perse cheap tracts on practical divinity, together with cheap bibles, and testaments. I have remarked, that many persons who would not be at the expence or trouble of purchasing books, will either dread themselves or make their children read to them, when books are put into their hands.

It is natural to add, that those who can do nos thing else for the cause of God, should shew, by their good examples, the influence of religion upon their life and conversation: this has often produced great effects upon scoffers. On the other hand, when infidels see that such as call themselves Christians can neglect the public worship of God, break the sabbath, be covetous or prodigal, proud and overbearing, or mean and undermining, drunkards or gluttons, defrauders and cheats, backbiters and Islanderers, swearers, liars, &c. they are ready to conclude that such persons do not believe in a day of judgment, when every one shall be dealt with according to the deeds done in the body.

The late pious Bishop Horne, in one of his ser

mons says, 66 some men considered as Christians,

engaged in the concerns of a better world, and a view of their conduct, is really sufficient to make a thinking unbeliever conclude, that nine parts in ten of them either believe no more than himself, or that a statute of lunacy should be forthwith taken out against them."

I know that freethinkers will divert and harden one another with accounts of the bad practices of such as pretend to believe in Christ: so that such as call theraselves Christians, and at the same time livein the open breach of God's laws, are strength

ening the cause of infidelity. Those, (saith Christ,) who are not with me are against me.

I am,

Sir,

Your's,

J. L."

Alveston, Feb. 16, 180S.

I will defer the remainder of what I wrote to

Mr. D. until my next.

I am,

Dear Friend,

Your's.

LETTER X.

Wildly-wavering rolls the dubious mind

From thought to thought, uncertain where its search
Should end.

Convinc'd by truth, the enlightened mind no more
Suspends its full assent.

DEAR FRIEND,

OGILVIE'S PROVIDENCE.

I WILL now give you my las

letter to Mr. D.

«Sir,

Yes, Sir, by the great mercy of God I am, (as you say,) returned to the study of my Bible. You may well be affected with my wonderful escape - from such a dreadful precipice, on the crumbling brink of which I long slept. For these last two-o

three years I have not even loved the sight of that part of my private library where the books stand which seduced me from the simplicity of the gospel. They have been to me Will o' the Wisps; and I have followed them through bog and quagmire, briars and thorns, until my poor benighted and bewildered mind was lost in such a labyrinth, that it was next to impossible for me ever to find my way out. As I suppose you will be glad to know how so great a deliverance was effected, I will give you a short account of it.

Notwithstanding the bad lives of some infidels of my acquaintance, as I continued to retain a regard odecency, honour and honesty, myself; and as a few freethinkers are studious, and, to appearance, moral characters, professing to believe in natural religion, while, on the other hand, I have remarked that some were guilty of gross enormities, who yet professed to believe the bible to be the word of God; I, for a long time, thought that infidels were as likely to be governed by virtuous principles as Christians were; the vicious lives of some pretenders to Christianity in some measure tended to confirm me in this erroneous conclusion. I was still more confirmed in this opinion by the plausible reasoning in some infidel writers, who, as you know, talk much about moral rectitude, the eternal rule of right, moral obligation, moral sense, &c. &c. Lord Shaftesbury goes very far on this head. He asserts that vice as much disorders the mind as disease does the body; which, no doubt, is true. He is also right in asserting, that virtue is moral beauty, and vice moral deformity. But his Lord

ship goes much farther; he, like an ancient sect of heretics, and many modern mystics, says a great deal about loving God and virtue purely for their own sakės, without any regard to future rewards and punishments; that to do good actions in hopes of being rewarded is mercenary; and that persons influenced by such motives are endeavouring to overreach the Deity, by purchasing eternal happiness with a short life of virtue. He insinuates that the old saints, who had respect to the recompence of reward, were cunning people, and only good from the fear of hell and the hope of heaven. How much is this like the Devil's objection? Job does not serve God for nought. In another place his Lordship asserts that there is no more rectitude, piety, or sanctity in a creature thus reformed, than there is meekness or gentleness in a tyger strongly chained, or innocence and sobriety in a monkey under the discipline of the whip.

If the rewards proposed to christians had been like those promised by Mahomet to his followers, ‹ sensual and voluptuous; his Lordship would have had some reason to object to their being proposed as incentives to virtue; but the idea given us in the New Testament of the happiness in a future state is noble and sublime. It is represented as

a state of consummate holiness, goodness, and 66. purity, where we shall arrive to the true perfec❝tion of our natures; a state into which nothing “shall enter that defileth; where the spirits "of the just are made perfect, and even their bo "dies shall be refined to a wonderful degree; "where they shall be associated to the glorious

general assembly of holy and happy souls, and "to the most excellent part of God's creation, "with whom they shall cultivate an eternal friend"ship and harmony; and, which is chiefly to be considered, when they shall be admitted to the immediate presence of the Deity, and shall be "transformed as far as they are capable of it, into "the divine likeness. Such is the happiness the "gospel setteth before us, and which furnisheth a motive fitted to work upon the worthiest "minds. And the being animated with the hopes "of such a reward hath nothing mean or mercen*ary in it, but rather is an argument of a great " and noble soul."

t

As to the fear of punishment, his Lordship, although inconsistently with what he in other places asserts, (in vol. ii. page 273 of his Characteristics,) says, that although fear is allowed to be ever so low or base; yet, religion being a discipline, and progress of the soul towards perfection, the mo"tive of the reward and punishment is primary, "and of the highest moment with us; till being capable of more sublime instructions, we are let "from this servile state, to the glorious service of "affection and love."

It may be also remarked, that after a wicked 5man has been roused by the terrors of the Lord, if he continue to obey the good motions of the Spirit, God then gives him a clean heart, and renews a right spirit within him. He then begins to love God, and fears to offend him, fears to be separated from him and his people for ever. The fear of