ster of its own purification: not surely in proof or elucidation of the light from heaven, but to prevent its interception.

"Wherever, therefore, similar circumstances co-exist with the same moral causes, the principles revealed, and the examples recorded, in the inspired writings render miracles superfluous: and if we neglect to apply truths in expectation of wonders, or under pretext of the cessation of the latter, we tempt God and merit the same reply which our Lord gave to the Pharisees on a like occasion."

In the sermon and the notes both the historical truth and the necessity of the miracles are strongly and frequently asserted. "The testimony of books of history (i. e. relatively to the signs and wonders, with which Christ came) is one of the strong and stately pillars of the church; but it is not the foundation!" Instead, therefore, of defending myself, which I could easily effect by a series of passages, expressing the same opinion, from the Fathers and the most eminent Protestant Divines, from the Reformation to the Revolution, I shall merely state what my belief is, concerning the true evidences of Christianity. 1. Its consistency with right Reason, I consider as the outer Court of the Temple-the common area, within which it stands. 2. The miracles, with and through which the Religion was first revealed and at

tested, I regard as the steps, the vestibule, and the portal of the Temple. 3. The sense, the inward feeling, in the soul of each Believer of its exceeding desirableness-the experience, that he needs something, joined with the strong Foretokening, that the Redemption and the Graces propounded to us in Christ are what he needs— this I hold to be the true FOUNDATION of the

spiritual Edifice. With the strong a priori probability that flows in from 1 and 3 on the correspondent historical evidence of 2, no man can refuse or neglect to make the experiment without guilt. But, 4, it is the experience derived from a practical conformity to the conditions of the Gospel-it is the opening Eye; the dawning Light; the terrors and the promises of spiritual Growth; the blessedness of loving God as God, the nascent sense of Sin hated as Sin, and of the incapability of attaining to either without Christ; it is the sorrow that still rises up from beneath and the consolation that meets it from above; the bosom treacheries of the Principal in the warfare and the exceeding faithfulness and long-suffering of the uninterested Ally ;-in a word, it is the actual Trial of the Faith in Christ, with its accompaniments and results, that must form the arched Roof, and the Faith itself is the completing KEY-STONE. In order to an efficient belief in Christianity, a man must have been a

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Christian, and this is the seeming argumentum in circulo, incident to all spiritual Truths, to every subject not presentable under the forms of Time and Space, as long as we attempt to master by the reflex acts of the Understanding what we can only know by the act of becoming. "Do the will of my father, and ye shall KNOW whether I ame

believe to have for the whole

These four evidences I 3il to be, for the world, ei, all necessary, all equally necessary; but that at present, and for the majority of Christians born in christian countries, I believe the third and the fourth evidences to be the most operative, not as superseding but as involving a glad undoubting faith in the two former. Credidi, ideóque intellexi, appears to `me the dictate equally of Philosophy and Religion, even as I believe Redemption to be the antecedent of Sanctification, and not its consequent. All spiritual predicates may be construed indifferently as modes of Action or as states of Being. Thus Holiness and Blessedness are the same idea, now seen in relation to act and now to existence. The ready belief which has been yielded to the slander of my "potential infidelity," I attribute in part to the openness with which I have avowed my doubts, whether the heavy interdict, under which the name of BENEDICT SPINOZA lies, is merited on the whole

pas

or to the whole extent. Be this as it may, I wish, however, that I could find in the books of philosophy, theoretical or moral, which are alone recommended to the present students of Theology in our established schools, a few sages as thoroughly Pauline, as compleatly accordant with the doctrine the established Church, as the following cluding page of Spin mens amore divino seu beau eó plus intelligit, eó majorem 1. affectus habet potentiam, et eó minus ab affectibus, qui mali sunt, patitur: atque adeò ex eo, quód mens hoc amore divino seu beatitudine gaudet, potestatem habet libidines coercendi, nemo beatitudine gaudet quia affectus coercuit; sed contra potestas libidines coercendi ex ipsâ beatitudine oritur.

es in the conc. Deinde quó magis gaudet,

With regard to the Unitarians, it has been shamelessly asserted, that I have denied them to be Christians. God forbid! For how should I know, what the piety of the Heart may be, or what Quantum of Error in the Understanding may consist with a saving Faith in the intentions and actual dispositions of the whole moral Being in any one Individual? Never will God reject a soul that sincerely loves him: be his speculative opinions what they may: and whether in any given instance certain opinions, be they Unbelief, or Misbelief, are compatible with UU 2

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a sincere Love of God, God only can know.But this I have said, and shall continue to say: that if the Doctrines, the sum of which I believe to constitute the Truth in Christ, be Christianity, then Unitarianism is not, and vice versâ: and that in speaking theologically and impersonally, i. e. of PSILANTHROPISM and THEANTHROPISм as schemes of Belief, without referrence to Individuals who profess either the one or the other, it will be absurd use a different language as long as it is thta nitate of common sense, that two opposites, cannot properly be called by the same name. I should feel no offence if a Unitarian applied the same to me, any more than if he were to say, that 2 and 2 being 4, 4 and 4 must be 8.

Αλλα βροτων

Τον μεν κενοφρονες αυχαι

Εξ αγαθών εβαλον.

Τον δ' αν καταμεμφθεντ' αγαν

Ισχυν οικείων κατεσφαλεν καλων,

Χειρος ελκων οπίσσω, Θυμος ατολμος.

PINDAR. Nem. Ode xi.

This has been my Object, and this alone can be my Defence and O! that with this my personal as well as my LITERARY LIFE might conclude! the unquenched desire I mean, not without the consciousness of having earnestly endeavoured to kindle young minds, and to guard