*

in the economy of redemption. Where this personal attachment does not take place, and abide, the professor may very justly question, whether his faith be of the right sort, or rather, whether he has any faith at all deserving that name. This may serve to detect many prevalent errors of the day, which lead men, not to Christ firmly and entirely, but to their own works and wisdom for the attainment of salvation. How barren, and how dry, are the hearts of such men! How little of gracious effect or knowledge results from those, who give themselves up to these delusions! Love only can animate, elevate, and sweeten duty. Duty without love becomes barren, if attempted, and commonly a burden. See the lives of men, who act upon the plan of recommending themselves to the divine favour by what they can do of themselves; and they will generally be found, either deeply tinctured with a gloomy moroseness, sufficient to impress others with dismal apprehensions of the nature of religion, or with a mixture of pastimes and amusements, in the full spirit of the world, with which true religion ever was and ever will be found, as incompatible as the worship of God and Mammon.

FOR THE CHRISTIAN'S MAGAZINE.

A Letter of the late Rev. JOHN NEWTON, never before printed.

[THE Editors publish the following letter of the venerable and eminently pious JOHN NEWTON, with peculiar pleasure. They hope to be furnished with more of his letters, by the friend who has

I

kindly put this in their hands. He was a correspondent of Mr. Newton, and personally knew him.]

My Dear Sir,

think I have already prepared you not to expect long apologies, even for too long silence. I love you dearly, prize your correspondence, and am sorry I cannot write more frequently. Let this suffice. It gives me real pleasure, that I can now sit down to write to you. I should have been glad of the indulgence months ago.

If we

I believe the best method of answering your last favour, will be to write notes upon the several paragraphs as they occur in course, though perhaps in this interval, you have forgotten the particulars, and may have here and there some difficulty to recollect the references. I could write a long note indeed upon what I first met with--your very great mistake in considering me as a very great man. could have a personal interview, I think you would presently be undeceived. Your mistake, however, has done me good. A whole quire of invective from an enemy could hardly have given me so keen a sense of shame. The Scripture assures us, that our hearts by nature, (like a coin from the same mint,) are all alike, and I hear my fellow-Christians complain of evils similar to what I feel, and they have the same right with myself to be believed. Otherwise, I seem to have reason to conclude, there cannot be one upon earth, who knows the Lord, so inconsistent, so evil, as myself.

There is, indeed, a large, (and as I have been ready to think with you,) sometimes a needless display of erudition in some of Owen's works, but it is chiefly when he has the Socinian con

troversy in view. The Socinians of his day were not such superficial, flimsy writers, as their modern disciples, but men versed in all the branches of learning, the minutiae of criticism, and the subtleties of logic or sophistry. He undertook to ferret them out of all their lurking-places; he was well qualified for it, and succeeded, I believe this was the principal reason of his method in his Commentary on the Hebrews, and some other of his works. But I cannot charge him with pedantry. And he seems always to have aimed at the edification of plain people, intermixing something savoury and experimental, in the midst of his arguments. Allowance, likewise, must be made for the manner of the times in which he lived. In point of arrangement, and neatness, and avoiding superfluities, our age is certainly improved, but I believe we are rather losers by what is called our good taste; for writers now are mere essayists, and fall, in general, far short of the depth, accuracy, and fulness of such men as Owen, in searching a subject to the bottom.

I thought I had given you my opinion of Halyburton on Natural Religion, &c. Ithink it a masterpiece; one of the most able performances I ever met with; but I suppose is most read by those who stand least in need of it. If there be such a thing as an honest inquiring deist, I should judge he could hardly avoid receiving conviction from an attentive perusal of that book. But I am afraid there are very few who wish to be undeceived, and therefore, few who will read it attentively.

What you say of Gurnal, reminds me to put another book in your way, (I think the author was a countryman of yours*,) Gilpin on Temptation. Į think the perusal of it would throw light upon some of your inquiries. I have only room for a few brief hints.

He was a native of Cumberland, England.

They that go down to the sea in ships, and do their business in great waters, experience hardships, and likewise see wonders which people who live on shore have no idea of. Many of the Lord's people are comparatively landmen, others are mariners, and are called to conflict, a great part of their lives, with storms and raging billows. I believe, much of the variety of this kind is constitutional. We are at a loss to conceive of the invisible world, and the invisible agents belonging to it; but we live in the midst of them. But it seems to me, that people of very delicate nerves, and those who are subject to what we call low spirits, are more accessible to this invisible agency than others. I am but a landman myself, and know just enough of some of Satan's devices to qualify me to lisp about them. And I account it a mercy, that the Lord, in compassion to my weakness, has encouraged me to pray, "Lead us not into temptation." Satan's power, I apprehend, is chiefly upon the imagination. His temptations may be considered under two heads, the terrible, and the plausible. By the former, he fights against our peace; by the latter, he endeavours to ensnare us in our judgment or conduct. The former are the most distressing; the latter, not the least dangerous. The former are often the lot of humble, tender-conscienced Christians; in the latter he has most success, when we are careless and self-dependent. By the former, he shows his rage and power as a roaring lion; by the latter, his subtlety and address as a serpent or angel of light. His attacks in the former way are so vehement, (as when he fills the mind with dark and horrible thoughts, blasphemies, and suggestions, at which even fallen nature shudders and recoils, which is the case with many,) that his interference is plainly to be felt. In the latter, his motions are so

insinuating, and so connatural to the man of sin within us, that they can not be easily distinguished from the wishings of our own thoughts. I suppose that when Ananias attempted to deceive Peter, he was little aware that Satan had filled his heart, and helped him to the lie. But Satan has a near and intimate connexion with the man of sin. The heart, while unrenewed, is his work-shop, Ephes. ii. 2. and it is the same with believers, so far as they are unrenewed. Therefore I believe he is never nearer to us, or more busy with us, than at some times when we are least apprehensive of him. We have no clear ideas of the agency of spirits; nor is it necessary. The Scripture says little to satisfy our curiosity, but tells us plainly, that he is always watching us, and desiring to sift us as wheat. I believe we give him no more than his due, when we charge him with having a hand in all our sin, I believe he cuts out abundance of work for us all. But the other kind

of temptations in which people are rather passive, though they often think themselves compliant, it is not appointed for all believers to feel, at least not frequently or in a violent degree. A fine general representation of them we have in that part of the Pilgrim's Progress, which describes Christians' passage through the valley of the shadow of death. Bunyan had been an exercised mariner in these deep waters, and he writes like one. As tempted souls go through the most distress, so they usually have the most affecting and striking discoveries of the wisdom, power, and glory of the Lord, and acquire a sympathy for afflicted minds, and a skill in dealing with them, which cannot easily be obtained by reading books. Something of this skill may be acquired from a careful observation of others; but experience is the best school. This lesson is, however, so painful to flesh and blood, that we may be thank