liberty to lay before you, that true Christians, as free from enthusiasm as Paul or David, may experience, at times, emotions in their animal spirits, attended with tears and sighs, especially when the cup of blessing or sorrow runs over with desire and love, or with fear and trouble; and, if they walk in the light of God's countenance, must enjoy, and consequently be sensible of, or fecl, in their inmost souls, through believing, "a peace that passes all understanding," such as the world knoweth not, "a joy," at times, "unspeakable," such as a stranger intermeddles not with.

This, and this alone, makes the service of God "perfect freedom," this takes away the guilt and the power of sin, disarms death of its sting, and the grave of its horrors.

This is the first fruit of that faith working by love, which gives confessors victory over the world, and martyrs power to clap their hands for joy on the racks and in the flames. It is the "spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father," the earnest of the Spirit: the earnest of our inheritance above.

If we take this inward principle from the heart of a believer, we take away the ingrafted word, the incorruptible seed, the

kingdom within, the bread and water of life, the little leaven, the pearl of great price, the hidden treasure, the wedding garment, the oil of the virgins, the hidden manna, the power of God to him that believes, the power of Christ's resurrection, the new creature, the new name which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it, the new birth, the wisdom from above, the blood of sprinkling, the life of God, &c. we take away, in short, "the faith of the operation of God," and, in a blind zeal for formal religion, we cry out against Jesus coming in the Spirit, as the Jews, in their blind zeal for the law, cried out against Jesus coming in the flesh, "Crucify him, crucify him;" and effectually, though ignorantly, crucify "Christ, in us the hope," the living hope "of glory.'

Thus Christianity degenerates into mere heathenish morality and good nature, drest up with Christian rites. All that is spiritual and experimental in our Bible and Liturgy must be, of course, enthusiastic stuff, or, at best, words without meaning. So that, after all, the only essential difference that will be found between us and just, sober, chaste, benevolent deists, will consist in repeating speculatively some creeds they do not assent to, in speaking for a book they run down, in using some religious ceremonies they think useless, and entertaining dry notions of one Jesus and his Spirit, whom they despise and reject; when, at the same time, we shall be equally strangers to that gospel "which is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth," to "the exceeding greatness of God's power towards those that believe, according to the working of his mighty power." Eph. i. 19. I have found it hard, Sir, to submit my carnal reason to the force of these and the like observations. I know, by experience, that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned :" I can therefore truly sympathize with those that stagger yet at that hard saying of St. Paul, 1 Cor. iii. 18, "Let no man deceive himself; if any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.-Where is the wise, where the scholar, where the disputer of this world? Has not not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For, when the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe-that believe so as to be born of God, (John v. 1 ;)-that believe so as to be filled with peace, hope, joy, and love, through the power of the Holy Ghost." Rom. xv. 13.

Let us, then, often meditate, Sir, upon such scriptures; they will, by the blessing of God, bring our hearts low, and make them willing, in spite of our reasonings, to submit to that faith which is the gift of God, to a soul distrest for sin, and to reap

and enjoy its fruits, a solid peace, a living hope, a burning love, and an unwearied obedience. For, till we are stript of our fig. leaves, till we have done boasting of our own powers, and the glorious remains of God's image, and trusting to self and reason, to pharisaical righteousness and forms of godliness, we cannot truly seek the power of it; and we must stumble at a thousand scriptures, as well as that famous saying of Luther, "Sicut sola fide in Christum veram justitiam ad salutem consequimur; ita nihil difficilius, quam hoc, hominibus persuadetur; nihil Satan (præsertim candidus ille Satan) æque oppugnat."

Thus have I, Sir, laid down with all plainness the observations I made upon your elegant discourse, as I understood it; I submit them to your candid judgment, and to your second thoughts, as well as to the word of God and the articles of our church. Should I have mistaken your meaning, Sir, in any part of these sheets, (which may easily have been the case,) I shall be exceeding glad to acknowledge it, and ask your pardon.

Should you have been mistaken, yourself, Sir, in some parts of your discourse, I beg you would not take amiss the liberty I have taken to lay before you the grounds of my fears on that account. I have not done it (God knows) out of desire to set myself up as a judge of any one of my brethren and fathers in the church; but I found myself in some measure forced to it by the following observations of some of my parishioners that were at Wenlock to hear you, Sir, besides the officers :

"If that gentleman is right," they concluded, "our minister must be quite wrong: he is always telling us of the darkness and blindness of our understandings in Divine things, the hardness of our hearts which we cannot force to repent and love, the unruliness of our will, which we cannot turn to true obedience: he concludes there is an absolute necessity for us to be born again, renewed in those faculties by the Spirit of God given unto us. But this gentleman talks of precious remains of God's image in our souls, and seems to be against this new birth. The one tells us we are fallen, that "God has concluded all under sin, that there is none good, no not one, that without Christ we can do nothing right, that there is no health in us, yea, he goes so far as to declare that of ourselves and by ourselves we have no goodness, help, or salvation; but contrariwise sin, damnation, and death everlasting." (Homily of the Misery of Man, 2d part.) The other affirms that we are fallen, yet we can help and raise ourselves: we have a free-will, and we may use it to do good works; and if, after all, we fall short in some things, the Spirit of Christ is to help our infirmity. Yea, we are not so blind and dark as some suppose, for we have the candle of the Lord shining in our breast, and that is, (not Christ, the light of the world, or the Word of God, that shines as a lamp in a dark place, but REASON_) "The one tells us that all the world being wrapt up in sin, by